Games Workshop Tyranid Ripper Base

A bit of paint doodling here. Some plastic rippers on a 40mm base. There should be five there but one went missing at some stage in the last house move.

Pinning Miniatures

Being able to pin miniatures is a skill that benefits anyone putting together multi part gaming miniatures. Metal figures especially acheive much greater tolerance to strain. It allows you to strengthen glue bonds that have a low shear strength and in this case allowed me to fix a ruined  necron figure. The blade and part of the haft had snapped off above his hand.

I'm using a pin vice here with a 1 mm drill bit. The first piece I attempted was down into the hand. Unfortunately the scoring on the shaft allowed the drill to snap the handle again but luckily the little part came out just like a little bead. Here you can see it on the paperclip which will become the pin.   

Building the modular wargaming table top mark I

The GOB has asked me to put together some modular tabletops which will rest on trestle tables for Warhammer / 40 K games. The board size will ideally be 4' x 2' with three bolting together to form an 6' x 4' table. We had discussed a High Density foam layer with scenery constructed permanently on top and the initial discussion involved plans for 18 boards but i'll start with one set (3 boards) and we'll work from there.

The photo above shows the pieces for the first board mocked up for size. The biggest problem is the size of sheet material here. If it has been cut in the USA then it will be in feet but if it's been made here it will be metric and thus a little short in every direction. Construction will be pine as it's pretty cheap running at $0.97 AUD a metre here.

Thinking music here...

I decided to go with 3mm MDF which has come from the US and has been cut into 4' x 2' sheets. I'd prefer ply for its extra strength but aren't prepared to wear the waste of cutting down a big sheet. Not to mention cutting the sheets by hand.

Board one screwed together. I toyed with the idea of using a long board down the middle but this double brace going across should be stronger and uses up scrap from around the place.

And an example of how it will work on a trestle table. With another one or two bolted to it shouldn't move too much. I've now nailed and glued the top on and that's sitting in the shed with some weights on top.