Another repair session

Last RuneQuest game I managed to topple a complete box of water cave blocks while playing. The damage was considerable, but it speaks for our casting plaster's quality that I managed to repair all of the broken bits in one hour, including glueing stuff back together and painting / washing with various shades of gray. I must have used about 50 of them.

Work in progress

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012-2013

Another great hirst session

Hirst terrain blocks are brilliant stuff, but one has to invest a considerable amount of time in order to get some serious quantity of blocks. We did and here's today's yield. It looks like a lot but you need a lot of blocks to make stuff. Still, we are putting some effort in regularly, and slowly but surely we're getting together a lot of cool looking terrain.

Here's the temple interior stuff so far

 

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

A belated Happy New Year!

I had 2 weeks of holiday, during which i have done very little in the hobby room, too many other things to do. Still, meanwhile the hobby activity has resumed, and although there are no pictures to show at the moment, I'm working hard at finishing Pavis buildings (x2), Rubble buildings (x1), and a lot of new modular room/cave terrain in hirst blocks. So this early pic will have to do! There's much more now!

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Test building for the Big Rubble

Made out of Hirst blocks

In parallel with making buildings for New Pavis, I'm also preparing a set of ruins for the Rubble. Or at least I intend to. Here's my first attempt, still a WIP,of a nice ruin in Manside. I'm gonna go for a mix of a few styles, ranging from egyptian to babylonian, I hope it'll look convincing. I'm gonna roughen this one up a bit, and then paint it and see what it looks like.

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

More Hirst goodness

After glueing up a cartload of cavern floor tiles and water and rock caves, I made some bits and pieces from another mould into an attempt at a modular inside terrain system. Early days, it's a modest start, but the idea seems easier to implement in Hirst than it was with scratchbuilt, mainly because of the Hirst dimensions and consistency.

The idea is to have 3 or 4 sizes of room flooring, and as many wall types, first in the combination visible here, but this can easily be expanded afterwards. I'm hoping to basecoat it all up tomorrow evening.

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Rearranged hirst block storage

After some testing by fellow clubmember Ben we purchased a heap of these small three drawers units for storing our cast hirstblocks before assembly. The shop only had these left, in all kinds of frivolous colours, so we now have a mix. I think 9 more will complete the rack and offer us a lot of separated storage. Following an idea of other clubmember Peter I am now manufacturing drying racks, with a simple wooden frame and birdcage fence, to solve the problem of cardboard boxes saturating with the water from the drying blocks. All around air, that should allow for optimal drying, short of installing an hot air oven, of course.

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Another hirst casting session

The result of 3 people casting hirst for an entire day (4 runs) is about 60 casts, working from 9 h30 until 15h30, not including cleanup. It's a lot of effort, but the yield is considerable, I have cast the caves 3 more times, and we did a lot of roman and egyptian stuff for Pavis style halls.

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Casting session

For our first whole day casting session we decided to make a bit of everything

The blog has been quiet the last few weeks, the reason for that is a mix of too much work, the temporary pause playing RuneQuest waiting for RQ6 (and Moon Designs Pavis, which I received last week), and the fact that the weather has remained so chilly: I really prefer sitting in my hobby room without the heater blowing, and when it's so cold I can't: I just have to heat it.  As a consequence I find I head down less often.  Still, I am still painting now and again, currently working on a set of Tusk Riders, a nice collection of zombies, and I also have a bunch of NPCs that I need to finish off, just some basing and finishing touches and we're good to go.

Funnily enough, two months ago I finally bit the bullet and decided to go and buy the SLR I have been wanting for so long now.  I invested in some decent lenses as well, and theoretically I am now able to make way better pictures than before.  But setting stuff up now takes longer, making it a more formal occasion: set up the flash and umbrella, set up the scene, tripod, linear rail and 1:2 macro lens.  So far I haven't really made pictures of my modelling, but I intend to soon™.

Once work settles down a little, I'll make a bit of effort on documenting the new photography tools.

Finished some more cave blocks

Here is the result of 2 castings each (not completely though, some bits went wrong) of all cave moulds.  I used some fieldstone floortiles to put them on, I might give those a whiter brush later to make them look more fitting.  Some parts are glued wrongly in the first batch, so I'll need to have another go to complete some of the double pieces, like the wooden door.  Still, the images clearly illustrate the feel of the blocks, they look great and will work very well for RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu, as well as any other skirmish type game, 28 mm or not.

The rocky caves, mould 81 & 82

The water caves, mould 83 & 84

Entering the water caves.  Using fieldstone floortiles

Mountains of madness?

Time to cast: 1 hour. 
Time to glue: 1 hour. 
Time to dry: 1 week. 
Time to base: 6 minutes. 
Time to dry: 1 day.
Time to paint: 1 hour. 

Look and behold: one cast each of moulds 81-84.  A second batch is drying, I think 2 batches will go a long way making cave encounters a lot more realistic and enjoyable in Runequest and CoC alike.  I'm doing a superdry white brush tomorrow, then some varnish, and we're good to go!

Hirst casting tryouts

Hiring children to do the work proves much cheaper,
and they can be bullied into working unpaid overtime easily

We had a few casting tests today, with the help of my son and daughter, to establish how many hirst silicon moulds one can cast per unit of time.  The tests pointed out that the speed I could reach very much depends on the number of moulds available.  At one time, I had 7 moulds 'in the air' at once.  That was doable, I would say I could manage to keep 10 moulds busy.  Depending on turnaround time, and therefore drying time, I could do 2 to 2,5 rounds per hour.  Some of the things I found:

1. Setting up took me about 45 minutes.  This will be the same for one person doing 3 moulds or 4 persons doing 40 moulds so organization is essential.
2. We need more mixing bowls: it is a very bad idea to rinse your mixing bowl in the sink, you have to let the plaster set and then remove it.  For one person, 5 mixing bowls is a good number.  Luckily, these are dead cheap.
3. It took me over one hour to clean up.  This will also be required after every cast, so it would be best to try and organize big casting sessions.

The homemade vibration board worked VERY well, so that's going to stay.  I have a nice setup in mind, with one person making the mixture, one scraper, one unpacker and one all-round, and that should allow to make lots of casts in the course of an afternoon or so.

Tempel afgewerkt

Nog een paar sfeerbeelden van de afgewerkte tempel.

Hier een diorama opzet, ik moet er maar eens wat figuurkes bijzetten om het wat aan te kleden.

De tempel van Humakt in Ardale

Jaja 't is weer lang weekend en we zijn weer stevig aan het knutselen geslagen. Allez ik toch want Domi moet non stop blokken voor zijn examens de arme duts. Hier heb ik een hoop blokskes gegoten in mijn Hirst mallen, en er daarna een ontwerpke voor gemaakt voor een tempel.

Zo moet het er ongeveer uitzien. Maar dan wat verhoogd zodat er een trapke aan kan. Hoogtechnologische vereisten, inderdaad.

Voila, twee lagen schuimkarton en de hoogte is ongeveer in orde. Dan heb ik er lichte klei rond gedrapeerd en authentieke steentjes uit het zwarte woud ingelegd. Kosten noch moeite gespaard, ik weet het.

Zo ziet het er dan uit als alles vastplakt. Enkel nog eventjes laten drogen en dan mogen de verfborstels worden bovengehaald. Een zwarte coating, dan de tegels met groenbruin brushen, en tenslotte alwerken met Granite, Grey en Stone. Nu moet er enkel nog wat gras en struikgewas op.

Modulaire tempeltegels!

Hier gieten we tegels en muurstenen, en een mal met accessoires.

Na het gieten en drogen worden de blokjes op zwart schuimkarton gekleefd.

Zo dus.

Zwarte grondverf erop, en dan progressief coaten van zwart naar oker.

Tenslotte de finale wash met Dheneb Stone en voila!