Jim Duncan Wargamer

Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Fingers On Buzzers

What am I up to?

I'm ditching a lot of these:

and I'm making a lot of these.

Just what am I up to?

Answers on a postcard or in reply to this post.

PS

The best clue is in the first picture!

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

Can't See the Wood for the Trees

While rummaging through my drawers ...

I found some Warbases regimental trays,

a few small coins of the Realm,

some scraps of plasticard,

and a bag of small trees I had recently traded (thanks Tim).

I thought that I could do something constructive with them.

I cut up the plasticard into small octogons a little bit smaller than a penny. I drilled small holes through the middle and glued the tree trunks into them. I stuck them on the pennies.

I then textured the bases and painted them greenish.

I also textured the regimental trays and painted them greenish too!

Putting them altogether looked like this.

A little small for 28mm.

A little large for 6mm.

Just fine for 15mm.

Oh Oh!

My wargames hut is getting untidy again.

Several batches of work in progress, 54mm WW2 British Infantry, 28mm Warlord Hanoverian Infantry, some Commanders and some Men of Rohan.

Tuesday, 12 May 2015

First Aid Training - Get it Done

Many of you will know that I am a retired chap, just turned 65 last month but have been retired from working for 6 years now.

That in itself is nothing to shout about, loads of people have been there, done that, got the T-shirt etc.

My post today had been prompted by an event earlier this morning.

One of my neighbours came banging at the front door, screaming a bit, her boyfriend was in a bad way in their flat. I ran over the road, found him on the floor, apparently having a fit, blue in the face, breathing erratically and thrashing about.

Despite being bitten twice, kicked a bit (he is a bodybuilder) I managed to get him breathing better and calmed him down a lot. He was trying to swallow his tongue and re-arrange my body parts at the same. Fortunately an ambulance turned up pretty quickly.

The point of my story is that if you have not done any first aid training then get some and soon, you may never know when it will be important to someone. I started my first aid training back in the late sixties and kept it up to date as often as I could. I never ever had reason to use that training until today. I hope it helped.

Your employer may be able to arrange something or if you are self employed then there are many other ways to get that experience.

This site may help:

http://www.redcross.org.uk/en/What-we-do/First-aid/First-aid-training

I don't want people to comment on this post saying well done and all that, I'm not after that. I would like to hear that some of you have taken that step, perhaps already, and gotten some first aid training, you never know when you might need it.

Saturday, 11 April 2015

Winston Churchill Autobiography

Wednesday, 8 April 2015

Casualty Markers - Another Batch

A chum of mine liked my casualty markers so much that he bought them. Then he rummaged around in his own bits box and asked me to make some more.

Here they are, all based up and ready to paint.

There was a cannon which might have been a key ring at one time.

A French fusilier cut away from his base and dunked face down in the dirt.

An Officer received the same treatment.

There were some bits of plastic cannon.

A drummer sans drum.

Some proper casualties, Perry perhaps.

Some more plastic cannon, single trail this time.

A British ranker ...

And an Officer.

Some more Perry casualties, eyes right.

And some more, eyes left.

I black undercoated them all.

This painting style starts off with painting all the shadows first.

Including the shadows underneath the figure.

Then I heavily dry-brush them with white.

Done carefully this brings out a lot of the surface detail.

Note the contrast between the black and white areas.

Then it is a simple matter of adding colour to the white bits.

The bronze cannon barrel got a coat of dark brown, then mid-brown and finally some 'shiny' gold.

I carefully painted the white bits on the jacket with watered down blue paint. This allows any of the black areas to show through.

Similarly thinned red paint on the British jacket allows the shading to remain. The rest of the painting is obvious, keep the paint thin. Finish with a dark wash and a coat of matt varnish.

I had, of course, added some basing material, some gravel and some static grass at the appropriate points. Dice holders are from Minibits.

What do you think guys?

Monday, 23 March 2015

Big Day Over - Back to Wargaming

Here's me and my good lady at the weekend. Nope, it wasn't for the rugby.

My youngest daughter Susan was married at the weekend.

Here she is with her new husband Craig.

Some of the photographs were taken at South Queensferry.

Downstream is the famous Forth Bridge.

Upstream is the Forth Road Bridge with the pillars of the new Queensferry Crossing bridge in the background.

I am reliably informed that this is the only place in the world where there is an Nineteenth Century bridge, a Twentieth Century bridge and a Twentyfirst Century bridge crossing a major river at the same place.

How good is that!

Now back to wargaming and where did I leave my paintbrush.

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Casualty Markers, from the Bits Box

I made some more casualty markers for a chum using some odd bits from the bits box.

The cannon balls are way over scale but do the job nicely. They are pellets from a kids toy gun glued into a pyramid. The bases are 30mm square.

The rest are spare torsos, spare arms and heads from the bits box. I had no legs for them so I cunningly modelled them in the shade of some shrubbery.

The bases are 30 x 50mm. The dice holders are from Minibits.

http://www.minibits.net/

I also finished off some 54mm WW2 British infantry figures that my recently deceased chum had started. I think they are made by Airfix.

I hope to make up a platoon or so of these and put them on sale at a show later in the year to raise funds for charity.

Followers