ERTL Farm House Set

I picked up one of these online. The ERTL stuff is listed as 1/64th scale (same as the Machine Shed. See that here, here and here) but I think it runs a little big.

Here's a repainted Heroclix mini for comparison.

 and

It's a small-ish house but it works for me. Well... it WILL work as soon as I finish it. ;)

How will I finish it? 

Well..., I started by cutting down some left over illustration board to fit in as interior walls. They measure 1-7/8" high. The short walls are 4-1/16" wide and the longer walls are 6-9/16" wide.

Next, I cut them and placed them in the house to make sure they fit. Adjust/trim as necessary.

Next, I grab a knife and "score" into the board from the outside using the windows as my guide. You could use a pencil or pen here too, I just went in with the knife.

Then cut the windows all the way out.

Place them inside to see how well they work. As you can see in the picture below I also measured out the floor space and cut a piece of board to fit. Right now, since I haven't decided if I'm going to glue the walls in or not, I recommend cutting the walls first, then measure for the floor. This way when you place the floor in it helps to hold the walls in place. My idea is to be able to swap the walls out so that I can have different color walls or paneling or things like that.

Next I grabbed a bunch of coffee stirrers and started laying out a floor. The more narrow the better as far as I'm concerned.

I started by laying out 4 sticks and measuring them for the width of the interior floor. Then I started glueing the floor slats to the support sticks. I had to add extra support sticks periodically to help keep the sticks close together and to keep them from bowing or warping.

Next time I'm going to vary the pattern a bit more, this is a little to "patterny" for my tastes. It should look more like a hardwood floor.
Yeah... nitpicky... I know.

It does look pretty cool when placed inside the house.

That's it for now. Coming up I plan to:

  • Create another hardwood floor for the second level

  • Create the attic

  • Create a basement space

  • Paint the exterior of the house

  • Figure out how to make some better shutters
  • Make it so that the door can be opened. Maybe.
  • Make some interior walls that can be arranged in different configurations.

  • Create a stairwell

  • Make or buy some furniture

  • I'm sure there's more but I can't think of anything else right now.

Life and stuff...

With the added expense of daycare my wife and I decided that we could no longer afford our studio space. We gave it up in the fall and I moved everything into a storage space. The goal was to have enough room in there to be able to go in and do a little work now and then.

Sadly, that goal was not attainable. It starts with properly labeled boxes and the intent of having an organized space and it ends with a mad dash of cramming everything into whatever available boxes you have and throwing it into the storage space.

The new, altered, goal was to just be able to find stuff so I could bring it home to work on. That goal has been met. So far.


Speaking of goals, I have decided to try and paint 10 minis a month. Or 120 miniatures by years end. I'd also like to include building a few IHC Homes of Yesterday and Today model kits. Lets say 4 of those (I have 6 or 7 of them).

 I have all 5 of the storefront buildings.
     300-14 Second Hand Rose

     300-15 South Street Smoke Shop

     300-16 Rita's Antique Shop

     300-17 O'Weeds Greenery

     300-18 Grant Cary's Apothecary

And 2 of the Gingerbread houses:
     300-2 The Queen Anne House
     300-3 Steiner House

I will take some pics at another time (and detail my plans for them), until then these ebay pics will do.

All in all it seems like an attainable goal as I have already painted 21 minis. So, January and February are basically covered before February starts. Though I suspect that at the end of the year I'll have about 50-60 painted and maybe 1 IHC kit put together (I have already started on one IHC kit as I type this so that should get finished). I have to add the ERTL farm house to this list.

Dinosaurs!

I have been trying to collect a decent set of scale (1/48th, O, 28mm) dinosaurs for awhile now.
I've been pretty lucky so far and have quite a few now. I found these guys the other day at Tuesday Morning for $5.99. I figured $2.00 a figure isn't bad for these guys.

They're pretty close to the correct scale (and hey, who says all dinos are the same?). Here they are with a converted Heroclix mini.

They're aren't perfect by any stretch but they can be with a little help. The good? Close to scale. There is some nice detail in them, the T-Rex even has the bottom of it's feet sculpted (for making footprints), and they are pretty cheap at $2.00 each. The Bad? The seams are really clunky on them, but I figure a little x-acto knife magic and, probably, some green stuff and they'll be in good shape. They definitely need a new paint job, though the T-Rex is pretty OK.

One final bit. The side of the box pretty much sealed the deal for me. These bullet points make absolutely no sense. 

The ERTL Machine Shed conversion Part 1

Recently, I posted about the ERTL Farm Country Machine Shed set. (http://confessionsofaminiaturemodeler.blogspot.com/2014/04/ertl-farm-country.html)
I'm really happy with the way it looks with all the 25-28mm/O Scale/1:48th mish mash of stuff I have going on so far. Once I finish I'll take some better pics for scale purposes.
So far, I've glued the roof pieces together and sprayed them with a gun metal-ish silver spray paint.
I had forgotten my camera for this step so there are no step by step shots. (I can't afford to waste any time in the studio by going back home to grab the camera). Here's the roof.
I plan to spray it with a dark(ish) green.

And the inside of the roof.

I scraped off the numbers and mold marks so that the interior would be smooth. Then I cut some strips of plastic and glued them on to give it some character.

Next I cleaned up the wall sections and glued them together.
Inside walls (you can see the circular mold marks)

 Outside walls

Then I took some of these drink stirrers (Not sure where I got these, which is a bummer because I can see lots of uses for them now) and cut them down to make support beams for the walls.

Pic of the stirrer support beams,

Then I used some plastic to cover up the joints.

I'll spray the interior with the gun-metal silver and the outside with white.
Here's a shot of it (mostly) together.

I still have to figure out the outer doors and the large sliding doors but it's coming along nicely so far.

Boats

I found the same Dollar General boats at Toys R Us. 

The Toys R Us price?

$5.99

AND...

It has a slightly better paint job to it and looks a bit nicer to me.
Even though it's pretty much the same boat.

The Coast Guard

My wife and I went to visit my parents for a Baby Shower/Easter family celebration. We had a great time and got some wonderful gifts from my family. We have another shower planned for the Chicago area folks. That'll be fun. Home Run Inn pizza. Yum!

Anyway, on the way home we stopped at a Dollar General and I grabbed this.

I  didn't realize at the time that it was a battery operated boat, even though it says it right on the cover.  You could probably use this thing in water if you wanted to (even though it doesn't say either way anywhere on the package). FYI the battery operated part. It's the motor in the back that spins.

I'm wondering if I can use the battery pack to rig up a spotlight on top. I'm going to try and track down another boat (or 2) and try a few things.

Anyway, I figured it was pretty close in scale and worth a shot for $6.00.
Here are some shots showing some different sides.

 I plan to take it apart and spray paint the parts. I'll make the deck white and the gray parts metal.

I also plan to raise the cabin up about a 1/4" to make room for the miniatures.

And finally a couple shots with a mini to show just how close it is.

I'm also thinking I'll have to grab 2 (I think I have a couple Hals laying around) of each of these:

Hal Jordan

Paramedic

  

 Then add some greenstuff life preservers to them and paint up a survivor crew and a zombie crew.

ERTL Farm Country

I had read online that the ERTL Farm Country play sets were good for O scale trains.
I figured it should be close for wargaming minis (28mm-ish). Well... they aren't perfect exactly, but they sure are close. For $24.00 (plus shipping) I got the Machine Shed playset and I think it's pretty awesome. A little small but these things come in all different sizes anyway.
Next I want to get the Barn set, then the Farm House.

I'll clean them up and try to buildup the insides a bit where they lack some detail, then get them painted up and weathered. They're going to look great on the Farm board I've been working on.