British Empire Platoon & Support.

Finished these guys off yesterday evening, a little later than projected but rather appropriate for St. Georges day given that they will be fighting the Vichy French in the land of his birth.

This will form the basic force for use with Too Fat Lardies Chain of Command rules which use the platoon as the basic unit with a number of additional supports depending on the type of scenario to be played.
I still have a few more add ons to complete including a portee'd 37mm Bofors anti tank gun & some Yeomanry:

Should have a game sorted soon, report to follow.

More Carrier Madness.

Just a quick update on the Syria project, this week a caunter-less bren gun carrier:

I didn't want my carriers to look too uniform hence the decision to go with a simple desert yellow scheme, I did experiment with weathering powders though. Not sure if it comes out on the photos too well but in the flesh they do add a bit of depth.

Bren Gun Carriers in Caunter. A short tutorial.

I don't know where the time goes these days, it may be an age thing but more likely my customers start coming out of hibernation after the clocks go forward. This is one of the bonuses of working outdoors, you do get to appreciate the diversity of the British seasons.
Regardless, I have been busy progressing the WW2 Syria project in my rare moments of leisure& thought I might share my method of reproducing the sometimes controversial Caunter camouflage pattern. I don't pretend that this is by any means a definitive guide, but the colours do scale quite well to  the 1/56th that Perry miniatures produce their vehicles in:

The basic raw materials, MIG filters 400 & 405, Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rubber & Tracks Primer, Model Colour  Desert Yellow, Iraqi Sand & Medium Sea Grey.

Base coat of Desert Yellow (hull) & tracks primer over Halford's red oxide primer.

Running gear blocked in with Iraqi Sand.

Dark rubber applied, don't worry about getting the lines to straight, this camo was applied in the field with brushes  without the benefit of masking tape.

Now the Sea Grey has been applied, after allowing the whole to dry for 24 hours the first layers of filters have been applied, you can see it collecting in the cracks & crevasses of the vehicle doing a nice job of simulating dust.

The finished articles with crew & stowage, Perry's supply ample quantities of the latter.

Work is also progressing on the infantry platoon featured previously, only a few figures to go now; next up will be a Bofors 37mm AT gun porteed on a Morris truck & some members of the Cheshire Yeomanry. Interestingly the Cheshire Yeomanry were the last unit of the British Army to mount a cavalry action, routing a Vichy French infantry unit out of a village in Syria; it isn't counted as a charge because apparently they didn't raise their swords!

Colonel Caunter's Camouflage.

Continuing to embrace the Middle Eastern theatre of war with reckless abandon I give you the latest progress on the Desert Rats featured last post.
First up my attempt at the titular camouflage scheme on a Vicker's Mk. VIb:

Mark VIb, courtesy of Blitzkrieg Models, via Perry Miniatures.

A fairly basic, though hopefully, effective attempt using Vallejo acrylic paint with several coats of Mig filters over the top. I have a section of Universal Carriers on the go at present & will present a quick tutorial on painting Caunter as my next post on this subject.
Not wishing to leave the footsloggers out more progress has also been made on the Perry Desert Rats boxed set:

2" mortar team

Boyes anti tank rifle.

Platton HQ assisted by the LRDG.

Really enjoying this little side project; it turns out my Great Uncle served with 7th Armoured in the Desert which makes it a bit more personal. I hope to find out a little more about this in due course because as was typical of many of his generation he didn't disclose very much about it. Most of my conversations with him tended to revolve around agriculture & its associated woes which seemed to interest him far more than armoured engagements with the Afrika Korp. Credit to him for that.

North Africa Campaign WIP & some 1:1 Scale stuff.

I have been mulling over the possibilities of skirmish gaming recently in an attempt to revive a somewhat flagging gaming hobby. I do like big spectacular games with plenty of figures on the table but pressures of work & other commitments have reduced the opportunities to perhaps one or two games per year. So to try & reverse this trend I am going to paint up a few figures for small unit actions set in the Desert War.

This is the first squad nearly complete in only three evenings of painting. Using vallejo panzer colours & some washes these Perry miniatures paint up really nicely & quickly which is great because my concentration span for painting has declined severely over the last few years.
The box set comes with enough figures to complete a full platoon of 37, but I'm going to assume a little bit of wastage so I can use the alternative heads included on the sprues to make up a small group of LRDG for a bit of variety. This will also give me a valid reason to paint up a couple of vehicles.
This might seem a bit of a departure from my usual wargaming interests but I was clearing out some boxes the other night & found a bag of Airfix 1/32nd scale 'Desert Rats' that I received for my 7th birthday, so its actually gone full circle.

You there, that man! Its all your fault.

In other news I have been busy with the woodworking tools again, in addition to the bows that are currently in production, I spent yesterday in the workshop putting a shaft on this:

This being a sparth axe/ bardiche from the very talented Josef Dawes at White Well Arms. There seems to be some debate over the origins of the berdiche, but the weight of opinion seems to suggest it evolved in Northern Europe from the earlier Danish Axe. I had a session yesterday afternoon trying to figure out how to use it effectively & it is not a subtle tool, requiring quite a bit of room to use & a fair bit of strength. More of this at a later date when I have some time with it.
The other woodworking project is also progressing:

The natural lamination of heart & sapwood that gives yew its characteristic spring.

These are the two longbows mentioned a few weeks back, there is still a way to go with these. It's not a job you can rush, if you remove too much material or remove material in the wrong place the job is buggered so theres a lot of weighing up work going on. Its unusual to find yew of the right quality for bows these days, If I cut 25 pieces in a year only one or two will actually be any good. The best stuff comes from the centre of overgrown yew hedges where the trunks have been forced to grow straight up to the light with very little side growth. Apparently Pacific Yew from Oregon is very good, but this is hard to get hold of in Shropshire so for the time being I will continue to use my closely guarded sources closer to home.

More Gran Colombians from Orinoco Miniatures.

Painting has been slow again this week, mainly due to long hours at work, but also my lack of a project that I am particularly enthused by. This seems to happen every now & then but eventually something will come along that provokes a veritable frenzy of brushwork, but for now I'm just tidying up loose ends of ongoing projects:

The first base of Fusileros. I like the variety of canteens carried.

WIP officers, the colonel on the left drawing his sword is nicely done.

When funds allow I will purchase a lot more of Orinocos figures, they really are very nicely realised, they are on the smaller side of 28mm figures which makes the painting a bit harder work, but the payoff is worth the effort. The range is quite limited at the moment, though there are more on the way apparently.

A Mixed Bag.

After last weeks trip to the capital its back to painting miniatures again this weekend.
First up re-purposing some redundant Foundry Hypaspists as late 3rd Century Thorakites by simply replacing their hoplite shields with some spare Polemarch Thureos from the spares box:

The figure in the centre is a Victrix plastic Hoplite.

I've got eighteen of these, but will mix in some of the Victrix figures to make this up to a round two dozen. Despite the Victrix figures being taller their overall proportions are fairly similar so they shouldn't stand out too much.

In addition to these I have made a start on some Orinoco Miniatures Gran Colombian Fusileros who have been languishing for the last two years:

These are very nice figures, very similar in style & build to the Perry Miniatures Napoleonics I used for my Peruvian troops. I will be returning to these later on today after lunch has been dealt with.