10mm Antonine wall / Roman fort

The Antonine wall stretches for 39 miles from the firth of Clyde to the firth of forth in Scotland, 100 miles further north than Hadrian's wall. The idea for doing this project came from a family holiday in the west of Scotland in 2006. We stayed just outside Oban. While there I bought a great book by Gordon Maxwell called a Gathering of Eagles (ISBN 1841583847), about the Roman invasion of Scotland. Lots of superb Illustrations of Roman forts, watch towers and the Antonine wall. In style very similar to an Osprey book, soft cover, same size but only £6.99p.

The idea was to build 5 sections of wall, each 6 inches long, the fifth section being a destroyed section for the caledonians to storm through. And one of the other 3 section with a gate built in. After starting to build the wall, it struck me that with some small modifications and additional sections I could also use the wall sections to make a Roman fort. So by cutting the wall bases at 45 degree angle on the back edges and creating 4 corner towers, I had a Roman Fort and a Wall. The next stage of this madness was thinking well you have a fort, what about some buildings to go inside the fort.

The wall was based on my usual art board, the bulk of the wall was made from polystyrene packaging with the turf blocks cut in with a scalpel. The wooden palisades and walk ways were made from coffee sticks. Then PVA glue with sand.

More pictures to follow in the next post.

10mm Hay Stacks

You have it all planned out and things are going just fine, then you makes some wheat fields. And into your head jumps an idea, wheat fields, so where are the hay stacks? So looking on google pictures I found some reference pictures. Also a great article describing the construction of one in 20mm scale on lloydianaspects.co.uk The two pictures above are WIP's of my 10mm hay stacks, based on 2p coins with sand and PVA the central poles which the hay stacks are built around are cocktail sticks cut down and hot glued on to the coins. The wooden poles the stacks stand on are made from cut down match sticks. The silver foil that makes up the bulk of the stacks is supper glued onto the base. The outer skin of the stack will be made from air drying clay The figure to show the size is a pendraken miniatures 10mm scale British cavalry figure from their WW1 range range.

10mm Roman marching camp

A marching camp created for my DBA early imperial roman forces in 10mm scale. The palisade is made from bamboo satay skewers. The ground work was made using the polystyrene packaging from a cheep clip frame. Its quite deep to make room for the DBA bases. The camp can also be used with some of my other 10/15mm forces. The base is about 7 inches square. I put in some spare palisade logs and some steps to add some visual intrest to the inside of the camp. Click on the pictures for bigger versions.

Finished Paddy Fields

The finished paddy fields. I found some green garden twine (string) for 99p in Wilkinsons, great for using as the rice, saves having to paint it, different lengths some in small clumps for younger growth. Glued in place with PVA. Then dry brushed with some very bright green. The water is painted using Humbrol gloss enamel paint to give a gloss reflective finish. I've also added some wooden work ways over a couple of the sections of the paddys. Double click on the pictures for bigger versions.