Bonehead scrambles to light up a table

[Bonehead]

Got a game in early July. My buddy usually runs things; 'beerhammer' we call it. Late night, four-player game. Plenty of beer and takeaway. 

This time he's not able to make it, so I've got to step up. Between another one of us who's been buying 2nd hand scenery and I, who have just started properly scratchbuilding in the last two weeks, we've got to fill up a table.

And because we've already set a pretty fun precedent in this regard, it needs to be riddled with diagetic lighting. Or I'll be letting the side down.

I should have started this earlier, but I was in a bit of a rush. So far I have completed one scratch-build. I went for the classic 'coke can refinery'. It's good to start with a traditional piece. Less good to use up an entire week working out how to light it up (different LED colours require different voltages, it turns out, so you have to wire a bunch of resistors in critical places if you want different colours on the same piece).

The refinery started out like this:

A basic mock-up. I got my main idea from 'Eric's Hobby Workshop,' a YouTube channel that has lots of inspirational videos that I strongly recommend. I made the I-beams out of thick card-stock I nicked off the back of a notepad. Bit of hot glue gun action and you're away.

Then I immediately complicated the brief by adding LEDs:

Long story short, it ended up like this;

For a first scratch-build I don't mind it. Rust's a bit over the top, but what the hell. The pipes will connect to the set of standard GW pipes that my mate got. It'll make for a good mission objective, I feel. Turn the switch on in the control room and keep it on for two turns. What switch, you ask?

That one. And what does it do?

Go hard or go home. The little generator hut between the pipe and control room does actually do that job, in a fashion; it's just big enough to hold a 9v battery, so it's the power source in a very real way. The top simply lifts off.

The wires hanging down are a measure for the future: Each pair is wired to a plug, in a socket linked directly to the battery, so I can build gantry/catwalk pieces with lights on the sides, wire the  plugs to the lights, and just plug in the gantries to light them up. Hopefully. I may have to introduce a socket for an effect-pedal power supply to do that, but that's going to be a max of two solder joints so barely worth mentioning.

Yesterday, me and the terrain-owning member of the group got much of his terrain sprayed up in basic colours. Good enough to game on, to start with. Few washes and some weathering powders and they'll be great.

Today, I wired up one of them. It's magnetised,for storage and transport, but I used another socket to join the two floors'wiring, which again menas it only needs one battery. Lots of the GW terrain tiles have bulkhead lights modelled on, so in most cases I just drilled those carefully out and fit the LEDs in there. Giving this result:

Round the back it could use a little neatening up, but with a lick of paint and some green stuff it should be fine in barely half an hour's work:

I also wired up this little piece; before I worked out different lights needed different voltages, so it's running two different bateries. Should be very easy to splice in sockets to run an extension to another piece and save on batteries.

I've also made a battery compartment in it too, so the 9v doesn't hang out on the floor and in the way anymore, but I forgot to photo that, as well as forgetting to photo it all painted up, but it is now as well.

Decent start, but just two weeks to go. I'd like to get one more scratch build done and lit up, and the aforementioned gantry/catwalks. There's also a complete chapel that could use some lighting.

Wish me luck. Or call me a an idiot, your call.

Edited June 23 by Bonehead
Gramers

[Firedrake Cordova]

A very old-school approach to scenery building, with a really nice result, somewhat reminiscent of the terrain used in the old White Dwarf Necromunda battle reports in the 1990s.

[Bonehead]

It'll do as a proof of concept. Appreciate the kind words. I did learn one valuable lesson building it, which is that I don't really like working with card as the main material. it's a bit messy and slow because of how you have to use hot glue or wait forever for different glue to dry.

Thus, I've decided to move on to mostly plasticard for my next scratchbuild. 

Which is going to be pretty simple, just a couple of catwalk pieces to join larger buildings. Verticality makes for fun games, I've found. And modularity makes for repeatability.

Thus:

Dead simple construction. Two-inch wide sections of treadplate-patterned plasticard, reinforced with more thick card on the underside, and then reinforced again with more plasticard at the sides and ends. They'll both get two LEDs to a side, and plugs attached so they can be wired into the main refinery piece. Or any other piece I choose to put a plug socket and battery housing in, come to think of it.

I'll do that next, then see about how long I think it'll take to build a cantilever arrangement on top so they have cover. Might buy some plasticard I-beams and that to speed it up.

If i did do that, I could put a couple more LEDs up top, too. Pretty strong motivation.

Cheers!

[Bonehead]

From initial idea to proof of concept in a day and a half isn't bad. Although I'll cheerfully admit it wasn't a particularly ambitious project.

Got the first one wired up, in a pretty ugly fashion, because i don't like waste, so I used up a bunch of small offcut pieces.

Who cares about the underside, it's not important anyway. The important thing is, the damn thing works!

Check it:

I'm calling that a definite win. Bit fiddly to plug in at this level though:

You can hardly see the socket, but it works just fine even if you do have to use a pair of pliers to plug it in.

Right, next part is to build the truss structure over the top, which I mistakenly referred to as a cantilever-style construction in the previous post. Think I'm going to order some Styrene I-beams and the like. Need more plain plasticard anyway.

I did probably miss a trick not just buying a ready-made model train bridge here, but what the hell, I'm enjoying myself.

Edited June 30 by Bonehead
Spooling

[Bonehead]

I'm not so vain that I can't admit I've made a mistake, even to myself. So I ordered the model train bridge parts. They showed up today. Too hot to do much of anything, and certainly too hot for my normal monday afternoon gym sesh, so I got them glued onto the bridges.

The plastic girder sections I also ordered didn't turn up, so I got out some of my last remaining plain plasticard and made my own I-beams. .5mm (white) on either end and 1mm (black) in the middle. Easy peasy. I made it up in the lengths I needed, so I didn't waste much material.

Knowledgeable viewers will see that I have indeed gone for a 'truss' style bridge. I went with it simply because it provides a little bit of cover.

Knowledgeable and pedantic viewers will also notice that I have used the truss sections incorrectly; because they do not extend all the way to the end of the bridges, in real life they'd be useless. This is not real life of course, so who cares. They look good. I also decided to skip fitting lights above them for now. I just couldn't think of a way that would look good. I have one set of truss parts left; when I come to make another bridge with those, I'll have a go at planning a place for a light up top as well.

Here's a not very much better view:

Below the truss sections, you can just see that I've taped over the LED covers; obviously I don't want to spray over those when i paint the bridges. And indeed I didn't, thanks tot he tape.

I gave them an all-over black undercoat and then a quick zenithal blast with metallic- think it was leadbelcher. Hopefully it'll be pretty easy to go back over the sections where the tape was and match the coverage.

Overall, they'll be good enough for a game once the taped sections are sorted. Beyond that, it seems like some rust, general stains and dirt, and probably some warning signs are called for. I'm pleased to note there's plenty of room for movable cover; can anyone think of anything else that should go on there?

You'll also note the scratch-built shiping containers taking shape in the background. These are made with plain plasticard and corrugated plasticard, and they're just boxes with triangular 90-degree braces made of scrap plasticard inside. They're a lot cheaper than the GW version; I plan to make a ton of these, and eventually make large shanty/underhive settlement terrain pieces using them. For now I'm just making a few as scatter terrain. To finish them off they'll need doors, bracing pieces along all the edges made of .5mm plasticard strips, and some plastic rod for the door mechanism gubbins as on the real deal. 

I made them the same dimensions as the GW ones so they look good next to each other: 6 by 6 by 12 cm. I'm also anticipating a moderately fun time painting them up with imaginary shipping company logos on them, and random strings of impenetrable reference numbers.

Once again, let me know if you can think of suitable details to paint/model on the bridges, and any good container livery ideas will be appreciated.

Edited June 30 by Bonehead

[kabaakaba]

What the scale bridge are? It's looks cool I think

 

[Bonehead]

Scale OO/HO according to the packet. I would link to the one I bought on eBay, but I bought the last three sets in the shop. Still, if you search 'peco lk-11 bridge kit' you should find them easily enough.

I got them finished this evening, with a quick and dirty bit of good enough for terrain but nowhere near good enough for minis colour matching around the LEDs where I had the masking tape on. I followed that with some sponging in two flavours of silvery metal: Boltgun metal and then Chainmail which in terms of colours that aren't twenty years old is probably.. hell, I have no idea. Dark steel and silver. That gives the metal a bit of a worn texture, and breaks up the big flat areas.

Following that I washed them randomly with good old Nuln oil and Agrax, and also some splotches of Athonian Camoshade. I mixed them all up with one another, left some places more concentrated than others. Generally went for just an uneven mess.

Then I got a purple wash, a red wash, and a yellow wash and made what I reckon is a pretty decent go at an oil spillage on the end of one of them. I might run a very light coat of gloss over it for added effect, but it's pretty good the way it sits.

Thus:

And with flash:

Just rust to do, and I'll get round to that when I get round to it. 

Considering I've run out of plain 1mm plasticard, that might be tomorrow, because I can't build any more standalone pieces until that gets here.

[Firedrake Cordova]

12 hours ago, Bonehead said:

Boltgun metal and then Chainmail which in terms of colours that aren't twenty years old is probably.. hell, I have no idea. Dark steel and silver.

You can still get them as Coat D'Arms Gunmetal and Chainmail.  Alternatively, the colours in Vallejo Game Colour range with the same names should be equivalent.  

[Bonehead]

Nice. I almost certainly will when my venerable pots inevitably run dry. Man, I genuinely still paint models with pots of GW paint that are older than some of the people on this forum. Life is pretty odd sometimes.

Anyway, as threatened, I bunged some weathering powder on the bridges. Not that you can see it very clearly on the photos I took- and the flash made them look like I absolutely coated them in it, which I didn't. The contrast always goes through the roof when you use flash.

On the other hand, you could not use flash and then the damn camera :cuss:s the bed and won't focus, but you can at least see the LED effects, which came out bloody lovely. GW and 3d print buildings in shot just for something to link the bridge sections to.

Nice. They're done. Hopefully the plasticard I ordered will get here tomorrow and I can build another piece. More shipping containers and a warehouse building to begin with, I think.

[Firedrake Cordova]

Looks good to me  

[Bonehead]

Well, surprise surprise the game got cancelled. But I was having fun making the shipping containers and whatnot so I just carried on anyway. I ran out of corrugated plasticard at 5 containers; so I'm going to order more; lots more. I did order an absolute ton of plain plasticard and that arrived. It makes a satisfying lump on the desk:

That should enable me to build just a ton of stuff. I'm going to make a warehouse/factory, for one thing. That seems like an ideal accompanying piece to go with all the shipping containers. As well as that, of course, a gatehouse type thing- a small booth with a barrier next to it, basically. Very appropriate for a shipping yard/warehouse forecourt.

But most immediately, I think it'll be just more containers. They're easy and kind of relaxing to make.

The only moderately annoying bit is cutting .5mm plasticard into 2mm wide strips for the banding, and even that's not very annoying. Building the things and fitting the banding is almost zen, it's so restful somehow.

I had a rare moment of actually having a good idea and just looked up photos of real ones to approximate what to do for the doors:

Definitely good enough for a gaming piece, I reckon.

Obviously, painting them comes next. Having a go at spoofing real-world shipping company logos was fun but surprisingly time-consuming if you've never used vinyl letter masks before; getting them neatly and regularly in position takes care, and the damn things are very fiddly. But they do a perfect job of letting you make stencilled lettering effects, because that's exactly what they are.

Yeah, any excuse to get some good old-fashioned swearing in.

The two ones with red on the sides, I'm thinking will be yellow with the same red logo- I just have to actually work out what that logo should be. The other one, I was trying to get a green by mixing blue and yellow spray, but it didn't work at all well. So I think that one's just going to be absolutely beaten up and rusted to death.

Right, I'm off to order more corrugated plastic. Cheers yeah

 

[Bonehead]

Got another one done this evening. I was mostly watching the football and the TDF so there wasn't much time for spray painting, but it came out ok. The company name is a reference to Mari, an ancient syrian city-state that was long-time enemies with Ebla, a different ancient Syrian city state. I mean proper enemies, they burned each other to the ground multiple times. Incidentally, my Rogue Trader imperial guard army are called the Ebla Mechanised and one of my traitor guard collections are the Mari Landsknechts. I like it when things fit nicely together.

Funny, that serial number looks a little suspicious, now that I know it's from a heretical homeworld...

[Bonehead]

Got the last two containers done as far as the spray painting is concerned. I was really struggling to come up with a company logo that I could easily make four stencils of.

Then i looked at my masking frisk (a vinyl material designed to be used to make painting stencils) and stuck to one sheet was a mask i'd made for a phase pedal- the outline of a wolf in front of the moon. Phase, you get me?

Good enough for a company logo. I just stuck it on the side of one container, waited for the paint to cure, then picked it off and stuck it on the other side. Four spray jobs later, all five containers are done.

Well, done in basic colour, anyway. Got to do the door release bits in bare metal (they're shiny steel in about every photo online) and then grime and rust them up. but they look decent enough already.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I'm loving your little shipping containers and their stenciled logos - it really makes them look the part, all they need now is the end rods and latches "silvered" and the whole things weathered.  Your moon wolf logo is perfect, in my opinion, as its the kind of corporate branding nonsense you often see that is used to denote ownership of such containers.  My only quibble is that typically you would see such logos at the left end of the container where it is a logo alone, rather than the middle (though the Maersk containers have their M logo on the left as well - that said those with names look apprropriate centered) - I suspect as that way it helps pick them out from a stack where you only see the end of the container.

 

I like how you've tied one of the containers into your force's backstory - I did the same with my own GW containers and my IG/AM, on the thinking that my IG PDF force was sponsored/raised/funded by the Zildous industrial conglomerate, who gave their logo to the force as its unit symbol.  Its not a shipping company, though, which is why I added their nonsense marketing slogan "It's for us!" as well.  If you want to create some background related continuity between our forces, you could use the Zildous symbol on one of your containers - though I must admit your stenciled look is much better than my kind of dodgy free hand. 

Edited Thursday at 04:57 PM by Dr_Ruminahui

[Bonehead]

I'll be glad to have a Zildous container, why the hell not. i love the idea of linking our collections despite living half the world apart, it's fun in a silly harmless way. My thinking about containers is that one from anwhere could reasonably end up anywhere else- they get bought and sold constantly, and only a few companies really bother to label them, most of them seem to be just plain. 

Because they're so universally useful, you could expect one to eventually travel the length and breadth of the galaxy. I've run out of corrugated material for the present, but when i get some more in I'll build a tone more, and most of them I'll leave unbranded.

I'm also planning a few larger pieces compsed entirely of containers, stacked up to make favela neighbourhoods, basically. I thoroughly enjoyed a game called Cloudpunk a year or so back, and that had some huge towering city blocks all made of containers, made into little houses. Building pieces that are larger than individual containers will give me an opportunity to get into some good old LED shenanigans again, too, which I'll never mind. Gameplay wise, they should make really good pieces. Lots of stairs and balconies, angles for taking cover in, and good old verticality. I've got a couple of decent sized cardboard tubes that would make great central pieces for them.