Productive weekend

First up, I've been spending real money. Since the type of kits you can trade is a bit limited (tend to be older and/or cheaper kits) I've paid for a pick up order at the next show I'm going to (a kit builders convention at the Overloon museum next weekend). Some kits for my 8th Army-to be, a truck for my DAK-to be and some bargain bin PSC boxes at half price on top of a order of PSC stuff from the UK. I really should stop buying stuff!

To prevent myself from buying stuff I'm just going at it, a lot. That way I'm not or very little online and can focus mostly on what I am building, and when I am online I just listen to podcasts or list stuff for sale. It's not perfect though.

A few weeks back I bought some prebuilt scenery for Samurai games (did I already mention this? I can't remember) and they arrived loose in a box, thus damaged, and they were shoddy built as well, so I put them back up for sale and it was bought and picked up a few days ago. I had picked up the Bushi Buntai (from Northstar) from a sale from a local shop as well, only to get an email from Northstar telling me Sarissa Japanese buildings are 10% off and free shipping over 10 Pounds......well, that hooked me. So, the money I got from the sale plus an extra tenner netted me a nice simple building, 2 rice stores (and a sprue of 28mm scale oil barrels, but those are for TNT). I want the building and the rice stores as the base and expand from there.

FFW to this morning, and I thought, why not try and build me a small shed/poor farmers shack. I've seen tons of stuff from Jimbibbly so plenty of inspiration. So, with a bit of scrap foamboard, some cardboard, swizzle sticks and a couple of matches, and quite a bit of time, I created this:

Foamboard block - scraps from a big foamboard I picked up somewhere ages ago. Turned out this black stuff is very, very hard to cut, nothing like the cheap white stuff I have. 40mm to the rooftop, 30mm for the walls. But it didn't feel right......

 So I raised it by 5mm with a piece of foamboard. Looks better now.

 Matches for the beams, and swizzle sticks for the door and the main spar to support the roof.

I didn't bother to cut out the windows - paint em black and it works too, the roof will be fixed and you can't get inside anyway.

I made a thin cardboard roof first, glued that in place as a base for the wood panelling, glued those in place (I've started using Modge Podge....it's not very sticky in the beginning but sets really fast so I can speed things up).

And then I doused the roof in cheap superglue to solidify everything. The rocks have been epoxied and then coated in superglue as well.

Compared to the bases I use (coins or 2mm MDF) it looks allright. As usual, I'don't use a base (or only very mininal) so I'll coat the black bits with gesso now to fill the holes and cracks.

Does anyone know if these houses are plastered or what kind of material do the use for the walls?

Anyway, it's built, I've learned a lot and the whole thing cost me a tiny bit of foamboard, half a dozen matches, 2 toothpicks and a handful of swizzle sticks. So....about 30 cents worth of material and glue? Now to actually paint it.

I've been hitting the 2nd hand shops again, managed to find 2 more tractors loads like the first one for 1 euro, plus 2 trucks plus trailers for 40 cents so I've been making tire piles.

Basically meant for Gaslands, they will work fine for TNT and RT as well, or stacked in a junk yard, 20mm or 28mm, and are good for roadblocks as well in both scales.

20mm on the left, 28mm on the right. All the tires have been filled with foam and sand and glue on top, with a healthy dose of superglue to seal it. Epoxied them to the bases, now that they have set I can trim them all down.

And that's it for today as it's now 4 in the morning....<bleep>