New STL Files - Swivel guns for Age of sail or Pirate gaming

This is the next installment of my 3D STL files series. These are swivel guns for 28mm age of sail or pirate games. There are many makers of deck guns, but to my knowledge, nobody makes swivel guns. Now someone does - me! You can find these on my Wargaming3D store here: https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/ajswargaming_28mm_pirate_swivel_gun_pack_age_of_sail_swivel_gun_pack

There are two variants, with and without the aiming 'handle' or whatever the protrusion is called. 

 

28mm Old Glory pirate for scale, although you can scale these up and down when you print them as needed. They come with the socket mount, should your ship not have enough thickness to drill a hole and mount them directly.

If you choose to not glue them into the mount, they will still swivel if your game requires it.

 

 

 

 

 

And if you need deck guns, I also have STL files for those as well on my Wargaming 3D store here: https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/ajswargaming_28mm_pirate_cannon_ships_cannon_pack.  Also if you're interested in both, there's a combo pack with both at a discount. 

Apologies for the commercial nature of this post, but I'm really excited about this new venture into making 3D STL files.

28mm National Guard of Milan 1848 - Piedmont Army

These are the first of two Chocolate Box Wars units I'll be making of the National Guard of Milan. When I saw this uniform in the Osprey book with it's fantastically ridiculous hat, I knew I had to have them as part of my Piedmont Chocolate Box Wars army. Unfortunately for me, because they saw little action until their incorporation into the Central Italian League, nobody makes a figure for this unit. Time went by and I mostly had given up. Then I decided to learn more about AI 3D model generation. After playing around with some online 2D to 3D AI tools I got some nearly usable figures. Good enough to encourage me to learn the requisite tools to complete the project. Those tools being the 3D modeling software Blender, Meshmixer and Windows 3D Builder, as well as some Autodesk Fusion 360 until I got more comfortable with Blender.  

Investing over 100 hours in learning these tools, I'm finally competent enough to make my own 3D models and this unit is the first one I've completed using my own 3D model STL files from my own models. To say I'm quite excited about learning this new skill is an understatement. Now there are no longer ANY units or uniforms that are out of reach. I learned a lot doing this unit. Primarily something that looks 'correct' close up, isn't what you want on a figure. Our figures have over-exaggerated details like belts, ammo pouches and the like. Getting a feel for how oversized is still part of the learning curve for sure. 

Something as simple as a musket, the length, width and breath of which is well known and easy to scale properly, looks TERRIBLE when scaled to the proper scale. They need to be shortened and fattened in thickness while not in height from trigger to hammer. Building a library of these 'scaled for miniatures' features is definitely needed, just the same as traditional sculptors use existing features on their 3-up 'greenies'.  All said, these are more than passable and I'm quite happy to have them and the skills I've learned in making them.

 

Below, a sneak peek at the complete ten figures I made in total. The next two-stand unit will feature all of the new standing and firing poses I've created, four more in total, plus the two firing poses from above. After that, some other small 3D modeling projects that have come too fast for me to document here, but will be as I catch up.  

 When the STL files for these eventually become available for sale, they'll be listed on my store at Wargaming3D - https://www.wargaming3d.com/brands/ajswargaming

28mm Bavarian Napoleonic Artillery

These are five Bavarian artillery batteries based up for Napoleon's Rules of War or Electronic Brigadier. I purchased three of these guns and all of the gunners pre-painted from a seller on Ebay. Since there were many more crew than I needed for three batteries, I printed up two additional French 8lb Gribeuval cannons from my own STL files (available for free on Thingaverse).

These figures are the last of my current batch of Napoleonics re-basing. They include 14 purchased painted figures/guns and two 3-D printed and painted by me guns. Definitely a mixed bag!

This photo, a close up photo of the 3-D printed guns made from my own designed STL files. They're nothing super fancy, but serviceable on the tabletop and I've given the files away free for non-commercial use. I hope you get some use out of them!

'O' Group Tokens

This is a selection of casualty markers for 'O' Group. I 3-D printed these. The design for them is my own, available for free along with all other O-group tokens on my Thingaverse page.

We've recently started playing O-group and are finding it quite enjoyable, so much so that I figured I'd finally paint up these casualty tokens for our next game.

Here they are next to some 15mm figures. I use Flames of War basing since I have a sizeable collection mounted for that system. Thankfully O-group is mostly basing agnostic. 

22 Terrain/Misc created for this year's painting totals. I'm counting these. They were quite laborious to paint!

First .STL Files Created - Markers for 'O' Group

There are .STL files for 'O' Group markers available for sale, but they appear to be made for resin filament 3D printers. Because of this the markings on them seem a bit 'chunky' to me for 15mm figures. Since I have a resin printer, I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to spend some time learning Fusion 360 and design some for resin 3D printers. 

This is the suppression/pinning tracking triangle that is unique to 'O' Group. I've sized it so it will not only work with large and medium bases, but also small bases (not shown). 

My printer can print twenty (20) of these at a time, directly on the build plate. I've finally dialed in the printer well enough that 'elephant foot' isn't much of an issue for things such as these. 

 

 

 

Order and Company Order markers are also just now finished. I'll continue on the rest of the lesser-used markers later this week. I'll count this as one 'terrain/misc' created.

3-D Model of French 8lb Gribauval Cannon for 3-D Printing

I'm working up the courage to invest in a resin-based SLA 3-D printer. I thought it would be an excellent tool to augment my laser and significantly increase my making capabilities for wargaming terrain, vehicles and maybe eventually figures. Before I'm willing to pull the trigger, I need to make sure my 2-D CAD skills can translate well to 3-D modeling. This project is a learning exercise in using the free 3-D modeling program Blender.

The model is of a French 8 lb. Gribauval Cannon. This was chosen because there are some decent plan and elevation drawings available, and it's a common cannon made at several weights. It was used both in the Napoleonic wars and in the USA during the war of 1812. I figured making something 'real' instead of the same tutorial objects would help me learn rather than just repeat what tutorials are doing.

There's a lot more work to do before this would make a decent 28mm figure, but the bones of the structure are there. So far I've invested about 40 hours learning the software and making the model. A skilled Blender modeler probably could have done this in an hour. I have a lot to learn, but this exercise is encouraging that I may eventually develop the skills to properly utilize a 3-D printer of my own and make my own models, not just print pre-made models from the Internet.