Still More Scratch Building and the German Cyclists

First of all here is an image of the German MG carriage and limber complete with the horse team. While three of the images that I have show a four horse team, another shows a two horse team. Since the former were of WWII vintage and the latter of WWI vintage, I chose to go with a two horse team.

 

I had been trying to find images of the French cavalry machine gun carriage. I had found a very crude drawing in the Funcken “Uniforms of WWI” book and then an illustration from a graphic novel. Then by sheer chance I stumbled across these photo in a completely unrelated discussion thread.

It showed the details I wanted and was all I needed to get started. Fortunately I had a spare Hotchkiss MG left over from the Russo-Japanese project so I didn’t need to make the weapon. The rest was an easy task with plastic card and a bit of green stuff. I have done a four horse team this time, but without the riders - unless I have a sudden rush of blood to the head and change my mind about the riders, which is always a possibility. I will post some images of this when the horses are painted and the model based.

I also knocked up a refugee wagon, based on a contemporary propaganda postcard. It looks pretty good, loaded with household packages. I may do a second wagon as well.

The German Jäger cyclists arrived from Dixon Miniatures just after Christmas and have finally painted them. They are intended to be used in conjunction with the uhlans, when the come. The jäger unit will also have an HMG (and the MG carriage of course) attached to them.

WWI Project – Buildings Phase 3: The Town Increases

I have had a productive weekend. I finished off the last of the texturing detail on thirteen biuldings on Friday, while I waited for a service man to turn up to repair the stove and then painted them over the weekend.

 

Of the thirteen structures, eight are intact buildings and five are ruins. The intact structures pretty much complete the main street of the town. I still have four buildings to make to finish the town, including a church, a workshop and two houses, and will start them next week.

 

The ruins are designed to replace the intact buildings. They do not exactly match the intact structures, but they do match the frontage so that for every 60mm frontage intact building, there is a 60mm frontage ruin. The two or three odd shaped buildings will have unique ruins. There are still ten ruins to go.

 

Here are a few shots of the finished models.

 

First of all the main street of the town.

And second, the first batch of ruins.

A Bit More Scratch Building

Following my success with the scratch building of the French ammunition wagons, I decided to expand my scratch building experiments to a German machine gun carriage and limber. After some searching on the web and with some assistance from a post on the Miniatures Page I gathered enough information to start.

I built the packed MG08 first from plastic card and green stuff. It was remarkably easy and I had most of it finished in one evening. Next was the MG carriage, which was a little more fiddly and took a couple of days to put together. Finally I made the limber, which was a relatively simple construction.

Once the basic models were made I put some stowage on the MG carriage and the leather satchel on the back of the limber with some green stuff. I have started work on the horse teams, but they will take a few more days.

The finished, but unpainted, models are shown here:

And then the painted model:

 

The MG carriage

The limber

Next will be a French MG carriage, although there is not as much detailed information on this, and then two more German limbers for the two field guns I have.

WWI Project Continues

I am waiting until the end of the month to buy any more figures. In part this is because I need to clear some of the Christmas debt on the credit card and in part because I want to get further ahead with the buildings that I mentioned in earlier posts.

While I have made great headway with the buildings I still have a way to go. Eight of the village street buildings are finished (although only three are painted) with three in progress, and will probably be finished this week. I have also completed four ruins. I have several other cardboard forms either ready for texturing, or in the sketch stage, one of which is the village church and another is the local garage. I hope to be able to post some images of these in a week or two.

In the meantime I have received a small packet of jäger cyclists from Dixon which have been assembled and will be painted after the current batch of buildings are finished.

I have also done a bit of scratch building. I found this picture of a French 75 in action:

I suddenly had the urge to make the ammunition wagon to go with the two 75mm guns that I bought in December. I dug around on the web and soon found more images, but more importantly, some plans and broke out the plasticard and glue and got to work.

The plans I had didn't have a scale, but I was able to work out a size based on the wheel size and then scaling that to the size of the wheels that I had on hand. In no time at all I had the base shape built and within a few hours the basic model was completed. The next day I added some of the details with Green Stuff and the result was this:

 

After adding a few more details the model was finished. I was so pleased with the first one that I made a second wagon for the second gun, this one slightly different - with one of the doors closed. With the two of them finished, they were painted and then based as below:

This attempt at scratch building has pleased me so much that I have started on a horse drawn version of the machine gun carriage for the French and German cavalry.