May 30, 2021
This week is one of those weeks between the end of one major project and the start of another. For the last year I have been working on three Gordon Institute adventures… Loch Ness, King Kong, and Frozen North. With the work for all three of those complete and Loch Ness photographed and posted both as a gallery and as a seven-episode series, I will be starting a new major project, one that will again last about a year. That project is North Africa in World War II… 15mm. But right now, I’m between the two and so I have been tying up some loose ends.
I completed two more of the Atlantis the Lost Empire Command Cars… this time with different roof racks than I’ve done in the past. I also did two more (I’m sure the last two) of the Citadel Lake Town Houses… this time with large chimneys, and finally I began work on a Pegasus Goth building… Small Set 2. These are buildings that come in pieces so you can design your own building. I’m a big fan of Pegasus so I don’t want to sound too critical, but this one was a disappointment in many ways. It is made to be a snap together… not by me it wasn’t. Some of the parts simply didn’t fit together. I was going to glue it anyway, but I expected the pieces to come together more easily than was the case with this kit. I was also very disappointed by the fact that the building they indicate could be built with the parts in the kit simply didn’t have all the pieces needed to make that happen. I’m a pretty good scratch-builder so I think I will be able to bring this together in a fashion I will be happy with, but it will involve at least one more day of work than I thought would be required.
May 23, 2021
I began the workbench week with what might (probably will) be the last of my Gordon Institute Frozen North projects. For my Neanderthal village I will be using the Battlefield In A Box Bestial Huts. The come two to a box and they are nicely pre-painted. The two huts are of different size. I will be leaving the smaller of the two as is… it’s fine. But the larger hut has a huge entrance opening. I decided to shrink that opening by setting a piece of plastic over part of it, covering the plastic with Milliput and then scoring the Milliput to give it a look similar to the section of fur that is above it. It came out pretty well.
My obsession with Atlantis the Lost Empire vehicles continues… probably will never end. I did two more modifications of the Disney Store version of the tanker, this time modified as freight trucks. I built the freight container sections out of Legos and then covered them with Milliput v-groove (4188).
With those done I turned my attention to what I believe is another version of the Atlantis digger… by far the largest. In the past I have done two of the diggers… the Disney Store version (far right) and the Happy Meal version (far left). The large one in the center is an Atlantis toy that came in the Leviathan Set.
I ended the week repurposing two more of the Atlantis command cars. I can’t seem to get enough of them. Note to self: the suitcases are by Pacific Northwest Miniatures on Etsy.
May 16, 2021
I began the week painting a couple of 1:43 die cast cars by RIO (a 1934 Hispano Suiza T 12 Spider and a 1929 Isotta Franchini). Both will be used as limos for the Gordon Institute.
This week I had a couple of great finds on the bargain tables at Arnie’s Trains. One of the bargain tables (3 ft x 6 ft) was covered with Plasticville HO scale buildings… dozens of them. The thing that first caught my eye was the Transmitting/Television Station. I have it in O scale, but what attracted me was not the building; it was the transmission tower. It was perfect for my Frozen North communications center. Those kits are difficult to find, and when found they are expensive. I didn’t care about the building; all I wanted was the tower, and the whole thing was priced at $4.88. I bought it.
As I was about to leave the table to pay for my great find, I saw that they also had the Plasticville HO scale motel. I have the motel in O scale, but not in HO. The previous owner was not a skilled model maker and this one was made years ago and put together with far too much tube glue, but with a price of $8, I thought I could bring it back to life, so I bought it as well. It will be one of the few plastic models I will be including in what I call my Norman Rockwell Murder Collection. The figures for that collection are all HO. The vehicles are all 1/87 scale. Most of the buildings are resin and beautifully pre-painted by Hawthorne Village. The idea behind this collection is a murder in an upscale community in mid-20th century USA. I’ve always wanted to do something Pulpish in HO rather than 28mm. Hawthorne Village does not do a motel so I decided that if I could get one cheap, I would use the Plasticville HO motel… this day I found it.
When I got my treasures home, I cut the transmission tower away from the building that came with it and set the tower in a base of Milliput which I covered with my baking soda snow. For the curious, the light will not be wired… I’ll paint over it. While the building wasn’t painted, the tower was (and not well) ... I’ll be repainting it. I then turned my attention to the motel. One of the windows in the office was missing. I replaced it with one taken from the Transmission Station I wasn’t going to use… same style building. Some of the windows in the motel-room complex had been set in place upside down so I had to carefully remove and reset them… it took some time, but I got it done. Although the posted picture doesn’t show this, once I had all of the windows properly set, I covered their openings from the inside so that you cannot actually see inside the empty structures. I’ll paint those now-filled openings black and I’ll be giving the motel a paint job that I hope will make it more compatible with the resin Hawthorne Village buildings. It was a great trip to the train store.
Mid-week I turned my attention to painting ice terrain. I began with a wall of ice that was originally marketed as a display stand for Game of Throne figures. I got it at the swap meet several years ago for a couple dollars… a cast-off toy. I added another piece of plastic rock to the top which had been a plastic “lift” for the wall. With that done, I decided to paint my six sets of ice crystals by AT-43.
I also decided to build and paint two more of the small versions of the Dust Studio Nissen huts.
The week ended with the painting of the last of the Acheson Creations crystals and my third and final Scania Vabis Post Bus. I changed the color scheme only slightly by painting the fenders and roof Vallejo Black and the rest of the bus Saddle Brown. At this moment, it appears that the work in terms of figures, vehicles, and terrain for the Gordon Institute’s Frozen North collection is done… we’ll see.
May 9, 2021
I began the week focused on my second Corgi 1937 Goldfinger Rolls Royce (1:43 scale). This one comes with a roof over the driver’s seating area… most of the versions I have seen don’t. I added a cargo rack to the roof and painted it Vallejo US Olive Drab. It will be added to the Gordon Institute motor pool.
With the Corgi done, I turned my attention to adding the homemade decals to the SMER 1:48 scale Supermarine Walrus.
I remembered that several years ago I got a weathervane/anemometer in a baggie of stuff I purchased off the bargain table at my local model train store. I decided that it would be a perfect addition to the Gordon Institute Frozen North collection. When I Googled them I found that most of the ones used in the arctic were painted white, but a few were red so I decided red was the way to go. I based it in Milliput and then covered the base with a mixture of Arm and Hammer baking soda, Elmer’s School Glue and water… snow.
Next, I painted the first of my two Matchbox Models of Yesteryear 1923 Scania Vabis Post Buses that I will be using as part of my 28mm Gordon Institute Frozen North collection. It's die-cast and 1:43 in scale. The only complication (and that was not a problem of significance) is that the tracks are rubber (like thick wide rubber bands), and I felt I needed to glue them to the wheels in order to make them secure. It worked out fine. I kept the paint job simple as I tend to do with the Institute's vehicles… Vallejo Model Color Saddle Brown. I felt so good about how the first Scania Vabis came out that I painted the second… I did it with Vallejo Model Color US Olive Drab.
As the week came to a close, I got up the courage to paint the last of the Corgi 1937 Goldfinger Rolls Royce. This third version is the one with the hood ornament, and it was the one I had decided from the beginning would serve as a limo rather than a field car for the Gordon Institute. I decided that I would use a paint scheme of dark red and black rather than the yellow and black of the original. Because I was using black as the color of the upper portion of the car, I decided I couldn’t paint the windows black, so I went with Vallejo Intermediate Blue for the windows. My last project this week was another 1/43 scale limo for the Gordon Institute. Like the Corgi I got this one on the bargain table at my local train shop… $3. It’s a 1934 Hispano Suiza T 12 Spider by Rio. I painted it Vallejo Black and Vallejo Green Grey.
May 2, 2021
This last week of April my workbench attention was focused on completing the last (for a while at least) of the Gordon Institute figures based for use on the interior floors of the Institute’s buildings.
The Institute’s household staff is made up of seven figures… five Foundry and two Artizan Designs/Thrilling Tales. I added a department of religion to the Institute’s staff as well… three figures… all Artizan Designs/Thrilling Tales. I completed the week’s figure painting with the seven members of the Institute’s instructional and field staff of the Institute… those will probably be the last staff members for the time being, but I could surprise myself. Those were all Artizan Designs/Thrilling Tales except one by North Star/Africa… Lady Isobel Poppington.
With the figure painting done, I closed the workbench week out by building a roof rack on a Corgi 1:43 scale 1937 Goldfinger Rolls Royce. I found three versions of this Corgi RR on the bargain table at my local train shop. Believe me, they were a bargain. For the limited edition version, I paid $10, and for the more standard versions, I paid $8 each. These are selling for $40 and up…far up… on eBay. Once the roof rack was complete, I gave the car a base coat of flat black and then dry brushed it with Vallejo Model Color Saddle Brown. I wanted this one to have the rugged look of a field vehicle, not a luxury car.
