As you will know I'm a teacher but you may not know that I teach design and technology. I think Americans call it 'Shop'. Whatever it's called I do a lot of work with wood, plastics and metal. At the moment my A-Level kids (16 -18 pre-university) are in the final stages of putting together their major projects. A lot of this stuff is something they have to do by themselves. I need to observe as I'll be marking their skills, but it can get pretty dull as they are all pretty engrossed in what they are doing. So occasionally I need to do stuff to keep me busy. Usually marking will take up most of my time but as it's nearly easter there isn't a lot of that to do. So I thought i'd do a bit of terrain work that would test my skills on a couple of the machines and also be a bit handy. I decided to do some towery bits and some stairways for my undercity/sewer board. As you can see from above I started of with some hexagonal pieces cut out on CNC router. I then used the table saw (above middle) with the blade angled to 60 degrees and cut up a load of lengths of MDF. A bit of PVA and the highly technical elastic bands as clamp method and I left these to dry for a while. After that I cut another load of MDF to cover the other 3 sides of each of the two prisms. Again PVA and laccy bands and leave them to dry.
Just to show you what I'm dealing with, this is the computer that runs the CNC router. The kids are always amazed when it boots up and shows a version of windows that's older than them! It may be old and clunky but it works pretty well. It's not a laser cutter like the school up the road or a 3d printer but it is a nice intro tool to CAD/CAM for the kiddies.
Anyway, I cut some larger Hexagons for the platforms on top of the plinths and after chamfering round the bottom edge went off to play with google sketch-up to decide if I could build some stairs instead of buying some.
Of course I left my phone at home today so no pics of me making the stairs but you can see above what I managed. I cut three towers/plinths so that the second one will be level with the first despite being on the lower level of the above board. The stairs slot into the plinth so gives me a bit of flexibility. Obviously they are very plain MDF at the moment but......
I have a big bag of cut offs and spares that I can use to detail and textures the surfaces. I get round to it soon.
In the meantime here is the next two beastmen and a chaos hound for my chaos warband. The beastmen still need their shields but I'll do them at the same time as the final beastman.
Which leaves me with one beastman, 2 chaos hounds and 3 shields to do. Once they're based I can breathe a sigh of relief!
Your terrain looks fantastic. I'd love to build a lot of industrial themed terrain for when I finally get back to playing some Necromunda and 40k 2nd ed skirmish games.
ReplyDeleteI always marvel at those that have woodworking skills. It was something I really would have liked to learn properly, but I was unfortunately lacking in that department back at school in my CDT classes.
Never mind "measure twice, cut once". When it came to me it was more like "measure 4 or 5 times times, get 4 or 5 different numbers...". My Dyslexia and Dyscalculia not making following instructions very easy, my teacher not being very patient didn't help either.
Such is life, I suppose.
Your warband is coming along fantastically! The skin and fur on the Beastman in the close up is very nice as are the scales on the reptilian Beastman and chaos hound. That red/orange spot colour you're using is really tying these different models together.
I really do have to give a RoC warband a go at some point, I keep seeing them all over the webs and the urge is growing quite strong.
Fantastic terrain. I'm looking forward to seeing some battles fought over it. I should get some pictures of my caulk gaming mat up on my blog tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI have posted some details re. making my own caulk mat HERE.
DeleteThe terrain looks fantastic. Do you have any more photos of the painted terrain pieces?
ReplyDeleteThere's quite a few pictures here http://theleadpile.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/stagathon-part-4.html of some of the terrain in use but you'll have seen those before. I'll have a look on the computer and see what I can find.
DeleteWP - You work so fast, it put's me to shame. As Head of Maths at my school with a department understaffed by 2 teachers, I'm getting no rest time!
ReplyDeleteI'm still hoping to get some painting in before Monday, but time is running out.
Your scenery is looking brilliant! And the Warband is coming on well. I'm really looking forward to seeing these first hand.
Chris
I'm a head of year so I know how much work an understaffed dept have to put up with. My A-level classes can often be a bit of a relief at this time of year.
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