Sunday, January 14, 2018

Mid January, resolve is cracking........................

  Just a quick update on some little things.

  The car is coming along. Broke the last ball mill and am awaiting another. Trying to squeeze in work between bitterly cold bouts. So far it is working. We went from 0 on Monday to 60 on Friday and back to 11 on Sunday. What a week. The 0 and 11 are weather, but the 60 is global warming and will require a new tax..................................

  On my last blog I declared I would be starting nothing new. That resolution has been sorely pressed, starting on January 2nd.

    I was informed I have a large credit at my local store................ Can you get me Advanced Squad Leader stuff?

  No. But look at this new Necromunda ................

  Can you get me Plastic Soldier Company stuff for my Squad Leader miniatures project?

 No, but have you seen the new 40K?................

  Perhaps some units for my old Warhammer armies, which would not be a violation of my oath. A new unit of 20 witch elves and 20 Sisters of Avelorn.  A small addition to the good and bad armies would be great................ Wow, even with free money it hurts to pay those prices.......................

  Oh well. Here are some pics of the Squad Leader to minis project and some pics of other people's take on it. It seems there are 2 schools of thought. First you can print out large map boards and play like that.  Hex Draw allows me to add custom textures so the maps can look more realistic.

 
 I spent (wasted) some time getting aerial tree photos and damaged road textures and neat wall graphics. And printed out with 4" hexes it looks pretty cool and the 15mm minis fit well in it. But it is still a printed map board.

 Second option is to make your own hex terrain.

  GHQ makes 4"Styrofoam hexes, which I owned a few of 20 years ago. I found them fragile and it was too easy to knock them about during play. Just google GHQ terrain maker and look at the images. Very neat stuff.

And this guy has developed a tool to cut the Styrofoam to matching angles.  hex cutter tool kit

There is an ASL in Miniatures Facebook group and the guys share ideas. one of the guys cuts his own hexes out of wood, which is the direction I am leaning. The printed maps look great, but it is just not the same.

 This is a recreation of board 78 by the founder of the group. He developed a really neat locking mechanism to hold the tiles in place. At this point that looks like the best option.


 So that is hobby stuff.

  The car parts are coming slowly in the mail. I have 100 axles, 100 gears and 100 motors already.  Pretty easy to see the problem, as cars have 2 axles each........Awaiting spacers to get dimensions to spec out the chassis.

The crock pot is here, and it melts metal so that is nice. Graphite is stockpiled and ready for use.

 I really need to clone myself...............................

 And final note- still no word from the York Makerspace.  If this falls through plans will be set back again. Not sure what is happening, some sort of red tape must be causing them to delay opening.  I can only hope things fall in to place and we have that place to meet and collaborate.

 Ok, that is my promised more frequent update with out a lot to really report on. More in 2 weeks.

 Stay warm folks!

1 comment:

  1. I've made simple tools to cut foam before out of cereal boxes using a small cutting machine I have. You can get good results, but hot wire cutters can be annoying. I'm currently thinking about 3d printing some templates and then putting some aluminum tape on the edges so the hot wire doesn't melt the plastic.

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