Tag: MDF

Warhammer 40,000 – MDF Industrial ‘Pringle’ Tower

WARNING: lots of very similar pictures…

The Pringle Tower.  Made from a Pringles crisp tube and some MDF.  A perfectly simple idea that can become a piece of scenery quickly and easily.  Coronasan has designed a whole range of Industrial Scenery around this humble crisp tube and expanded that range to include walkways, landing pads and even lighting options for the more technically minded.

Mine is a basic, early production prototype.  It went through a few basic design changes before the final design was settled upon.  Mine has all the basic parts of the final design, but the final kit comes with more guard rails and a couple of terminal points that can be fitted to the central column.

Designed with 28mm miniatures in mind (are GW still claiming their stuff is 28mm these days or is it more 30mm or even 32mm now?).  The floor plans can fit base sizes up to 40mm without too much trouble.

And there is plenty of room up top for objectives to be fought over.

Even my new Death Guard Helbrute can fit on the ledges, although you might argue he would have trouble getting through those hatches…

All in all, a nice simple kit that I should be able to weather up and fit in with my, slowly growing, collection of Sci-Fi scenery.

MDF Plinths, Stairways And Plazas

As my current aversion to painting green Space Marines continues to settle, I have moved over (with the help of the good weather) to a side project that won’t side track me for too long. Playing about with a little bit of MDF should allow me to go back to painting GREEN again pretty soon.

Warmer weather, shorter drying times and ultimately just a little too hot to paint anyway (the inside of the shed was up to 49 degrees C when I ventured in last weekend…) As no brush work would be worthwhile, I guess a little trimming and gluing would have to suffice.

A bit of base colour spraying is always possible on warmer days too.  A little bit of weathering may need to follow when I am all done with these builds…

These are TT Combat Venetian street blocks and canal stairs.  The reason I bought a few sets of these recently was to see if I could get a bit of height difference on to the table. Each kit in the range makes up a 25-30mm high plaza square or street section.

As always, MDF is an easy medium to work with, and although not as fancy as some of the textured and 3d resin out there, it remains a staple in the shed as it is robust and fairly easy to store away between games.  I have a larger pack with about 8 more base plazas and streets in it but these had a slight fault on them so I am awaiting replacements for those kits.  When they arrive and get built up I should have enough from this range to allow me to stack smaller sections onto the larger bases, layering up the plazas to create higher and lower areas on the table, eventually…

Steam Wars – More MDF Skyships

While I was tinkering with other MDF kits in the shed, I thought it was about time that I tried to get a couple of other kits off the ground (pun intended).

At one of the shows I attended last year I managed to get these two Skyships from the lovely folks at BlotZ.  They were £11 each and well worth the money in my opinion.  I already have one of the larger Blotz Skyships (my Oxford Class Patrol Skyship).  These are what they call their Aether Launch however I am likely just to call them my Assault Barges.

It is a really easy task to build these kits, but I don’t plan to paint these in the same way as my recent MDF houses.  These are going to be done in mostly white or bare wood. With that in mind, I don’t need lots of different parts painting up beforehand.  I can easily get away with just spraying the undersides of these, along with the hand rails, engine blocks, funnels and fins, in white – as I did my original Skyship – and then, when its dry, I can go over the metal work with a bronze metallic marker pen.  A couple of other colourful details and a few decals and I should be almost finished.

Before all that, while I am waiting for the glue to dry, I can try out the deck plans of these barges to see how they will load up with figures.  These will be part of my Navy Marine army so please excuse the use of Martian Sanwar Slaves for measuring the crew complement.

These barges have very long decks, so I am hoping that they will be able to fit a deck gun at the front and still have plenty of room for for Marines to be transported to the thick of battle.

By my guess, at this point, it looks to be a maximum of about 10-12 infantry that will fit that deck length. However, if I want to bring that deck gun along, I might have to limit things a little.  I might only be able to get a deck gun onboard with a unit of 6 infantry and maybe an officer or two to motivate them to jump off and attack.

Decisions, decisions…

More MDF Houses

So, a while back I started a new MDF kit. Surprisingly, I managed to get it almost finished in a single evening.  The second kit was ready to start but I never got around to it as I was quickly drawn into something else…  As usual…

These kits look like a lot of bits when you start but they are easier than you would think.  Especially when you remember to paint (or ink in my case) all the parts before you put them together.

They are both now completed to nearly the same stage and I really need to start thinking about how I finally finish them off.

The different kits are made up from many of the same parts. So sections like the roof are effectively interchangeable

I still need to paint the second roof, paint the window frames in a contrasting colour and add a door knob or two.

I should also try to add some weathering as they look a little too clean at this point.  My dirty paint water pot and a small sponge should give me the right level of grime without getting too many brush marks or tide lines.