Japanese neff

Today I'm going to show you the first proper neff I ever built (three years ago now). This has already been on LAF but I've got a better write up of the construction here.

I had seen various VSF flying contrations for sale on the net but was never very happy with the size so I decided to go for something that was practical on the tabletop but not too large.

After deciding on a basic hull size of about 390mm by 120mm it was time to start construction.

One side of the hull profile was cut out from 1.5mm mounting card and this was used as a template for the other half so the hull would be even.  

The superstructure was also cut from mounting card. The engine house was cut from a material called chemiwood to some. It's basically a machinable resin compound that is quite easy to shape with the right machine tools.

The two discs were acyrlic leftovers from another project and they were the base for machineguns.

The main turret was a short section of tube, again with leftover discs for the top and bottom.

The funnel was a narrow peice of tube with a slight angle sanded on it and the small funnels and portholes were from my bits box (they are resin cast and I made them years ago). The mast is an old Victorian lampost that was made for a project at work.

The superstructure was edged with styrene strip to neaten the edges and were then riveted.

During the main construction I made some of the smaller details like a pesudo Maxim gun (there were two of these). I also made a small gatling gun to go on the rear. All three were made from various styrene parts and the odd little bit of acrylic leftover.

The gun deck has a styrene treadplate glued on and it has fancy supports underneath.

The main deck was planked with 5mm wide balsa strips that were about 120mm long to represent the actual breaks in planking that you get on ships.

The underhull was carved out of insulation foam (blue/pink foam) with a long knife to get the basic shape, it was then smoothed down with a disc sander and then finally sandpaper keeping an eye on the eveness.

Riveting was done throughout the build if I got bored with any of the main construction. The rivets themselves are either tiny discs of acrylic or cut down styrene rod. Both types were stuck on with a steady hand and a paintbrush loaded with a version of Plastic Weld.

The prop-house was made from chemiwood the same as the engine house and was stuck in the under hull slightly protruding.

As you can see from the photos, various hatches, stowage boxes and other details were added all the way through the construction.

The propellor is from Tamiya (I think) and I got the shops entire stock :-) It's supported by a styrene tube and is removable. Rivets and such were also added along with a rear mast (styrene again).

I only decided to rail the upper deck as it makes it easier for gaming. This rather dodgy photo shows the basic idea. It's brass rod, cut to size and drilled in place on the upper deck. A chain is then strung between the posts and held in place by dressmaking pins which conveniently 'slot' inside the brass rod. Clever huh?

The wheel shaft was from an old resin ship kit and the wheel itself is actually a medieval gun wheel (until I change it for a proper one!). The figure is an old Redoubt Boxer Japanese officer.

The next thing to do was the stearing aerofoils. Most of the other neffs on the market (and that people had scratchbuilt) always seemd to have the stearing coming out of the rear. I fancied something a bit different for my Japanese neff and so therefore had them coming out the sides.

The construction was from embossed styrene sheeting with a pretend hinge inbetween and then clad round the outside with halfround rod. A basic rod support was made for the other side and that just sticks into a small block on the hull.

This might not make it the most maneuverable ship out there but I don't care because it's VSF and as long as it's not too outlandish I'm happy.

The whole thing was given a coat of primer and painted in the same way as the defense platform in the post below (but I'll go through it again).

The colour scheme is taken from Japanese fleet ships from the very early 1900's, and was painted with Foundry paints (I use these as it's easy to remember which colours were used).

The decking was Palomino with various washes and drybrushes added to give it a worn sense. The lower hull was Foundry slate grey and the upper was arctic grey. these were given a wash of GW green/brown ink (can't be bothered to remember the stupid names) and subtly drybrushed with varying degrees of light grey.

Weathering was acheived with thinned down orange ink and applied to various areas. Silver was also lightly drybrushed in areas that would see a lot of use (paint being worn away etc).

The flags are accurate to the historical period of the paint scheme and were printed from the computer after having a look for the relevent ones. You can't see them on the photos as they were a later addition. Basically there is a Commanders flag on the main mast and a normal Japanese naval ensign on the rear mast.

I'll leave you with a few more photos of various parts but just so you know the bloody thing was shot down in the first turn of it's first game and I haven't lived it down yet :-(

ttfn

VSF for a change

I thought it was about time that I showed some of the rather large VSF project I've been working on for the past few years.

The basic premise is that the major powers are competing for the resources that have been discovered on Mars.

I will write a more detailed back story as we decide on the details but for now all you need to know is that my chosen faction are the Japanese (no surprises there then :-)

The first thing I'm going to show for this project is a defense platform. The idea of which is that it gets towed into place, say, along a trade route and is armed with three heavy machine guns with crossing arcs of fire.

Now, the initial pictures might not make much sense but it will be come clear as the post progresses.

The basic construction was with lasered acrylic (after finalising the design) clad with wood of styrene for the finished surfaces.

The turrets are cast from resin and will soon be available on my website, along with (hopefully) a whole range of VSF goodies.

The bottom shape was just simply styrene wrapped round an inverted cone frame and stuck together, using strip styrene as pretend joints between the panels. The top railing was made from brass rod cut to size with dressmaking pins pushed through a fine chain and lightly glued in place. It's actually quite robust unless you drop the whole thing on the floor... (guess what I did).

The ladders and portholes were taken from my ever expanding bits boxes along with the hatch on the top.

The whole thing was covered in rivets, and no, I haven't counted them :-) The top surface on the command deck is textured styrene sheeting.

The whole thing was given a coat of Halfords grey primer (probably the best all round primer going).

Then came the fun bit...

The paint scheme was chosen to match historical Japanese ships of the time (namely 1900-1905), the main influence being the battleship Mikasa.

There was also an Japanese style emblem added to the cone base (better picture below). The main hull and tops of the turrets were painted dark grey with the superstructure and upperworks a light grey. The whole lot was washed with a mix of brown and green GW inks (god knows what they are called now).

When this was dry a light drybrushing of very light grey was added and then plenty of washes of thinned orange ink for the rust. Occasional topdeck areas were also given a light drybrush of sliver to represent the worn metal surface.

The emblem was painted gold and then treated in the same way as the rest.

The base is a disc of arcylic with a 10mm clear rod sticking up that fits in a respective hole in the bottom of it. The anchor was a late addition and might need some more weathering. 

I'm amassing quite a collection of 28mm neffs at the moment and at the last count I had five complete, two nearing completion and two more just started.

I do have plans for plenty more but as you'll see in the coming months, this is a massive project and so everything in time.

ttfn

Hollywood Hood

A little bit of whimsy tonight as I'm going to show you the progress on a project a couple of us are doing at the moment (although it's gone by the wayside somewhat, what with holidays etc). Some of you may have seen this on LAF a while back but I though I would post it here to help give me some more inspiration to carry on!

On the left we have F**king Massive John, a monster of a figure from Foundry, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head he stands a whopping 38mm :-0

The idea for the campaign was to have a Hollywood version of Robin Hood and all the cheesyness that comes with it, being predominantly a terrain builder I'm making the buildings but I am painting some factions to play with (one shown on the left)  and I'll post some more in another blog post in the near future.

The initial buildings were to be kept quite simple, thatched hovels for the most part which are quite quick and 'dirty' to do. Below you'll see various building shots.

Simple card walls with balsa timber and textured paint for the panels and teddy bear fur for the thatched roof (you can see here the size of FMJ next to a Perry monk.

After a few of these were made a church was needed. I've already made a couple of these so the template was ready to go but I added a small cemetery and a rather large tree.

The colour scheme was kept broadly the same as the hovels and the groundwork was done in the usual way.

The graves were just lumps of acrylic that were the right sort of size with a small mound in front and the wattle fence used bristles from a brush and were placed on randomly to help give a village feel. I actually haven't got a close up of the fence but will do at a later date).

The windows were backsprayed acrylic and the frames were laser cut. It has been suggested that I use the mesh you can get from Halfords to 'lead' the windows a bit more and I think I'll do it. It will help to make it look a bit busier.

It was heavily weathered and I added a few more growies around the church than I would normally. 

I'm also in the process of making a upperclass house with a walled garden and a monastery that will fit on a 18" x 24" base with removable roofs (but this is a long term project, like so many others!).

We've got a fair amount planned for this campaign including an archery contest (very quick but fun rules), a deer hunt, wolf attacks, sheep rustling, an attack on the castle (which I have to make as well) and just normal scraps.

There will also be the Green Knight, Ivanhoe and many other characters from the Robin Hood tales. I myself am fighting for the King but that might change if I keep getting beaten :-)

We have even played a quick game to refresh ourselves with the rules (a disaster on my part where my entire faction was pretty much wiped out). There are photos of this and a few other things below.

ttfn

Stupa

A smallish post today as its a small project. A very nice chap on various fora has had several buildings from me in the past and for his next gaming project he wanted (along with other things) something that 'said' Nepal. The first thing that came to mind was a stupa, and if you don't know what one you soon will :-)

A stupa is basically a reliquary holding religious items on the inside or it can be used to signify an event in the life of Buddha and they can be found all over the Indian subcontinent and surrounding countries.

It seems that most of the small ones tend to be built on mountains or hillsides, which could prove difficult without building a mountain for it to go on. The layout to the left shows the way round this that I came up with. A simple oval base with a small cliff on one side and the stupa on the other with a suggestion of a path in between.

The cliff is cork bark and it has been blended in with normal household filler. The platform for the stupa is insulation foam and has been similarly blended in to the base.

The small wall was carved out of the foam and it helps to define the path and give a sense of usage rather than the stupa being completely left alone in the wilderness.

The base of the stupa was simply made from various thicknesses of materials, cut square and stacked on top of one another, it was then given a light coat of textured masonry paint to help bring it together. I unfortunately didn't take a wip picture of the very top but you can see it on the finished item below.

The ground work was done in the normal way to begin with but I didn't  use a lot of 'growies', just a bit that was slightly brown to help convey the feeling of a piece mountain terrain.

The cliff was painted in the same range of colours as the groundwork to help bring it all together. Various washes were implemented over the base as well.

The actual top was made on a lathe out of acrylic rod following the style from the images that I had gained from the internet.

The stupa itself was painted white and dirtied down a bit with some more washes. The top was painted a generic bronze colour and weathered accordingly.

The next part to make was the prayer flags which are a prominent feature in the Nepalese landscape. A dead tree was attached to the cliff and a piece of fine cotton was strung between that and the top of the stupa, it was held in place with thin super glue. The flags were cut out from thin coloured paper and stuck on accordingly representing the blowing wind.

I'll leave you now with the finished photos.

ttfn

Lower class samurai house

This is going to be a work in progress post as I'm taking my time with this one. You might have seen it on LAF a while back but I've only just thought of blogging it.

It's a house for a lower class samurai with a 'value' of 40-60 koku (the samurai, not the house).

A koku was the amount of rice it would take to feed one man for a year and generally wasn't taken literally in the later periods in Japan but was used as a bench mark system to calculate a mans worth.

The house has a very simple, small footprint which is actually be smaller than the real thing would have been as it's always easier to downscale wargaming terrain (otherwise it would never all fit on the table!).

There is an entrance hall that comes in at ground level and then raises up a bit to the rest of the house (for taking your shoes off basically, a habit which is still prevalent in most Japanese houses today). The next room is the main room and is a tatami room. Tatami are Japanese mats made from rice stalks and they smell quite nice.

Most of the house's daily activities would go on in this room including sleeping. The next room is just a general usage room, probably used for preparing food, storage etc.

The building is raised to help prevent flooding and also to give a slight sense of superiority (even lower class samurai have pride).

The house is made from mounting card and I'm going for a full detailed interior with a lift off roof and shoji for the doors and windows.

The timber work and shoji frames are done but they don't slide ;-)

The house will be surrounded by a bamboo which I am still working on to get it looking right, it's an absolute b**** and I haven't really seen anyone who's got it right on a model apart from in Japan. I'm nearly there though.

The main roof will be thatch with hipped ends and the gabled extension will be out of wood, the two will be joined together and might contain LEDs.

There will also be a small outhouse and a vegetable patch.

As I mentioned before, this will be a long term project and I'll have sporadic updates as and when I work on it. The idea is to get this one just right and work out the best way to make it so I can make more, easier. Increasing the size and layout accordingly.

That's about it for now, the groundwork has been started but it's not worth a picture yet.

ttfn

Boxer Japanese

Time for a proper post after the long quiet and for today we have my Boxer Japanese figures that have been painted for me by a very nice chap in Scotland, Brian Phillps (who's website linky is on the left)

He's done a cracking job on them and I'm slightly ashamed about the quality of the photos as they don't really do the figures justice (I blame the weather... Well, not really, poor skills on my part more like). Anyway, if the weather is good tomorrow I'll go out side and take some more along with the boxer building that is the start of a new range.

I'm still not convinced about using the pad for post do I might revert to the old steam driven desktop (it's easier to see what you have done/messed up) but I'll leave you for now with a few more of the better photos.

Slight edit on the original as I've reverted to the desktop (damn sight easier if you ask me).

ttfn

 

Doh!

I've just deleted the apology post trying to figure out how to post from my iPad. Most annoying and I'm sorry :-(

The upshot of which is that I know how to post from the pad so I'll be able to post far more frequently from now on as I won't have to warm the desktop up and spend hours loading pictures etc.

First "pad post" tomorrow :-)

cheers

James