January 31, 2021
It was a slow week at the workbench… more a cold week at the workbench. My workbench is in the garage, and we had rain and cold this week and the garage was cold, so I wasn’t drawn to spend a lot of time out there this week. I did get a few useful things accomplished. I began with a Reaper Bones figure called the Carrion Worm. I’ve had it for years and just decided it was time to get it painted… no project associated with it.
With that done, I decided to address an issue that had been bothering me for a few days. That had to do with my Creature of the Black Lagoon footprints. I had mistakenly alternated the footprints having the right foot forward on some and the left forward on others, but when you set them down together that just doesn’t work, so I decided to make two more with the feet side by side as though the Creature stopped walking and started again. That solved the problem, and while I was at it, I made a couple more footprint bases with the feet in walking position.
I closed out the week basing and painting a second Loch Ness Monster. Years ago, I bought a Playmobil Dragon at the swap meet for $3. I thought it would make a great sea serpent for my pirates. I cut it to waterline and based the entire figure on one base of Milliput. When I decided to do the Loch Ness project, I realized it would make the perfect Nessie. But as the project came to a conclusion and as I wrote the seven episodes to tell the Gordon Institute Loch Ness story, I realized that I needed a Nessie in three parts on three different bases so I could get different photographic looks. I was fortunate to find another on eBay, and it arrived on Friday. With nothing else on the workbench agenda and a little excited to get the new Nessie going, I did the cutting and basing on Friday afternoon, and gave the new Nessie its paint on Saturday. I like the way it looks… pretty close colorwise to the original even after more than a decade.
The last pictures in this post were of a project that I completed about a quarter century ago. The reason I am posting it now is that I came across it this weekend while looking for something else and realized that this is where my romance with Milliput began. I purchased this crashed resin Waco glider from Monday Knight Productions. I knew it was 20mm but I thought it would work with my 15mm WWII figures. I was wrong. It was significantly bigger than they were. I had to decide to modify it or get rid of it. I decided to give modifying it a try. I started by cutting sections away to make it physically smaller. That helped but not enough. On top of that I needed to hide the cuts. I decided to try a two-part epoxy scored as bushes to hide the cuts and to hide some of the size problems the cuts didn’t solve. It worked and my romance with Milliput continues.
January 24, 2021
This week’s workbench was dominated by bamboo. As of the end of the week I had 300 bamboo shafts/stalks based. I based and dry brushed about 110 of those this week. While basing bamboo, I used a little Milliput to create more Creature of the Black Lagoon footprints. Looking around for something completely unrelated, I found a Mega Minis rowboat that a friend had given me years ago. I decided to take a break from bamboo basing to do the boat. Mega Minis has been out of production for years now. It’s not a great boat, but it will work with my Loch Ness collection. I gave it a stern lantern and an anchor line so I can use it as a channel marker. I closed the week out painting a Pulp Figures film crew. Because of the rain on Saturday, I didn’t have the opportunity to give the crew a spray of clear flat, so the crew still needs its bases covered with turf and sand.
January 17, 2021
This was a week of odds and ends. It began with a concern I had as to how I was going to bring my Gordon Institute Loch Ness tale to an interesting conclusion, and that reminded me that I had purchased two identical Creature of the Black Lagoon figures (toys) at the swap meet a couple years ago. They cost me 50 cents each and I hadn’t done anything with them and thought I might have tossed them out. Fortunately, I hadn’t. In fact, they were just where I thought I had left them. I cut the lower legs off one of them and set that figure in a base of Milliput to serve as water. The second I removed from its base and set that figure (complete except for its original base) on a base of Milliput which would serve as ground. I painted them both and that moved in closer to where I wanted to be with my Loch Ness story. A day into the week I got an order from Acheson Creations and painted a few campfires and three stone idols (idols may not be the right word, but it’s the best I can do right now). In making the Milliput bases for the Creature of the Black Lagoon the first bases I made didn’t set up properly, so I thought I hadn’t mixed them well, so I made second bases which were fine. But by mid-week the first Milliput bases were hard so I decided to make use of one of them by making it water with a floating oil drum and a rubber ducky (the rubber ducky was from a Heroclix figure called Molly Hayes). Not sure what to do next, I decided to reorganize one of my garage storage cabinets that I used for terrain. In the process I found a nice piece of terrain purchased at the swap meet several years ago. I set it on the workbench to paint if nothing else caught my attention.
While I was reorganizing, the mail arrived and my second order of plastic bamboo was with it. This was a very pleasant surprise. I ordered two hundred more plastic bamboo rods (2 packs of a hundred each) a couple weeks ago and the seller indicated that they would arrive between February and the end of March, so this was a nice surprise.
I decided to return to the Loch Ness project once again with a focus on things needed to give it an interesting ending. I decided that it needed a destroyed outdoor work station and some webbed footprints. The destroyed wooden platform for the work station I made from Evergreen plastic. The broken table and the jars on the ground are by WizKids Deep Cuts. The gas containers came with my Acheson Creations’ order. I just did a bit of cutting and put them on the ground near the broken wooden platform. The footprints were made by pressing the foot of the Creature of the Black Lagoon in some Milliput.
With that done I painted some tree stumps and logs that also came from Acheson and I painted that piece of terrain I had found while reorganizing my garage cabinet.
I ended the week basing my new plastic bamboo. I’ve based 89 more bamboo groupings from the new batch that came this week. That gives me 189 based and 111 left to do.
January 10, 2021
This week I just did a few odds and ends. I painted the shorter rock formation I put together last week. It will work okay with a rope ladder I want to use.
Over the years I purchased three of the articulated gorillas that will serve as my King Kong. I finished the third of the three giving it a new arm position and a base because the positioning of the arms altered the balance point of the figure. As I did with the others, I filled the gorilla’s joints with Milliput and scored them to give a hair/fur look.
I built a bamboo ladder… used Plastruct plastic-covered wire. The picture here is not good… sorry.
I ended the week basing 100 plastic bamboo shafts. As their bases I used a metal washer covered with Milliput and then stuck the bamboo in those bases before the Milliput dried. Once dry, I glued the bamboo to the Milliput to make them extra secure. I dry brushed the bamboo with Vallejo Flat Green and then with Vallejo Yellow Green. Once that was dry I sprayed the bamboo with clear flat spray. I then covered the bases with Scenic Effects ground cover.
January 3, 2021
The workbench week opened doing some modifying today of my Bandai Power Rangers’ Dragon Train. I got it at the swap meet several years ago for a couple of dollars. I thought/think it has a great steampunk look. Most of what I initially did involved hiding screw holes and adding some odds and ends that I hope will add to that steampunk look. The odds and ends are leftovers from the Pegasus Power and Chemical Plants. By mid-week it was ready to paint. I kept the paint scheme simple, and I really like the way it came out.
With my Dragon “steampunk” train done, I turned my attention to figuring out how to make complete use of the figures I got with the two war canoes I purchased from Old Glory several years ago because I wanted a couple canoes that were beached. Those canoes came with crews of 10 rowers each, so they weren’t cheap. I used a few rower heads as replacement for heads on some of my Eureka islanders (their heads were too big). I used three of the rowers with my Moana outriggers, but I still had 12 rowers left. I decided to use them as rowers on the beached war canoes but to put them on removable bases so they could be used as beached canoes or as canoes in the water with smaller, six-man crews. I think the idea worked out pretty well.
The mail on New Year’s Eve brought some treasure. In early December I bumped into two things by accident… completely unrelated to each other. I came upon a game called “The World of SMOG The Rise of Moloch.” I had/have no interest in the game, but it came with expansion sets, and both the expansion sets and the game came with great-looking figures. Since I had never seen them in person, I didn’t know how they would scale with 28mm. I also thought they were made of a bendy plastic that often produced ill-formed figures. Nonetheless, the figures were really interesting, very steampunk/Victorian Sci Fi and very unique. I was unable to get a solid read on any of my questions about them, but there was a guy selling them at very reasonable prices on eBay so I jumped in and was able to buy 16 single figures and I discovered that two of the expansion sets were also priced very reasonably in terms of the number of figures I would get… most of the time the game and expansion sets are pretty expensive. I bought the two expansion sets as well (The Mekasylum and The Baker Street Set). When they arrived on New Year’s Eve, I was thrilled. The scale was great for use with my 28mm figures. They were made of a solid plastic not unlike resin, and they were in perfect condition. I’m still waiting on the two expansion sets, but I have every reason to believe they will be great as well. The second treasure was a pack of 100 plastic bamboo shafts. Very happy with those as well.
I ended the workbench week creating a 360 degree rock formation out of two 180 degree formations. These are smaller (shorter) versions of the ones I used to make my King Kong rock wall. I’m basically connecting them and filling openings with Milliput. I should have it done early in the next week. I will be using one of my modified/almost scratch-built rope bridges to connect this rock formation with the rock wall.
