Paint Table Saturday 28 August

 

As you can see, I have started work on pimping the MDF buildings for my jungle terrain. These three will be for my plantation area.

Most of the other buildings will have thatched roofs. I'll start work on those tomorrow.

Finished: Large Secondary Jungle Bases

 

I a slightly surprising turn of events, I actually managed to finish these today and to sort out (temporary at least) storage for them.

As usual, our trusty Aussie Commando has made his way into the photos.

There are two bases which can be used separately as corner pieces or together as edge pieces:

The four large bases all pretty much cover an A4 board:

The two large non-corner/edge bases:

The three medium bases:

The bases I used for these are from Wargames Tournaments.

Other than the buildings (which I will be working on next), that will be it for jungle terrain for a while. I might do some more scatter pieces in the future for my "transportable" terrain, but that will be a while off.

Wednesday Workbench 25 August

These pieces are taking much longer to finish than I'd expected. That's mostly because of the increased drying times. I might have them finished tomorrow, but Friday is now more likely.

Of course, the next problem is going to be organising storage for them!

Paint Table Saturday 21 August

 

My paint table is rather full, as you can see from the photo above. Progress on these hasn't been as fast as I'd hoped, mainly because the "fix" on the herbs took a long time to fully dry for some reason. I suspect that might be down to the ambient temperature now being lower than when I was doing the earlier pieces.

Today I added the trees and the cocktail stick tips to the bases. Tomorrow I should get the plastic plants and brush added. I think they should be finished on Tuesday.

Wednesday Workbench 18 August

 I've been up to a few things today, now that those secondary jungle scatter pieces are finished.

I stared the day off by adding some blue foam pieces to some large terrain bases, then this afternoon I added filler to blend the foam edges into the base:

I'll be painting over the tops of these tomorrow and might get the herbs added. These are for the large secondary jungle pieces I mentioned yesterday.

As I couldn't do any more on these today, I decided to prime the remaining building sprues for the jungle project:

My plan had been to assemble these in stages over the next couple of evenings, but I got a little bit carried away:

I should note that the water tank (black) had been assembled a while ago and was just primed today.

The large secondary jungle pieces should keep me busy for the next few days. When they are done I will start work on the buildings - I need to tart up the roofs, then I can crack on with painting them.

Finished: Secondary Jungle Scatter Pieces

 

I got distracted yesterday, so these pieces got finished today. 

Scatter Pieces

80mm Scatter Pieces

50mm Scatter Pieces

These will be the last of the small scatter pieces, but not the last of the secondary jungle - I will be starting on some larger pieces tomorrow now that my order from Wargames Tournaments has arrived.

Paint Table Saturday 14 August

 

Well, with all those bamboo, kunai grass and swamp bases finished, I decided it was time to do a bit more secondary jungle.

I added trees to some of the bases yesterday then added smaller plants this morning, then some dense undergrowth (brown lichen, the coir bunches and rubberised horsehair). This afternoon I added some clump foliage and green lichen. This evening I "fixed" the clump foliage and lichen with 10% matte medium.

Tomorrow I'll get these mostly finished, but I expect that they won't be ready to spray with matte varnish until Monday.

Finished: Bamboo Thickets Batch #2

 I finished the bamboo thickets yesterday, but decided to leave the glue to dry overnight before taking photos.

There are two bases with paths left over from the original batch:

...and six bases without paths to fill gaps or act as line-of-sight-blocking terrain:

Here's a top-down photo of all the bases (including the three finished a while ago):

In total they cover about 1' x 2'. I've got about 150 stems left over. Mostly that is because I only needed 350 or so for the bases. However, most of these were "rejects" that will need a little bit of work to make them usable. 

It seems that the most recent bundles I'd bought had been made with slightly thicker wire than the earlier lots I'd had. This meant that the plastic coating was thinner and the wire tended to burst out at the top and/or bottom - I'll need to trim them, so they'll end up somewhat shorter. I'll probably end up using them for small scatter bases.

Paint Table Sunday 08 August

 

I decided to take a break from the workbench yesterday, and haven't done a great deal today. Even so, I have drubrushed 200 of the bamboo stems and sorted the next 100 ready to go tomorrow. 

The board that I'm poking them into will only hold about 250, so I'll need to take the ones I've already drybrushed out first before I start on the next batch. 

I should have all 500 done by the end of tomorrow, and will be able to start adding them to bases on Tuesday. I suspect that I'll have quite a few left over which can be used for some small scatter bases or as small groups on secondary jungle bases.

Finished: More Kunai Grass

 

I decided to get these bases finished today before working on the bamboo thickets. This morning I added static grass to these bases and to those for the bamboo, then this evening I added to plastic "kunai grass" pieces.

These extra bases are to fill gaps between the larger kunai grass bases I finished a few weeks ago. I have enough of the plastic grass pieces to do about twice as many again of these if I ever decide I want more.

Tomorrow I will be moving on to the bamboo thickets. I've got all these bases to fill up with bamboo stems:

The two larger bases are from the original batch where I ran out of bamboo stems; those on the board are the ones I have just prepped.

Tomorrow I will be starting work on drybrushing the bamboo stems:

...just five hundred of them to do!

Wednesday Workbench 04 August

 

Not a lot to see today, I'm afraid. These are the extra bases for kunai grass and bamboo thickets. This morning I coated he blue foam with filler, then this evening I have given them a coat of brown paint. Tomorrow I will add a few patches of texture paste; when that has dried I will paint and drybrush, then add herbs,  On Friday I will "fix" the herbs, then add static grass. Once that's all done I can start work on drybrushing the 500 bamboo stems...

Finished: Swamp Terrain

 

I'm calling these done. Well, almost - I've just given the undersides of the bases a coat of PVA to see if it helps to counter the warping. I also need to sand down the 25mm bases as they don't seem to fit in the 25mm washers.

There are two main types of swamp in New Guinea - mangrove swamps along the coasts and river mouths and palm swamps inland. I have done these, as you can see from the photos, as the latter. Giant ferns along the water edges are a common feature.

Here's a photo of all the insert bases:

There are 28 bases of trees (3 per 50mm base), plus five 50mm bases and fifteen 25mm bases with giant ferns:

Once the PVA on the undersides of the swamp bases has cured I will start work on the extra bases for bamboo thickets and kunai grass.