Flames of War - Commission Work - Dragonteeth

I hope you are all doing awesome ? Well I finally managed to get my hands on some balsawood, a dice 8 and miliput to finalize a request I had lately to do some dragonteeth.

With this in mind I strayed out to do my work... hope you like the results....

The Balsawood is the base in this case. With the Dice 8 (8 sided dice) I pushed the "teeth" into the miliput and slapped it flat on the top. Easy as that.

Enjoy the results:

Flames of War - Tutorial - Gun Emplacements - Step by Step

While still trying to save some money on an expensive hobby, I came across the Gun Emplacements made by Battlefront. That indeed is something you can easily do yourself.

From my perspective these handy "Dug In" Markers for Artillery or similar stuff makes sense and is easy to build yourself.

Just to give you a basic understanding... these things will cost you approx 15 Euros for a pair of two. What you normally get is two for the front and two for the back side of a large base. Oh come on... this is something we can easily do ourselves.

Let us start with the components I used here:

- Beermatt (Still loving this stuff), substitude with 1mm Balsawood if that is more handy for you
- Sand
- PVA Glue
- Filler

The advanced version will also use:
- Miliput

We also need:

- Scissors
- putty knive or similar

Easy I guess ....

So lets begin the process.

Step 1:
Take some filler and put it into a container for mixing. I used an old youghurt type of thing. But also a newspaper could do this job. Then add some PVA to get a smooth working wet mixture. Add the sand to it and mix it through. Why we are doing this ?
Quite easy.. we get a bit more texture for painting later on. If you feel that painting is a bit not your type of thing you could also add cheap acrylic colour to this mixture. This will be your base tone.. so be carefull that it is indeed dark enought.

Step 2:
Cut your beermatt. I placed a large base somethere in the middle to get some measurements. If you have e.g. a fitting form upfront from e.g. infantry dug in markers you can also use these for the wide side of life. This makes it easier for the measurement part. That also leaves you with a stripe left after cutting of approx 1-2 cm... depending on the beermatt size.

Step 3:
Cut the above mentioned stripe down to approx 1cm height.

Step 4:
Use your putty knive to take up your mixture and carefully place it around the self made base. If you are not that kinda tidy here it is NOT a problem

Step 4. Build up slowly. No extra glue needed !

Step 5:
Use your cut stripe to match to your large artillery base. Make sure it fits in there and that you have a bit spare space in the inner room left. That helps later on to get the base out again.

This is how it should look like after Step 5.

Step 6: 
Let the whole stuff dry.  If you try the advanced version you know use your miliput here to place some sandbags or glue some wood pieces on it... either you can substitute "wood" with beermatt left overs.

Step 7:
Use some cheap primer (black) and prime it. Afterwards basecoat colour it with a cheap brown colour. If you need to add details on the inner parts.... use a knive and do some slight cutting into the beermatt parts. This gives later on the impression of wood. Drybrush and paint as desired.

Step 8:
Enjoy your work !

Total costs:

Sand - nothing , I got it from the beach
Beermatt - nothing, Taken from my local pub
PVA Glue - Whole Bottle 3,99 Euro. So this will approx have used up 10 cent
Filler - Whole 900 gramm container for 3,99 in sales at Lidl Ireland .., used approx for 20 cents
Colour - I used white and brown and later on mixed the stuff ... so 3,99 Each for 100ml, approx 50 cent altogether

Invest for two:

0,80 Cents Euro

vs:

15 Euros on cheapest mailorder i could find.

Saves: 14,20 Euro

Flames of War - Tutorial - Lets make some buildings Part 1

In one of the forums I am part of I got the question if I could not do some sort of easy tutorial on building a building, house or something similar.

As staying neutral at this stage I want to do some scratch building with you on doing this. Lets start for the beginners and doing it .... NOW....


Materials needed:

Thick cardboard (I used grey cardboard approx 2mm thick)... makes it not easily to destroy and still flexible enought for our purpose

A ruler (really essential here) and...

a hobby knife.....

and a bit of glue which I will need in Part 2


So lets start

Step 1 :
Define your measurements... for our purpose and game technics it makes sense to at least get two stands of infantry into it... so lets put them together and cut a scare around them (makes it approx 65mm by 50mm)

Great stuff... bear in mind... we will need this approx 3 times (one is the bottom.. two are for the roof parts)

Step 2:
After this step build your walls around this. As I like the Battlefront webpage "Flames of War" quite much you can also find a definition there how high a building should be a minimum by refering to the Stalingrad Appartmentblock tutorial.. if you do not know it by hand.... its 30mm high.

As you can see on my picture I left out a couple of blocks... why you might ask ? I always hate it to fill my already small space available to me with a full 65x50x30 plus roof building. So I was thinking on interconnecting parts. This also leaves me to some easy to make variations later on and a much easier casting then it comes to reproduction. We need all parts two times.

As you can see I also already did cut out the windows with my hobby knife... the measurements for this I got from the based miniatures themself:

Windows are 10mm by 10mm
A door is 10mm by 15mm in my measurement.. Do not cut away your excess cardboard now. We will need it later on.


Step 3:
Continue with your roof tile.. we want the roof to be taken away so that we can place some miniatures inside of it. We do not later on want to move the complete house.

So we need the roof triangle as well.I decided on the smaller 50mm side being the right one to place my roof on. So cut out this tile as well two times . My highest point here is 20mm..... that makes it 50 by 20mm and we will have a small angle.

Step 4:

We also need a chimney... so lets also cut this out. Now we come to a place...you need your chimney being more exposed ? Then cut it out two times... in our tutorial we will be pleased with one time. Chimney is 60mm on its highest point and 25mm on on its widest part. Do yourself the favour and work with helping lines to get the upper part in a better shape then mine :)))



By now we should have:
3 Parts 60 by 50mm
1 chimney 60 by 25mm
2 parts of long side walls approx 64mm by 30mm
2 parts of short side walls approx 54 by 30mm
2 roof triangles 50 by 20mm



See you in the next part.

Flames of War - Tutorial - Entrechment Marker

Also finished the painting job on the Entrechment Marker... easy way to build it up with some putty , balsa wood , toothpicks and the usual colours and flock...

Flames of War - Tutorial - Rebuilding things from Battlefront Webpage (Minefields)

Also finished a couple of more minefields by now as shown here:

Minefields

Flames of War - Tutorial - Selfmade fences the tricky way (mikado)

With some more time I finished a couple of more of my

Fences (the tricky ones)

Love the outcome ! :)

Flames of War - Tutorial - Building things from the Battlefront Homepage - Barbwire -

Browsing the Battefront Homepage you will find the Modeling section and some things on "How to do..."... Christmas brought some Balsa Wood to me and so I started redoing the tutorials from their webpage.

The Barbwire:

As I am also building a 78. Sturm Division Unit I am in need of some trenches and stuff like that. The barbwire stuff from the BF webpage looked easy and I also would rate it as being easy.

Materials used:
Balsa Wood
match sticks
Superglue
Miliput
Filler
Wire


Step 1:
Scale for this one is 20cm by 5cm. This is also the exact sizing BF gives on their webpage.After cutting your Balsa Wood into shape you can take some of your match sticks and cut them to approx size of a standing model. You will need three parts of your cut match stick for one "metal holder". So superglue them together (first as a cross and then do a support strand as the third one). This done you can either choose to do only one row of barbwire in the middle or two from the outside. As sticking to BF plans this one will focus on only one row in the middle.

Step 2: 
Superglue your selfmade metal poles to the balsa wood. As I did it ... you can put in some variation on the wideness of your metal poles.

Step 3: 
Take your miliput or similar epoxy to build some nice textures around (e.g. craters).

Step 4: 
Use filler to give the balsa board some more texture.



Step 5:
Paint and flock as desired

Step 6: 
Take your wire and a thin pen. Spin the wire around the pen and you get your barbwire rolls. Cut down as desired. Paint them as you like and as it fits to your scenery. and glue them to the board.


Step 7:
Enjoy your work

Flames of War - Tutorial - Oil drums from sprues

As you can see there are a lot of things you can do with your belowed sprues.

Step 1:
Lets take the sprues again... you see the small round ends at the corners and in the middle ? Yes ! We will use these now.

Step 2:
After cutting them out (which I doubt everyone will get as well done as that they will be straight). Take two of these and glue them on top of each other.

Step 3:
Do this with the others as well.. one sprue makes approx 4.5 Oil tons.

Nice objective marker.... in case you are sensitive to extreme realism.. put a wound bandage soaked in PVA above them to hide the worst...

Prime and paint... and enjoy...

Flames of War - Tutorial - Fences (the not so tricky ones)

After the tricky fences we also can work out the better concealing ones.... takes also less then 5 minutes.
For this purpose I took the same stuff for cleaning ears.. but you can also use the toothpicks if you bought them for the other projects


So here we go...

What do we need ..

Materials:

Tongue depressor
Toothpicks (Partysticks) / or earcleaners
Superglue

Step 1:
No coffee today.... take a look at the gathered materials

Step 2:
Superglue the lowest "log"row directly on the tongue depressor.

Step 3:
Use the lowest row as hold for glueing one (NOT BOTH!) side of the  upright standing logs of your fence. Place as many as desired....

Step 4:
Build up one to two more log rows like Step 2.. but simply superglue them to the pins as well as to the row below.

Step5:
Superglue the other upright standing parts of your fence

Step 6:
Superglue the last row... paint and flock as desired... enjoy your result

Flames of War - Tutorial - Fences (the tricky ones)

Today it is time to again work a bit around on something that takes less then 5 minutes for at least 2 parts of todays fences.

Everyone knows the classic ones. Being a one piece cast thing totally shutting down any view and giving concealment to troops. Why should that always be the case ? Why cant a fence not be a hinderance for advancing troops instead of giving concealment ? ....


So here we go...

What do we need ..

Materials:

Tongue depressor
Toothpicks (Partysticks)
Superglue

and thats it....

Step 1: Did I state that I like coffee ... so lets start with one upfront and have a few on our materials

Step 2:
The more tricky variaton.. Superglue upright standing "bolts" on your base.

Step 3:
Put a lose layer (I took two here) on a 180 degree ankle on your base. In my case it is 2 toothpicks... Why ? Because a fence does not start on the bottom but somethere on the first third.

Step 4:
Superglue toothpicks from one upright "bolt" to another. To give the more hold we first layed the 180 degree toothpicks. So you can simply go ahead and place your fence parts simply in 180 degree again on the already existing bolts.

Step 5:
as seen on the picture and


Step 6:
Equal steps 3 and 4.

Step 7:
Base as desired and enjoy your result.....

Flames of War - Tutorial - How to build a barn

After reading through OntheStep.net I thought it is time to build a bit more terrain. Also the WWPD.net guys inspired me heavily on building some new stuff.

As to figure out measurements etc... I will give you some hints here on what I used on mine.

Things used:

Foamboard
thin cardboard
Coffee sticks
Small metal pin (old needle cut down)
Beer matt
PVA Glue
Filler
Sand

Measurements:

Front side heigth 35mm, wide 75mm
Back side heigth 40mm , wide 75mm
Both sides approx size of a medium FoW base with heigth going from 35 up to 40mm


Step 1: Cut your pieces out of the foamboard

Step 2: Cut the two doors out of the beer matt and glue them to the smaller front side and scratch in the panels, also glue smaller crap pieces as handle and for the bars

Step 3: Use filler on each wall section so that you will have approx 3mm thick walls (that also matches the beer matt part then and the total thickness includes the foamboard)

Step 4: Stick the metal pin as a bar above the larger door.

Step 5: Put sand on each of your filler filled wall parts and gently press it into the filler. This gives texture for painting and an old worn feeling to the building.

Step 6: Let the parts dry

Step 7: Meanwhile cut your card board a bit larger then the overall building will be. Start glueing your coffee sticks on it (I did cut them before and broke them off, you could also wait and cut them afterwards)

Step 8: After everything is dry basecoat your wall sections as well as the roof part. If you are sure that you sealed your foamboard with the filler you can use a normal spray primer on that. If you are unsure just be on the safe side and prime it with a colour and a brush.

Step 9: After the primer dried the sand should stick in place as you first pressed it into the hardening filler and then sealed it in with the primer. Yeah !

Step 10: Paint as desired.

Step 11: Highlight as desired

Step 12: After drying .. enjoy the result