Tag Archives: Laser-cutting

Gone?

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This is the first post of three regarding the Tabletop Knights show in Germany.

This will be about the first display board, Gone?

I saw this image, credit to whoever did this (if you let me know I will credit that person here) and thought, “I want this!” If you are interested I have a Pinterest page devoted to scenery. Look for Nik Green. I highly recommend Pinterest as a resource for keeping ideas from all over the interweb neat and tidy and in one place.

I got the dimensions of a Kill Team board, thirty by twenty two inches, and got two sheets of chipboard cut.

Clamping the sides

Burning the splinters off the cheap wood frame

Trimming the foam for the inserts with my Proxxon

Foam inserts fitted

Playing around with ideas

Track chopped out and starting to detail the edges with strips of cork tile

A Lego wheel being used for detailing

Gravel from Walersee and fine river silt used for detailing

Building before and after painting

Starting to build up the layers

I made a pipeline out of some scrap pipe from a skip and some laser cut supports. I magnetised the feet so it could be removed for transportation.

Everything in situ

Silt! Silt everywhere!

Paint and weathering applied

Tuft mania

And then scatter

I think the scatter needs to be more yellow to match the tufts. Added to this was some water effects. Overall I am very happy with this board. Some minor tweeks as noted are required.

The joys of the countryside

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Altough it is very pretty where I live, if you don’t have a car you’re buggered. To put it politely. I had to go to the post office to post some orders.

Mighty Fortress doors


I have actually made something that people want to buy!
Usually my Wife drives me around. This week however she is off skiing with the children.
Geographically the post office is just under five kilometres away. Very manageable on the flat. We live just over two hundred metres higher and the most direct route is cross-country. Joy.
Add to this, Eugendorf is not designed for cyclists. It is a shopping nexus on a main road with an autobahn junction.
I won’t be doing this again in a hurry.

The Reever’s Arms

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2018 is the year of extracting digit. My old gaming buddy, mugodice.wordpress.com, had wanted an inn for his games a couple of years ago and I had been putting it off.
The brief was that it had to occupy an eight inch square footprint.
So spoiling his birthday suprise here it is.

I have a cunning plan. Maybe?

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Somebody yesterday on the Oldhammer Community page in Friendface posted an interesting question.
“Has anybody made replacement doors for the Mighty Fortress?”
The Mighty Fortress was a polystyrene castle made by Games Workshop in the mid-eighties.
mf
Due to the age of this many of the plastic doors have disappeared or have been broken.
The-Doors
Some people on the Oldhammer page suggested 3D printing. This got me thinking.
Why can’t I laser cut replacements?
I dug my Mighty Fortress out and I used a piece of scrap 3mm MDF to guage sizes.
scrap
It fitted perfectly.
Next project.
group

Reflections on 2017

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I’m somewhat late on this one as I’ve been laid low with a rather unpleasant flu-like lurgy.
A quick catch-up on a couple of pieces from my last post.
barbarian
Here is the Barbarian from the OS Miniatures Company. This was a challenge that I undertook to have him painted before Christmas. Nobody else took up the challenge which was a pity.
santa
This was from Warmonger Miniatures, again painted up for Christmas.
There is one more figure which was supposed to be my last figure of 2017, but the lurgy stopped that. I’ll post when it is finished.
Old age seems to have telescoped the year. Blink and I’ll miss it.
The first three months were taken up with making the Rogue Stars display board. April/May I did some landscaping in the garden converting a be-shrubbed steep slope into a flat grassy terrace.
June/July/August were at Electric Love. I had a great time and it gave me enough money to buy my own small laser cutter.
The rest of the year seemed to evaporate, lttle jobs around the house and making bits with my loot from the summer.
2017
Here is a group shot of what I finished painting. There is a lot more half finished and the 2018 goal is to finish all the half started jobs from the past few years, the Heresy Dragon being the main target, get all that out of the way so I have a clean slate. Then one project at a time, start it and finish it.
Yeah right!
Product of the Year 2017
On reflection it has to be the laser cutter. It’s small and slow but it has enabled me to prototype ideas and to make stuff on the fly. Christmas cards, party invites, party bag goodies, cake icing molds and gift tags just to name a few bits and bobs.
Heroes and Zeroes
Firstly the Heroes.
At the top of the list are the Facebook friends; EvH, DW, SR, ME and CF. They have been a constant source (sauce?) of inspiration, advice and encouragement. I might actually meet some of them in RL oneday.
Then comes the figure manufacturers who have gifted me with lovely toys this last year.
Ramshackle Games
http://shop.ramshacklegames.co.uk/index.php
The OS Miniatures Company
https://www.facebook.com/OldSchoolMinis1985/
Avatars of War
http://www.avatars-of-war.com/eng/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59&Itemid=51
Warmonger Miniatures
https://www.warmongerminiatures.com/
Finally Revolution Events
https://www.revolutionevent.com/
For fun, education and loot.
Now to the Zeroes
Wayland Games for lengthy delays, poor communication and their unwillingness (or inability) to combine orders.
TNT for their lack of customer service and making life just that little bit harder.
Games Workshop for tantalising me with the new rules for 40K, promises of fewer books and then conveniently forgetting about all that.
The new plastics are beautiful though.

The tyranny of Bullet Journaling

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Blame my Daughter.
I am disorganised.
I am untidy.
I am lazy.
In my ideal world I would sit at my desk and paint, all day and everyday.
However in RL there are jobs to be done, kids to be fed, laundry, chickens etc. etc. etc.
I’d never heard of Bullet Journaling before. Go and Goggle it. There are about twelve million results, I just looked. So it must be fairly popular.
My Daughter visited in the summer and spent some time hunched over a notebook. I didn’t really pay any attention.
She came back last month and on a shopping/sightseeing trip (Salzburg is very picturesque if you didn’t know) had wanted to spend a small fortune on rubber stamps for her journal. My Wife told her to talk to me first.
I had some rubber sheet especially for laser cutting and knocked off a set of the stamps she was after. She was delighted and pointed me in the direction of stencils for journaling.
I erm “copied” a stencil sheet that she wanted. Basically traced the image in Illustrator, quite roughly and cut it on my laser.
She was delighted, again, and gave me a shopping list of designs that she wanted. There are a number of stencils on the market, but I want to do better.
The material I used was Kraftplex.
Kraftplex specifications
It’s a softwood pulp pressed into sheets and I had been given some samples to try from Happylab.
Back to the original topic.
I make myself “To Do” lists on the back of envelopes etc, which I proceed to lose or are “tidied” up.
So I considered buying myself a Bullet Journal and start organising myself. I took a peek at Leuchtturm1917 on Amazon which my Daughter stated was the absolute gold standard in Bullet Journals. Not excessively expensive, however it was the size issue. A5. I have a little Man-Bag and I carry around an A6 (ish) book from Tiger (their webshite is excessively annoying). So why not just use what I have and adapt.
jour1
Using my own bastardised version I have started making my own daily task lists. In reality this means I am always busy and tasks seem to overflow to the next day, but rarely to the next week.


Here are some date stamps in the production queue.
invites
Birthday party invites for Number Two Son produced on the laser cutter.
Maybe time for a zero task day soon?

Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago

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gawinter
Winter is here
This really needs no introduction and a lot more eloquent people have written about this.
cover
Frostgrave looked very interesting, never played it but never mind, but the only drawback that I could see was that all your scenery had to be winter themed which could be quite restrictive.
Ghost Arcipelago is set in a more tropical environment so the scenery can be integrated into other games.
At my rather casual reading of the rulebook it appears that it can be a sandbox of a rule-set. You want pyrates, OK. Savages, no problem. Dinosaurs, why not? It seems it can be a lot of fun.
I’ve put out a request for players on my local gaming forum, but no takers as yet.
http://www.diefestung.com/forum/
Next year’s Austrian Salute is looming and I’d like to try and win best gaming table again. I’ve set a standard so I have to go one better and I’m up against Christoph from Grune Horde who does his own laser cutting. To win I have to have an oustanding table AND play the game.
ga4
I have my gaming table, thankyou Electric Love. And I have started planning out a possible layout. I wanted my island system to be as interchangeable as possible so I could go from small islands to large conglomerations.
ga1
You can see on the right the first iteration of the design process. Looks nice however the pieces don’t fit seemlessly, there would be a little gully between each cluster.
ga3
This led me to laser cut this little device which means I can have perpendicular edges enabling everything to fit together unobtrusively. Hopefully.
ga2
Laser cutting some islands.
Lush tropical islands need to be accessorised.
Here are some scatter plants. I need a lot more. Thank heavens for eBay and cheap chinese aquarium suppliers.
ga5
Some scenery from my bitz box. Who knows what eldritch terrors this statue has witnessed.
On a final note. I’m having to squint to type this so apologies for any smelling mistooks. I had my eyes tested and my prescription has changed very slightly. Trying to be sensible and grown up and looking after my eyes I took the new lenses. After a week of squinting at the computer, I thought my eyes took time to adjust. Sitting a metre back from the screen hunched at a weird angle trying to reach the mouse I’d have enough and went back to the optician.
“You didn’t say you wanted to read as well.”
Using the interweb acronym FFS!

A laser cutter which is all mine

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With my ill gotten gains from the summer I bought myself a laser cutter. It is a 30cm by 40cm machine from Shen Hui Laser Company based in China.
https://shenhuilaser.en.alibaba.com/
It was a bit of a performance getting it. First with the money transfer and then with TNT not communicating with itself.
But it arrived.
laser1
Unpacking revealed the quality of the components.


Not very good. There was great big screw in the middle of the work-bed which threw out any pretensions of a level work surface. And the airhose is of the cheapest material and finish one could imagine.
The provided software was unintuitive and useless.
Customer support is non-existent.
Thankfully there is the interweb. I found a piece of software called K40 Whisperer and some support groups dedicated to Chinese laser cutters.
It is slow and takes a couple of passes to cut through anything so it is only useful for prototyping ideas.
laser5
For the real work I’ll have to continue using Happylab in Salzburg.

Some little bits done before Electric Love

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I did manage to do a few bits and bobs before and during my time at Electric Love, but I don’t seem to have photographed everything. I plan to remedy this before too long.

This was inspired by the Blanchitsu articles in White Dwarf and I rather liked the floaty bits that people had made. This is part of my ongoing Imperial Court which is slowly building up.

This is a little speeder I’d lasercut and will be putting up for sale.


My old gaming buddy Seb had sent me some figures. With them was this halfling which I liked but just didn’t quite know what to do with. So rather than having it sit on the leadpile I thought I’d paint him up and return him. I had a blast painting him and I made the most impractical gaming base ever.

This was the Mayor of Helsreach, a freebie figure from Curtis of Ramshackle Games.

Ramshackle Games


He was given out at the annual BOYL event at Wargames Foundry
http://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/
I really want to go to this one day.

Die Grüne Horde

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As usual I’m far behind in my posts. Laziness, a trip to Legoland and starting work at Electric Love Festival. The ELF is my work for the next seven weeks with some very long days ahead the nearer the festival gets, so don’t expect much posting from me. If all goes to plan I want to by a small (400mm x 300mm) laser cutter with the money.
This was the event that I had been invited to the previous year and due to communication problems I didn’t make it. This year I did. Okay there were some problems with road signage and autobahn exits that were closed, but I was there.
It was advertised as a gaming day and it most definitely it was. There were three tournaments that day; Warhammer 40K, Infinity and Firestorm Armada. Also being played was Saga, Bolt Action, the ubiquitous Frostgrave, X-Wing Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Force on Force, Kugelhagel and a very brief appearance of Test of Honour (replaced by Halo Fleet).


It was held in a much larger space than the Austrian Salute. The thing I have found at gaming days is that I felt very slim. The average physique on display was, politely, well rounded.

My display


There was a painting competition, which obviously I entered. I ended up with a third place in the Unit Category. I did expect to be higher ranked in this one as the quality of the other entries was okayish, in the other categories there was better painting so I didn’t expect much there.

Painting competition area


Roll-the-Dice was trading there
http://www.roll-the-dice.de
And I had an interesting chat with Martin, the proprietor.
Walter (Austrian Salute) was there and it was nice to see him. We chatted about the new edition of Warhammer 40K coming soon. And he managed to chat me out of some money for when it is launched.
There was a pro painter there
http://www.crissis-bemalservive.de
She wasn’t up to the standard of Sigur of Battlebrush studios but she did have some interesting iridescent effects, but not using nail products which I am currently researching.
The lunch was mediocre, luke warm, but the service was excellent.
I didn’t demo the game at all and hardly sold anything. But I had some excellent conversations with people there.

Number One Son eying up a scratch built titan.


Overall it was a pleasant day, not sure if it is worth the effort though. Quite a lot of traveling for very little result. I’ll have to ponder whether I want to attend again.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother

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I really cannot for the life of me understand why people are prepared to pay me double the amount I pay myself laser-cutting for a few hours work pulling up weeds in their gardens.
Is there no value to creativity?
On the plus side though, it means I can afford to get a few tools for the workshop.