Archive for the ‘Air Strip One’ Category

Well folks,

Here it is.  The last piece of scenery I’ll be building for some time.  So with out any further ado, behold!

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Table 5

So this board will be one of the table being used during the tournament I’m running.  For those of you that are interested, I’ve added a how to get to the venue page on the tournament website.  It’d be great to see a few of you come along.  You’re bound to see some pretty amazing armies.  If you can’t fear not!  I’ll be taking lots of photos and making a post on this blog about it in the following weeks.

Thanks for dropping in

John

 

Hello everyone!

Are you ready for another instalment of Air Strip One?  So this particular episode is all about the bulk fuel storage that will be in the centre of the air field.  Surprisingly it was quite easy to make.  It was simply a 15omm diameter piece of PVC pipe used for plumbing.  The tricky bit was cutting it so that it sat flat.  I accomplished this by wrapping a large piece of plastic card around the circumference of the tube, making sure the two ends lined up and the sheet was flat on the surface of the tube.  I then just scribed a line on the tube with a pencil.  I then just grabbed my Dremel and attached a cutting wheel.  It was fiddly, however worth it.  The piece looks good and was pretty straight forward to make.

If anyone has ever seen any sort of bulk hazardous chemical storage they always have a spill barrier around them.  For this I used the excellent barricaded from Quantum Gothic.  I don’t know exactly the story with this company, however they’ve not been open for business for what feels like 2yrs now.  Its very sad, as they have amazing products. As you can see from the pictures, the detailing of the container was pretty straight forward.  I once again used the cut off bolt heads as a final piece of detail.  Other items used were the grab handles off the Leman Russ kit, and some FW brass etched Imperial Eagles.  If you’re into making scenery, grab a few of these, they’re fantastic.

The final picture is roughly how the layout of the base will look.  Two landing pads, the fuel storage and the ground control.  If you remember from the first post of on this table, this is basically a small section of a much larger air field.  Hence why its symmetrical.

FW Epic Bunker WIP93 FW Epic Bunker WIP101 FW Epic Bunker WIP82

Thats it for now.  Thanks for dropping in.  The next post on this base will be of the finished product!  I’m very pleased with how its turned out, and I’m sure you will be too.

John

Hello everyone!

Well, as you can probably tell from the flavour of my last few posts I’ve not been doing much mini painting…  Instead I’ve been making scenery.  This is all in preparation for the tournament I’m running shortly.  I wanted to have five 4 x 4 tables for the tournament.  I had four done.  The two 4 x 4 Forge World Realm of Battle boards I did some time ago.  I admit I only did a 6 x 4 board, however I did have 8 2 x 2 tiles.  I finished off the last two tiles recently, just haven’t taken any pics of them… soz.  The Anhpelion Base, and a Zone Mortalis.

I needed a fifth.

Going with my theme of buildings rather than ruins, I decided to make an Air Strip.  Remember the Forge World Aeronautica Imperialis Air Field they did for Master Class 1 ( I think)?

img_1641

Well, I sort of wanted to do something like that but on a 40k scale.  Seeing as I had some left over bits from my Anphelion Base I decided to go with that.  Something I was really anxious to try out was to make a 40k scale one of these…  I think its a Forge World bunker of sorts for Epic scale.  You can see it in the picture above too.

FW Epic Bunker

Its the thing on the left hand side.  The first thing I did was got out the old drafting kit from way back in the day and draw out a scale version of what I wanted to make, and then cut out the base plate.  I wanted the inside to be made out of tread plate, so I cut two bases.  One in the actual tread plate, and the other in just 1mm thick plastic card.  To give it stability.

FW Epic Bunker WIP101

Here you can see the two bottom plates.  Next I glued them together.

FW Epic Bunker WIP202

The bottom one is slightly larger to accommodate the exterior walls.

FW Epic Bunker WIP303

Not being happy with just a nice tread plate interior floor, I decided to add some detail.  I don’t know what you’d call the detail that I added, but it looks cool…

FW Epic Bunker WIP404

FW Epic Bunker WIP505

 

Next up came the roof.  Now, I see this as a control tower of sorts.  So instead of having the top of the roof just end, like the Epic scale model.  I wanted to have antenna etc sticking out of the top.  So I modified a Rhino Razorback weapon mount to accommodate the antenna.  The centre piece is a 40mm piece of PVC plumbing pipe (I think).

FW Epic Bunker WIP606

Just adding the roof panels.  Very tedious…

FW Epic Bunker WIP707

FW Epic Bunker WIP1111

The door.  The parts are from the engine of the Baneblade and a door from the Imperial Bastion fortification.

FW Epic Bunker WIP1212

Its starting to look like an actual building now.  I wanted the roof to come off to make putting models inside a lot easier.  I did detail up the interior panels, however I forgot the take photos of them.  You’ll see what it looks like inside when I do the final shots.

FW Epic Bunker WIP1313

There you have it!  You’ll notice the small grey rivets.  They’re actually a military modelling detail kit I found while wandering aimlessly through a hobby store a few months ago.  They are nuts and bolts that come on a strip and you just cut them off and glue them on.  It’s a nice touch.

So there you have it.  Building one complete.  Well, mostly.  Next up I’ll show you how I made the bulk fuel storage container.  (think 150mm diameter piece of PVC pipe covered in rivets)

I’ve actually finished painting this board however I’ve just gotten my act together to show you what I’ve been upto.  So I don’t intend on drawing this out into 6ish posts, probably just 2-3.  I don’t want to overwhelm you, you see…

Until next time, thanks for dropping in!

Comments welcome!

John