Farm-Raid

On the sixth of June, in the early hours of the evening, german troops raid a farm in normandy. This Kampfgruppe belongs to the Panzerlehr-Division which is advancing westwards to patch the holes in the costal front.
On the way they try to clear the upstate from scattered Airborne troops.

 To be honest: I'd only like to show of my new selfmade pieces of terrain:

 A field growing vegetables

 An already mowed crop field

 Hans is getting ready to throw the stick for the farms dog

 The Master for the Building was made out of foam board

 The windows were scratched from polystyrene

 The Windowlatches and doors were made of balsa wood

  The roof is made of corrugated cardboard

 Now, this building was completely cast from ceramic

 Next to the already known barn, I added a NWC, non-water-closett :-)

 

I hope you like it!

Finally, welcome to fpotd, he runs a blog featuring a funny pic each and every day! Go check it out! :)

And also welcome Trull, I am really impressed of his house-building skills!

Cheers, Mojo

Cast done

Last night, I have had my first contact ever with resin in liquid state ;)
I finally did the casts of the peripherals for the Houses.
I am amazed about the level of detail. Almost every little bit of the balsa wood pattern is visible!
Even one of the failed doors (right) looks pretty well! I am impressed.
And it's so much easier to work with, compared to plaster... I guess, I like resin.

Here's a quick shot...

Cheers, Mojo

Mould made

Yesterday I made the Mould for the small parts of the Houses. Though most of the results look crispy and clean, the mould has eaten most of my balsa masters. I should be able to use them as some kind of rubble.
Two of three doors were an absolute fail, but its not that bad. I dont need as manyof them ;-)















Last but not least I wish to welcome Alan to my Blog :)
You can find his own blog here! He has produced some beautiful timberframed houses on his own recently! Go check it out! :)

Cheers,
Mojo

Restaurant "Au Boef"

A few weeks ago I headed to Haguenau, Alsace, France with my girlfriend. On the way we passed some history-charged villages like Hatten and Rittershofen (Operation Nordwind, Jan. 1945), but we didn't stop there.
Also, a bigger village called Soufflenheim crossed our way. Soufflenheim is well-known for its traditional pottery-arts. More than a decade ago, my parents took me there, looking for some pottery-bread-pot, and we had a lunch at the local restaurant "Au Boef". This is where I tasted frog legs for the first (and last) time. It hasn't been the bad cook, no. It's just not my thing :)

However, when we were driving through Soufflenheim, I instantly recognized this restaurant. Last friday, while taking a sunbath in the local park, I was planning my gamingtable. I decided to put some outskirts of a small village on it. So a café/bar/restaurant may not be missing. This is where "Au Boef" comes in :)

I started to reconstruct it from the photo that I have taken on our tour:

 

I will not build the whole thing, just the first half of the house.  So here is the first shot of my planning and construction:

Its a bunch of work, but I am sure it will pay off. I started to mark where the windows should be placed, and where the timberframes are. Then I cut balsa-wood into matching pieces and glued them on top.

This is how far I got until now:

 

I really hope you like it :) The space between the frames will be covered with PVA and very fine sand, to create a rendered surface.

Now a few words to my foregoing post, which I published on a most unfortunate time, between Bloggers two downtimes. I asked for some help with motivation, and The Angry Lurker as well as Paul were kindly trying to motivate me. These comments have vanished in the depth of googles Blogger-Databases, but are unforgotten :) Thank you, both! I didn't start off making moulds yet, but will do this week! :)

I hope you guys (and gals) have a good start into your new week!

Cheers, Mojo

20mm Barn

Tonight, I finally finished the first part for the all-mine-gaming-table: A Hay stack:

I'show you what I've done:
Fist: A plan. As always :) Two fronts with a gate on each one are not really useful. I corrected that later ;)
As you can see, I recalculated the models measurements in real measurements (using scale 1:72).

I got me some coffee-mix-sticks at the local 0€ shop ;). These were used as planks. I carved the edges to create a rugged look:

Afterwards, they were glued to the cut-out shape:

Using my all-time-favorite tool, the proxxon scrollsaw, i cut off the excess wood:

Here's the finished sidewall:

This also happend to the other sidewall, the front and the back.

Now I went for the wood-shingled roof. I sanded some really thin polystyrene sheet (0.25mm) and cut it to ~7mm strips, which themselves were gashed with scissors:

I needed quite a lot of these... They are glued overlapping onto the cardboard. Of course you must start from below... This is really a lot of annoying work, if you add some fissures to the ends of the shingles and make them of odd length...

Next up: The gate and the top-window. Again, we need some strips of the sanded polystyrene. This time some more narrow ones (1-2mm):

They are being glued to the thicker, supporting polystyrene back, which already has the final shape of the gate:

Small hint: use only two narrow stripes of glue, right angled to the planks. This will (hopefully) prevent the glue from coming out between the planks. You can see that little desaster above. With the described technique, all went well :)

Again, cut off the excess "wood", but don't be to accurate:

If you are kind of a perfectionist, as I sometimes (only!) turn out to be, you might carve the ends of the plank with your scalpell. Use two different angles to get a nice finish:

Then it looks like this:

Finally, glue some supports to the gate. I had the nice idea of using them as door hinges.

Therefore I bent the strip around the outer side of the door and fixed it.

As this was the work of several days, I decided to make some molds of it. One can always use hay stacks ;)

These are the (goddamn expensive) silicone molds and the first casts:

I hope you like it!

Cheers, Mojo

Finshed... at the last moment

It's new years eve, and I am ready to leave for the party, but before I go, I'd like to wish all my visitors and readers a happy new year!
Finally I have finished my latest project and I wish to share some pictures with you...
The Sd. Kfz. 251/22 is done. As I learned from Double 0 Seven, I have put the model in some context for the photoshooting ;) Have fun (tonight) !

Taking aim

Dispensing the used round

As Paul asked for the Crew, here's a shot ;)

The interiour without the gun

And with the gun

In action

Vorwärts, Männer!

Yeah, tank support!

And one last picture...

Now guys, go out and do some party!
See you next year!

//mojo

It's got me again

Tonight, the Ausführung 22 caught my attention again.
Since I was not really satisfied with the quick and dirty mock-up of the gun platform and the vehicle was really lacking space for crew, I felt the need to disassemble it.

First, I cleaned the interior a bit. Some of the seats were removed, because they would not ever be used again in this vehicle. This also promised to provide some more place to stand for the figures:

The holes were covered with some styrene sheet afterwards. As you might notice, the space for the figures did not really increase. I rather feel like it decreased, because there is less horizontal space to stand. So what, its done...

When this step was finished, I started scratching a rack for the gun. This is a bit closer to reality, but actually it's still pretty far away :D

This is how it looks when its assembled:

As already said, there is not really more space than before, but I think it looks more neat and I do not have to cover anything with camo nets... Oh, and my poor rear Machine Gun mount is broken :( I hope I can fix it again (about the 4th time)...

As I don't think that I'll get to post something before 24th:

I wish merry chrismas to all who believe in!
...and  simply some nice calm days for those who don't ;)

//mojo

W.I.M.P. is international again!

After my mate Mork6969 from boforum.de and http://mork6969.blogspot.com/ decided to continue blogging in english only, I felt like I had to check my blog-stats.


Now I think I need to follow morks choice, since 49% of my visitors are from outside of germany! I have to thank you for watching my blog, even if you might not understand everything I write :)



So, enough of that... Back to business!

In the past, I started several big projects, like building and painting 2 Panzer IV, one Panther A, a Kettenkrad and a Kübelwagen, or painting and basing 72 figures at the same time. The goal of it all was to keep the effort low.

But the consequence of it is, that I get forward very slowly with both projects, and I almost don't want to look at it anymore... I promise, I will not do it again :D At least I hope so.

The "Panzers" are currently being weathered:
The Decals are on (the Seitenschürzen are not mounted yet), the washing is applied and the edges are highlighted.
The next step would either be a filter in earth-tone or some kind of fading. But since I am not really sure about which colors I should use for fading with this camo, I think I will omit this step.
The problem is: My girl is going to bed earlier and earlier every day. Which is alright, because I have more time for modeling, but I cannot use my airbrush, because it would keep her awake.



Feeling unable to apply any filtering without my airbrush, something else came to my mind. Since I recently got the double-pack of Armourfasts Sd. Kfz. 251, I thought about my old 1/76 Revell 251er and my old PAK40, which is also made by Revell and also in 1/76.

 

In the past I have often put the PAK on top of the 251 to simulate an 251/22 while playing Behind Omaha (See the bad picture). So why the hell shouldn't I combine them to one model?

I am well aware, that it would be unlikely to see a 251 c with a mounted PAK 40. I don't really care, I felt bored ;)

 
 
 
 
 

First, I built a platform from plastic sheet. This platform is not like in the original, I know :) As I said, i just tried to kill some time ;) It was not easy to fit the platform into the vehicle, but after some trial and error, it worked ;)
Most of the interiour will be invisible, when it is finished, because I plan to cover the platform with some camo netting.

Also, I costumized two figures for this vehicle:

The "commander" was an Airfix Paratrooper with an Revell DAK-NCO head transplanted.

The gunner/loader is one of these incredibly ugly Hasegawa Flak 88 crew members. I really had to chop his head off... Since this figure is rather big, I chose one of Italeris "German Elite Troops" to lose his head for him :)

It is not nearly finished, a lot of painting has to be done on this one, but I hope you like it so far :)

 

Greetings,

mojo

Mojos Puppenhaus...

...für Püppchen der etwas anderen Sorte 

Ich will hier mal ein bisschen meinen ersten Versuch im Haus/Ruinenbau bebildern...

Erklärtes Ziel ist es, ein Kleinstadt-Reihenhaus zu bauen, welches nach einem Brand dargestellt werden soll...
Allerdings konnte ich es nicht lassen, das eine oder andere erhaltene Möbelstück zu basteln  Daher auch der Thread-Name 

Los gehts:
Husch husch ins Körbchen sagt der Onkel!
Weil das Körbchen oben steht, müsst ihr erst die Treppe hoch!
Die großen Männer bewachen das Körbchen, damit euch nachts nicht die bösen Monster aus dem Kleiderschrank fressen.
Was macht denn Papa da mit dem Ofenrohr? 
Auf der Mauer auf der Lauer...

Also in der Küche (wo Papa mit dem Ofenrohr hantiert) liegt ein zusammengebrochener Tisch mit ein paar kaputten Stühlen rum.
Der Klotz nebendran ist so ein schöner alter Herd, was man ohne Farbe leider noch nicht erkennt.

Das Ganze bekommt natürlich noch ein paar Farbkleckse ab, ein bisschen mehr Dachgebälk und ein paar Ziegeln obendrauf.
Die Treppe werd ich seitlich auch noch verspachteln, damit man nicht die 16 Lagen Selitron sieht 

Die Häuserfronten werde ich abnehmbar gestalten. Hierfür kam mir eine kleine, aber geniale Idee:
Einfach ein paar Nadeln längs ins Selitron der Front stecken und im Haus kleine Magnete anbringen.
So kann man während dem Spiel und in der Vitrine schön seine Figürchen platzieren 

Any comments, so far? 

//mojo