March to Hren28 week 2-3

Our team is preparing to perform at the Turnip28 tournament called H.R.E.N.28 in Slovenia in July. Ana, Mario, Domagoj, Seb and Antoni assemble their armies and paint, and we follow them on their way!

ANA: "Continuation of last week's Fodder unit. I basecoated the shoes and hats in black and some details in red and washed them with a brown wash.

After that, I started adding additional shading and the first highlights on the uniform.“

ANTONI: "I named the army (cult) for Turnip28 Feast of Charybdis. The entire army is based on crabs. And it will consist of 1 Toff, 2 Toadies, a cannon and a unit on "horses" of three pieces and 12 Napoleonic British soldiers who will form the gunlines.

In addition to those figures, there will also be this Scuttler that I worked on this week. It's a cool unit because it doesn't deploy in deployment, but comes out of the mud in the first turn and gets some crazy charges"

MARIO...

CSSR 1986 Diorama part 7

In this series of articles, we will follow my work on a new diorama, another in the 1986 series. This time, we take you behind the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia.

Next are the final details, which are not necessarily connected to each other, nor were they done in the chronological order in which these articles are published. They simply were not connected to the rest of the story in the articles, so they all deserve their own mish-mash article. First, preparing the substation for painting by spraying the interior black. So that it will be dark inside through the openings in the doors and windows. Once the substation is fixed to the base, this will be impossible to do.

From the clear plastic that I also used to make the fence, I cut out the shape of the window for the substation.

In the box with the bits I also found a barrel in good scale so I assembled that too.

Finally, there was corrosion on the door. First, I thinned the holes in t...

CSSR 1986 Diorama part 6

In this series of articles, we will follow my work on a new diorama, another in the 1986 series. This time, we take you behind the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia.

We are slowly coming to the end of this diorama. Apart from a few more small things, the main job that remains is to make the concrete parts. First, we will make the concrete slabs for the pedestrians. To do this, the simplest method is to cast them from plaster. So first, let's make a mold.

I made a mold of thin strips (2 x 2 mm cross-section) on plastic foil. I made a grid for the panels. This way, the panels will all be the same thickness and shape.

I then poured some sand into the mold – to simulate the pebbles in the composite concrete slab.

Then I mixed the plaster with water until I had a pasty mixture and then poured it into the mold.

Using the rest of the batten, I leveled the boards inside the mold.

While the plaster was drying in the mold, I a...

CSSR 1986 Diorama part 5

In this series of articles, we will follow my work on a new diorama, another in the 1986 series. This time, we take you behind the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia.

After the gate, it's time to tackle the rest of the fence. First, we'll make a post that will hold the closed part of the gate on one side and the open pedestrian door on the other. We'll make the shape of the post (and the rest of the fence) from linden slats with a cross section of 5 x 5 mm.

To fix this part of the fence properly, I decided to pin the batten to the base. I drilled a hole with a drill and put a staple in it. I glued it with superglue, and the fence post with PVA glue to the base. (NOTE: be careful not to use superglue on Styrofoam or Styrodur, as the glue will eat through it.)

Once the post was glued, I added both doors also with superglue.

For the second part of the fence, I decided to make part concrete and part steel. The concrete base, like the post, wil...

CSSR 1986 Diorama part 4

In this series of articles, we will follow my work on a new diorama, another in the 1986 series. This time, we take you behind the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia.

As we announced last time, starting this week we will start making the details. So far we have been using larger or smaller elements, but now we are starting with scratchbuilding the parts. First up is the gate. Because it will define how the rest of the fence will look. I decided to make it a standard “closed” type gate – made of pipes with a plate welded to it.

Since I imagined the gate in two parts and that the whole thing had to be quite vertical/parallel and very geometrically correct, I concluded that making a frame out of round profiles would be a very big challenge. That's why I decided to first make two boards (of the same dimensions) around which I would then glue round profiles, thus ensuring the correct shape of both parts of the gate.

Ideally, I would use plasticard. Unfort...

CSSR 1986 Diorama part 3

In this series of articles, we will follow my work on a new diorama, another in the 1986 series. This time, we take you behind the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia.

So far we have made the substation and the road, now it is time to make the cobblestones/macadam inside the industrial complex. It is not clearly visible in the photos, but I angled that part when cutting. Now we need to add some “volume” with the details.

We will add volume using DAS glass mol. When asked which one to use, my advice is no matter what. White or terracotta - just the same. Namely, both one and the other version crack quite hard when drying. This time, I'm using the third type of DAS clay, which I bought in Italy and haven't seen it here to buy yet. He says it is for stone surfaces. So let's try it.

Before applying the clay, my advice is to coat the entire surface with PVA glue so that the clay sticks better. Also, while spreading the clay, feel free to wet it a little wi...