March 22, 2026
My hobby time this week has been completely devoted to working toward the completion of my frontline trenches for my Trench Crusade collection. I completed seven more trench sections this week; each are 5 1/4” long. These seven with the three I did last week take me to ten of the eleven frontline sections I will need for the layout I am planning. All the sections were scratch built using an inner core of American Plastic Bricks (very old school) covered by Evergreen plastic with Milliput shell holes. The ammo shrine is made of Evergreen plastic with a small metal cross attached to a plastic bullet that were both found at the swap meet. The sandbags are made from Milliput. The tree stumps and roots are from Etsy.
March 15, 2026
On Saturday (a week ago) I found a cross statue at Savers’ thrift store for $4. I should have taken a picture of it as I found it, but I got busy modifying it so the best I can do is to show it before I apply paint. I covered it with hobby putty, built a small shrine out of Evergreen plastic, added a ground surround and sandbags using Milliput, and included speakers, candles, skulls, and small crosses I found on the internet. The repurposing was fun, but it’s the paint that brings it all together.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to build my trenches for my Trench Crusade collection. It’s pretty common for me to construct structures using Legos and Duplos as the inner core of the structure, but to build a trench system out of Legos would take a massive number of Legos and it would be a pain to put them all together. Duplos are easy to use but their size and variety of shapes is limiting in terms of the look I was after. Fortunately, a few months ago I found a huge supply of American Plastic Bricks by Halsam Products on the clearance table at my local train shop. I had these when I was a little boy back in the 1950s. The price was right so I bought a lot because I was sure I would find a use for them down the line. Their size is between Legos and Duplos and thus gave me a greater option for this trench project. Once the inner core was built, I covered the plastic bricks with Evergreen plastic and covered the ground area with Vallejo Diorama FX. This is my first use with this Vallejo product, but the guys at Brookhurst Hobbies tell me they use it all the time. It applied easily (a little goes a long way). Once it dries (they tell me 24 hours), I’ll spray the whole thing flat black and then dry brush my color over the black base color.
On Friday I finished painting my first scratch-built trench section for my Trench Crusade collection. As I mentioned above, it is also the first time I used Vallejo Diorama FX ground cover, and I think it does a great job... goes on easily, and I was surprised about how little I used to cover this 5" long section. With that first section complete, I went on to build three more and got two of those three painted before the week came to an end.
March 8, 2026
I began the week painting four Ikore VOID bunkers I’ve had for years. I decided they would work great with my Trench Crusade collection. I did some modifications… added a GrimGuard hatch to three and a Skylander speaker to the fourth. I gave them a camo scheme from the WWI era.
With those done I returned to Star Wars and painted six Clone ISP speeders and five Separatist Hellfire droids.
Next on my agenda was a tank by GrimDark that I had been waiting for months to get my hands on. GrimDark was very generous. They apologized for the huge delay, returned my money, and sent the tank. I immediately put it together, added a GrimGuard hatch and tank commander, and painted it to match the Atlantis pieces it will be jointing as part of my Trench Crusade collection.
March 1, 2026
I began the week with a Communicant figure from one of the Trench Crusade lines of figures… it was a 3d print, and it was in terrible condition when I received it. It was supposed to have two crosses stuck in its eyes. When I got it, one of the crosses was missing an arm and the other was missing completely. The head was almost devoid of detail to the degree that I had to cut the nose off another figure and add it to this one. Frankly, none of the detail on this figure was crisp, but I decided I had to see what I could do with it. Side note: the Seller apologized and is supposed to be sending me replacements for the damaged figures I received; there was more than one.
A week ago Saturday, I found an ice harvesting scene… resin with the look of the figures I used to get at the Dollar Store at Christmas… with heads too big for the bodies. I thought it would be a good addition to my Gordon Institute Frozen North collection. I gave each figure a new, more appropriately sized head and painted everything except the ice blocks.
Mid-week I took on the repurposing of what will probably be the last Atlantis Water Tanker made into an armored vehicle. After doing five before this one, it was a pretty routine process.
Quite by accident I discovered that I had an Atlantis bridging vehicle/tank option. I purchased it years ago and had completely forgotten about it. Luckily, I had a set of Atlantis tracks left over from another project, and that spare set of tracks allowed me to do both options.
As the week neared its end, I got the urge to do the Hutt twins. I’ve had them for some time as well as two litters and carriers from another project. As it turned out, bringing the two litters together to form one large enough for the two Hutts was not all that difficult, and the painting was a lot of fun.
Throughout the week I painted two transformer SWAT armored vehicles. I worked on them a little at a time because doing them wasn’t all that exciting despite the fact that I really like the vehicles. The hardest part was getting my paint color close enough to the original that I could keep the “SWAT” on each side of the vehicle.
