Laser Infrastructure - Part 1

This past summer I got a divorce and bought a new home to live in. One of the unfortunate consequences of this is I have to re-build all of the support infrastructure that is required to operate my laser engraver. Although the laser is an amazing tool for both my wargaming and radio-control aircraft hobbies, it does require a large amount of infrastructure to operate safely. This is part one of what I hope will only be two installments on this subject. This does include efforts that spanned several months, but for brevity I am including them all here in one update.

To the left two switches and an outlet. The outlet is an always-on 110 volt AC outlet to power the laser. Not shown are the two receptacles that the switches operate, both are elsewhere. Eventually this wall will be covered in drywall. On the opposite side of the wall will be an airbrush compressor run by the left-most switch. This blows compressed 30 PSI (2 bar for you non-Imperial types) air in the path of the laser to clear smoke which would impede the laser's ability to cut.   

The right-most switch is a three-way switch that operates this 600 CFM (0.3 m^3/s) exhaust 'blower' that evacuates the combustion byproducts from the laser. This keeps the air in the laser cabinet clear of power-sapping smoke as well as prevents it from asphyxiating the operator. Very important that this works properly! The other partner to the three-way switch is located where my spray booth will be, allowing me to use the exhaust system for both purposes by adding in some 'blast gates' for the vent pipes. 

Finally, an all-metal vent added to the exterior of my new home. This was by FAR the most nerve-wracking part of the operation. I needed to buy a proper mounting plate and line up everything so that it fit properly over the vinyl siding. As far as I'm concerned, it looks pretty good to me!

Part two of this will be running all of the interior piping for the exhaust system, including the blast gates and junctions for the spray booth and laser. Some of this is going to require me to order some specialty parts not offered at the local home center. Luckily, now that I have the external work done, I can do the exhaust piping even during the winter months - possibly during Christmas break since I won't be doing a lot of visiting with family due to the ongoing pandemic. 

Salerno 'Tobacco Factory' - Part 5 - Weathering and Collapsed Buildings

More progress on the Salerno Tobacco Factory terrain. Here you can see the collapsed building sections. Also a big 'thank you' to my uncle who stopped by today and helped me put some weathering and wear paint effects on the buildings and also helped do the detail painting on the collapsed buildings. I still have another evening of detail painting and weathering, including adding some bullet holes and damaging the roofs, but we're getting closer!

One detail was where to put damaged sections on the rear of the buildings to allow players to access them. I decided to let the players choose their entrance points. A quick blast with a panzershrek or bazooka will open up a hole in the building at the location of their choosing. I made these nifty breech markers that can be placed wherever the player's troops make a hole.

Salerno 'Tobacco Factory' - Part 4 - Raising the Roof

When I started this project, I knew it was going to be a lot of work. I had no idea until I was 32 hours into scratch building seven separate roofs from plywood and model railroad polystyrene roof tile sheets exactly how much. Here is the complex with all of the buildings that will be intact during the battle.

The rest of the buildings were destroyed by bombing or direct fire during the battle and will be represented by rubble. Some of the facades shown in the previous post will be part of that rubble. Initially I thought I might have those destroyed buildings represented mostly intact. I changed my mind when I realized how dominating the complex is on the tabletop. Rubble can be seen over and crossed by tanks, buildings cannot. 

Each of the roofs is removable to allow figures to be placed inside the buildings. This is a key mechanic for Iron Cross, and will also be useful for Bolt action.

Close-ups of some of the buildings are below. Still to be done, adding more weathering and battle damage.

Salerno 'Tobacco Factory' - Part 3

Work continues on the Salerno tobacco 'factory' terrain for game day. Completed are the base units for all of the large buildings and two of the smaller wedge-shaped buildings. The rest of the smaller wedge-shaped buildings are placed in un-assembled so I could get a sense of the scale of the piece. It's HUGE. The grey mat is 4' x 6'.

The wedge-shaped buildings each side of the ruined building were completely destroyed in the bombing of the complex. I'm likely to make those more rubble piles, lower in height due to the lighter mass of the shorter buildings. This will also allow armor a point of ingress. The same approach will be taken on the wedge building lower left. Lower right the wedge and large building will also be destroyed rubble. These pieces are still to be created.

Two and a half weeks to go. I'm in full brown alert on this. Moving as quickly as I can. The Mrs. came down to see why she hadn't seen me in days and said, "you're missing all the roofs"...yep, they're on the to-do list! Also on the to-do list is adding battle damage and weathering and making scatter rubble. If push comes to shove, piles of crushed coarse cork may suffice for the latter.

Salerno 'Tobacco Factory' - Part 2

More progress on the terrain for October game day. I now have one of each type of large building roughly framed up with interiors still to paint. I have one ruined building 'in the raw' still needed to be painted. Here they are on a 'broken blacktop' Zuzzy Mat that I have dry brushed with earth tones to represent the factory's infield. On it are a sample of the craters that will fill the factory's courtyard.

After finishing for the night last night I realized to my horror, that the smaller wedge-shaped sections are too tall. They should be only a little taller than their (correctly-sized) doorways according to the photos. Fate was smiling on me though. I haven't glued them up so cutting them down should be a simple affair on my Dremel table saw.

Next up, continuing to work on preparing three more 'blanks' of the paint-layered plywood to make the rest of the building frames. Hopefully progress on this will start to approach a fever pace. I'm down to only a few weeks and I'm still only about 20% finished.

For the rubble in the ruined section, I used a base layer of pink construction foam. On top of it are over 100 bricks made by punching out thin craft foam with a square hole punch. With the bricks are various sizes and shapes of grit. I'm hoping when painted this will look enough like a correct pile of building rubble but still allow figures to be placed on it. I still have to make rubble piles for the outside. I'm going to make them out of hot-wired foam and more of the same rubble technique.

"Homemade" Saga Dice

This is a set of "homemade" Saga Ordenstadt dice that I've recently made for myself. I put homemade in quotes, because it's not really fair to say as most people don't have a laser engraver in their home. With maker spaces becoming more common these days, more people do have access to them now. Projects on the laser aren't any harder than painting a figure once you get access to the equipment. Studio Tomahawk, the publisher of Saga, provides the dice graphics for people to make their own dice. As long as they're for your personal use, I believe this is an activity permitted (encouraged?) by the rules publisher.

Earlier I posted a photo sample die that I made. After some corrections to the settings of my laser I believe I have things dialed in nicely. This is a fairly laborious job involving a lot of masking of the dice with painter's tape, laser engraving the pattern onto each face, then removing the masking tape. The latter is particularly labor intensive due to the very tiny bits of tape left in some portions of the pattern. These need to be 'weeded' off each face with a hobby knife, tape, etc. Each die is then washed with water and a soft cloth.

They're not perfect, but they'll roll fair and are serviceable. For armies I just want to try out I make more sets. I did purchase two official dice sets for the armies I intend to play the most. For comparison, the Studio Tomahawk Ordenstadt dice are shown below:

First units for Saga - Crusader Hearthguards

My friend and fellow Northern Conspirator Mike has been promoting the Saga rule set within the club recently. He's even been hosting some one-on-one and small group games to introduce new players to the rules. It seems that his efforts have paid off as several of us are starting Saga armies to use with the the 'Age of Crusades' era /  source book.

I'm starting off with some generic Crusader units and will probably eventually create enough units to do most of the Christian armies. Later I'll likely want to do some of the Muslim armies to oppose them. Of particular interest are the armies with camels. I've never painted any camel-mounted troops.

These figures are from Gripping Beast and represent two four-figure units of hearthguards. The shield transfers are from Little Big Men Studios. I have some experience building plastic models and prefer water slide decals, sometimes even making my own. LBMS transfers are a hybrid between stick-on and water slide. Applying them may be more intuitive for those without experience using water slide decals, but for me I found them less easy to use. The graphics were sized appropriately for the Gripping Beast figures and the graphics with the exception of one shield so far were very good. The one shield that didn't keep it's detail as well as the rest just looks dirty, which is quite acceptable.

The first unit is Gripping Beast's "military sergeants with hand weapons". They're more uniformly equipped and I believe intended for the Milites Christi warband which explains their uniform equipment. I've kept the equipment regular, but varied the shields which I hope will give them a bit more utility. Eventually I may paint up a full uniform Milites Christi force with matching shields, but for my first units I prefer the flexibility.

These are wonderful figures with great equipment detail. Even the backs of the figures without cloaks have straps and buckles on them. I took some extra time to do a gray highlight on the black cloaks on these. The only complaint I have with these is the photographs on the Gripping Beast website depict these equipped with axes and swords. The weapon hands being separate. My pack only contained hands with swords - no axes.

The second unit is Gripping Beast's "dismounted knights #4". Three of the four of these come with shields detached and hands without weapons. I would have preferred all four match, either all with or all without. The one odd figure looks a bit misplaced among the others. The hands do not come pre-drilled. Not much else to say here, the figures have good detail and painted up quickly.

Saga has a lot of dice. Each army needs eight. Tomahawk Games provides images so you can make your own dice if you like. I purchased a set of Christian and Muslim dice, but the rest I will probably make on my laser engraver. This sample Teutonic die I created to see if making my own would be doable. I need to adjust the laser's settings to get the design etched deeper into the die's surface, but I think the end result will be worth the manual labor or masking and painting the dice. There's something about making your own stuff that's very satisfying.

Medium Bunker

Lately I've been on a huge 28mm WWII binge thanks to our club really enjoying Iron Cross. Iron Cross games are better with a lot of terrain. Also bunkers in Iron Cross, while good, aren't the unbeatable fortresses that they can be in some other rules. Thanks to that I feel I need to add a few more bunkers to my terrain collection. This is a  medium sized bunker that will accommodate one weapons team on my standard 2.25" circle bases or four individually mounted figures. I was TRYING to make a 5-figure bunker but somehow figured out a way to mess that up. Still this will be a valuable asset for future games.

I've shown it in the photo to the left with some 28mm figures for scale. I intentionally made the layers visible to mimic many of the bunkers that were poured in multiple passes.

W.I.P - 28mm Small Townhouse With Gable - Part 3

Tonight I finished the base coloring of the small townhouse. I used some cheap craft paints on the roof, so I need to let it all dry at least 24 hours. Later this week or maybe this weekend I'll finish up weathering the house which should make it table ready. I'm not entirely sure the hours put into the piece can be justified against the cost of the excellent Miniature Building Authority buildings, but there is the satisfaction of knowing that the piece is homemade.

W.I.P - 28mm Small Townhouse With Gable - Part 2

Another night of progress on the small townhouse with gable. I've completed the applique stone work on the corners with some extra sprinkled in for texture. I've added doors front and back, a chimney and roofing made from polystyrene 'tile' roofing sheet. Next up a coat of paint on the trim, roof, chimney pipe and interior and some weathering.

I'm still undecided if I'm going to paint the corner stone work a different color from the field of the house. The main color is hardware store texture spray paint which has a very nice multi-color look to it up close. The digital camera plays tricks with it, but in person it looks a peach.

W.I.P - 28mm Small Townhouse With Gable

While helping one of my radio-controlled airplane friends with a project on the laser, I was showing him some of my wargaming items. As a younger man he also did some miniatures gaming. About half way through I showed him a stack of 'ideas' on my workbench. I quickly realized that I hadn't done a significant laser project in a while. I have a lot of Miniature Building Authority buildings. One that I've always wanted is their small stucco house with gable, but it's out of print. They have a couple that are similar that have replaced this one in their line. I figured I would take a shot at making something similar.

I've chosen to make these separate stories to make using figures inside much easier. The Iron Cross rules we play care if a unit is in a separate floor from another unit. The decorative band on the building I hope will hide the join line.

Still left to do is to add the corner stones detail applique and a few random stones in the field, then to tile the roof and add a chimney. Once that's all done I can give it a coat of paint. I still haven't decided if I'm going to make the roof flush with the side walls or not. Doing so will let the building be used adjacent to others in a town, but I think it looks less correct if the buildings have a small space between them.

Laser DOWN!

Most readers of this blog know that I have a laser engraver that I use to cut acrylic, plywood, balsa and paper to make wargaming items for personal use and for sale as a small hobby business. The other evening I was cutting a job for a customer and the laser stopped working suddenly.

Come to find out I've finally worn out (blown up sir!) the Y-axis servo motor pictured to the left. It's performed it's last chooch as AVE would say. So I had to order up a new one from the manufacturer. $230.00 later it's on its way. Hopefully I'll swap it in and be back up and running soon. At least it's not as expensive as when I blew the laser tube a year ago. That repair cost me $3,000.00. The only difference between men and boys are the cost of their toys I guess.

28mm WWII German Limber Freya Radar Terrain Piece

I've always wanted to add a WWII radar station to my Bolt Action terrain, even before the great scene in Saving Private Ryan. This is a Freya Limber Radar station. From the other photos I've found on the Net, it appears that this was designed to use the same limber system as the 8.8 cm Flak gun - aka the '88'. Since no appropriate model exists in 1/56 scale, I decided to scratch build this one. I say 'scratch' built, but I did use my laser cutter to do all of the intricate work on the radar system's receiver support structure.

Radar systems in WWII were BIG. This might possibly be one of the smaller land-based systems. Often multiple were used in a single installation. Although the base turns, it wasn't operated in a spinning mode like more modern radar systems. Since this is a terrain piece, I've gone for a relatively simple rendition of what was a very complex system of antennae in front of the mesh reflective surface. The mesh for the array's reflector surface is fiberglass window screen. The weave shows up prominently in these photos, but much less so in person and is 'close enough' to giving the right feel for me.

Below are some additional photos, plus one 'scene' with a bunker I previously built, a radio antenna my Uncle scratch built for me and an SdKfz 250 command half track and a couple of infantry figures for scale.

The diagram I built my model from, and a couple of historical photos from the web below.

I'm counting this as one (1) terrain item in my annual painting totals. This may be one of my favorite laser-cut original creations.