Water plumes for Cruel Seas

 Cruel Seas has a mechanic that requires tracking how many times a ship has been shot with sufficiently large weapon.
Cool way to keep track, and not fill the table with immersion breaking counters, is to use water plumes.

The "Missisippi Queen" is now afloat, unique modelling tip and next project

I got the notorious Watt gang to pose for me during the chastising of "Missisippi Queen" or "African Queen" depending where it will sail :)

Farmhouse step 2

I've been mostly painting demons for my chaos space marine army. The house is getting along however every now and then when I feel I need to get a break from painting.

Automated Sentry System (ASS)

Couple of days back I was in a toilet and started looking the cotton buds on a plastic stick one uses to clean one's ears or other small orfices. I started picturing them as a barrels of a gatling cannon, and had to follow up on that by trying to make one.

More river pieces

More river pieces are getting done. With these, I  changed the process a little to fix the issues with the previous pieces, and to try out something new.

Mossy swamp trees and first pieces of river

Tree on the right is waiting for sepia wash

I thought the swamp needed more stuff happening in it, so I created couple of detachable trees to grow in it. The trunks are Woodland scenics, they were first painted black with gesso, and attached with magnets to the base. I then attached some  acrylic wool to brances with PVA glue, its from hobby shop, the same stuff that Flames of War bag of flames is made of. When that was dry, I pruned it with hobby knife, tearing it to keep it from looking too uniform, and painted it mutation green. I originally planned on stopping here, but the green looked too clean, so I applied Vallejo sepia wash as a last step, making it look dirty and clumpy.

Terrain part 2.

So, here are the finished products, first the swamp.
I'm quite pleased of how this turned out, the water coloring and water/ground relation is pretty good.

 

Terrain for terrain's sake

I for some reason thought I'd need terrain at home even though I do my gaming in our club.
Because of this, and the reason that I'm bored in painting, I started making a few test pieces.

hedges and a berry bush in making

First came couple of hedges. These were made by gluing rocks and glycol soaked lichen to a wooden base. I have a bag full of lichen as I collected it last summer. I've used it mostly dried as scatter, but haven't yet found any use for the glycol softened version.
After gluing, I soaked both pieces with watered down PVA, let dry and repeat. This is time consuming as it takes a long time for watered down PVA to dry. The delay is of course mitigated by starting another project to work on in between, im my case a swamp.

Home made Static Grass Applicator

After reading about Static Grass Applicators, I decided it was a time I try making my own. As a discalimer, I have never worked with electricity before, besides changing lightbulbs.

So, I bought McEnroe electric flyswatter for 6.50 euros, and opened the screws at the handle. 

The insides consists of some sort of thingie from which 2 wires come out. These wires lead to the swatting part of the swatter. 

I broke the swatting pad apart carefully, trying to preserve the wires as good as I could. I took a short piece of rubber covered wire that ended in clamp, and attached it to the other wire. I then made a basket from metal spike and metal net I had laying around, taped it to the handle, and attached the other wire to that construction.

To my suprise, the thing actually works! 

McGyver couldn't have done better!

Using the thing.

You have to apply glue to the part of the base you want the grass to stick to. Normally, I use PVA glue as it is quite sticky and fluid enough when mixed with a small amount of water.

Then put some static grass to the metal basket of the applicator, and take the free hanging wire, and electrify the general area of the PVA glue spot.  I have clamped on a metal spike to make it easier to target the glue.

While keeping the electricity on, gently shake the static grass through the metal net to the glue, while keeping 1-2cm distance between the metal net and the clamp/spike -part. If the distance is longer, the static electricity is not enough to raise the grass, if it is shorter, the clamp and net will touch, resulting in sparks. 

The static electricity will keep the grass upright while it is falling to the glue, so the end result is neater than without the applicator, it also helps to shake the grass through the strainer.

It is not very powerful as it is powered with 2xAA batteries, but it'll get the job done, and it was a fun project to build :)