A start into a new project

thomasriepe , , , , ,

After a very long hiatus here on Wargamesgazette I will post again about my new project. I haven#t been doing nothing, concerning the hobby, but I just couldn#t find the time to post on here.

In the meantime I painted a few Star Wars miniatures, but that could not keep my interest as my last project , the Vietnam war.

Now, with 3d printers getting cheaper and cheaper, I restarted an old project of mine, which I worked on for the last time when I was a teenager.

In my last holiday I started to reread the Richard Bolitho novels by Alexander Kent . I got som,e STL files from Turner miniatures in 1/700 scale. These were to small for me so that I resized them to 1/350 to be able to put some crew on them eventually.

For the few of you who don#t know the novels and want to read them here is a list of all books:

Richard Bolitho

1 Midshipman Bolitho (1975)
     aka Richard Bolitho, Midshipman
2 Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger (1976)
3 Band of Brothers (2005)
4 Stand Into Danger (1976)
5 In Gallant Company (1977)
6 Sloop of War (1972)
7 To Glory We Steer (1968)
8 Command a King’s Ship (1973)
9 Passage to Mutiny (1976)
10 With All Despatch (1988)
11 Form Line of Battle (1969)
12 Enemy in Sight (1970)
13 The Flag Captain (1971)
14 Signal, Close Action! (1974)
15 The Inshore Squadron (1978)
16 A Tradition of Victory (1981)
17 Success to the Brave (1983)
18 Colours Aloft! (1986)
19 Honour This Day (1987)
20 The Only Victor (1990)
21 Beyond the Reef (1992)
22 The Darkening Sea (1993)
23 For My Country’s Freedom (1995)
24 Cross of St. George (1997)
25 Sword of Honour (1998)
26 Second to None (1999)
27 Relentless Pursuit (2001)
28 Man of War (2003)
29 Heart of Oak (2007)
30 In the King’s Name (2011)

The first ship I build was the cutter Avenger which features in the novel “Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger” Here is a picture of the model: ( flags and crew are still missing)

The ratlines were done with a ratlinemaker. I will take pictures of the process next time. I will try to do each ship Bolitho served on in the future

An M113 for my ARVN force

thomasriepe , , , , , , , , ,

I got the wonderfull 3D STLs from BobMack for the Vietnam war. There are nearly all versions of the M113 included. I printed the M113 with my resin printer and enlarged it to 1/50 to fit in with my other vehicles from Empress Miniatures. the crew and Infantry figures are by Empress, sculpted by Paul Hicks.

The 1st squad of my ARVN platoon

thomasriepe , , , , , , ,

Sometime last year I bought some of the ,then new, Empress ARVN Infantry figures. Now I finished the first squad of them. We’ll see how they perform on the gaming table later.

So here are the pictures of the first squad

And many more pictures of each fighure in the squad:

The LVPT5 is finally finished

thomasriepe , , , , , , ,

This time it took quite long until I could find time to write this post. That doesn’t mean that I did no modeling or painting in the meantime. I just couldn’t find the time to take pictures of the finished projects.

So here is the first finished project I had time to take pictures of. The 3D printed LVPT5. I printed the vehicle on my resin printer. You can find out more here: https://wargamesgazette.com/2022/01/16/the-start-of-my-lvpt5/

So here it is in all its glory. The crew is by Empress Miniatures.

Here are some closeups of the “Mean Machine” and the crew.

I hope you like my effort…. More to come hopefully more regularly again.

A firebase somewere in Vietnam

thomasriepe , , , , , , , ,

So for the Build something contest over on the LAF forum I made the firebase you can see above. These are two terrain pieces roughly 40x80cm big. The fit against each other to form a 80x80cm terrain piece.

The Sandbags and other parafrenalia are 3d printed on a resin printer. The rest is scratchbuild. The roofs of the bunkers can be lifted up to place miniatures inside.

Here are some pictures of the bunkers during the build :

Next I build a base were the individual bunkers fit in:

The white sandbags were made out of DAS clay. Now the ground got a basecoat of paint and I added some smaller items like smoke grenades, C ration bags, warm food containers etc.:

Then all the bunkers emplacements etc got a black basecoat.

And this is the finished firebase:

I build the two terrain tiles to be able to insert a middle par as needed. So I will build different middle parts in the future like gun pits or a landing pad for choppers etc.

The start of my LVPT5

thomasriepe , , , , ,

This is the project I started over the x-mas hollidays. A LVPT5. The model was printed on my resin printer in 1/50 scale. The figures are from Empress. Here is the picture which I took for refernce:

Here is a picture of the printed model:

And some pictures of the finished model before painting. The sandbags are made from green stuff, the c ration boxes, bags and ammo boxes are resin prints.

And the vehicle with added basecolors.

The miniatures will be painted with GWs contrast paints the rest will be done the traditional way….

More to come shortly

A happy christmas to you all

thomasriepe

Another year has gone by much to quickly again. This year was an exceptional one for me as my hobby time went down as the year progressed. Due to work costrains, my daytime profession is in the medical sector, there was just no time and whats even worse no power left during the evenings to spend with my favorite pasttime.

I hope this will change again when the pandemic looses its drive, whenever that will be….

So, I am sorry that I couldn’t update these pages as often as I would normaly have done and you expected of me. As soon as there is more time again, I promise, this will be changed. I have a lot of things on my painting table so watch this space.

I wish you all a happy christmas and a wonderfull prosperous new year and above all good health in these rather difficult times !!!