Fish smoking factory WIP

My version of a total made up in my head idea of what a factory for producing smoked fish would look like, no research at all. To go with the fish market. The spark for this idea was a tube of lemon sherbet, which in my youth was closed at the top with a twist of paper. The modern version has a plastic cap. Which gave me the idea of using it for the body of the boiler at the back of the factory. Pipes going into the roof are plastic tubes from cotton buds. The rest of the building was made from a selection of different sorts of card stock.

I've updated my settings on the blog this time, so all comments will be moderated in future.

Fiat petrol station

The petrol station has finally got some paint on it, still need to tidy up some of the joints, just wipe some filler down them. I used some prints of pre war Italian motoring posters from the web to liven it up a bit. Still need to finish painting the petrol pumps, made from beads and plastic tubes with wire from a paper clip supper glued down the middle to keep it all in place. Worked out well in the end, not an identical copy of the original, but in the spirit of, as they say. Will finish of the painting about 80% there, just need to put a bit more detail in. Original post was back in December last year under plans for 2010, with a link to the real life version of this model. I just love it when a plan works.

Blitz - Freeze Snow 2

The snowing up of terrain sample two, lots more bits and bobs on this test piece, burnt out house, small stream, shell holes, barbed wire, bunker and bridge. Barbed wire was made from wire pan scrubber, bedded into PVA glue. No white spray paint first on this one. Just strait into applying the snow gunk with a brush direct onto the terrain. The spray white flattened out the contrast in the colour of the terrain on the first test piece. Applying the snow direct onto the terrain keeps the contrast stronger. Works better for me. I may use the white spray paint on some trees in future, before they are positioned on the terrain. This second test confirms the original idea that the terrain will be produced as partially thawed, with areas of snow and areas of thawed ground. Rather than a totally white arctic type layout.

The Fish Market

A long story - cut short, plastic fish for fish sauce from a Sushi pre packed lunch. It was just crying out to be used in some type of terrain project. Then it come to me in a flash of inspiration, Mussolini's famous attempt at cornering the world pilchards market in the late 1920's with the building of a fleet of ocean going pilchard boats and the construction of a number of on shore facilities to support the fleet, located around the Italian empire, including Fish Markets, Smoking houses and freezing plants. However the wall St crash of 1929 resulted in the bottom falling out of the market, and the infrastructure fell into disrepair.

All of the above may or may not be true, the plastic fish however lives on.

The market was built from foam core card for the concrete base, plastic sprue from an aircraft kit for the cast iron support posts, hot glued into position, card for the roof and the freezer store room, I hand painted the fish advert on the freezer room. Next project is the smoke house, which will involve a tube of lemon sherbet.

Blitz - Freeze Terrain test two mid-way

A selection of pictures of terrain test two for the Blitz Freeze project, 6 inches square, showing the burnt out house, dugout with sand bags and barbed wire, plowed field. and shell holes. The next stage will be to obscure all the details with snow. The barbed wire was made from pan scouring wire glued on with PVA. The plowed field was PVA glue put on in heavy lines and left to dry. The dugout is sized to take a 1p coin which I use for basing my 10mm figures on.

Blitz Freeze - The Snow

The original ground test 6 inch square terrain board with the snow added, I first sprayed the board with matt white spray paint, this was not as successful as I had hoped it would be, it tended to flatten out the look of the terrain. I made the snow from a mixture of pound land filler, matt white emulsion paint and PVA glue. This was applied with an old paint brush. This worked quite well, I will play around with the mixture of the paint, filler, PVA combination, after taking these pictures I added quite a bit of dry brushing with dark brown earth colour. When making this terrain tile I got so far and was tempted to give up, but kept going, and in the end it worked out quite well. More pictures to follow.

Blitz Freeze - Ground work test two

Ground test two, for the Blitz Freeze project. This time with a destroyed house, shell holes, dugout and small river. I'll paint this one with the same base colours as the original board but this time I'll paint on the snow instead of using spray paint. I still need to make some sand bags to go around the dugout, which was cut out to fit a 1p coin which I use for basing my troops. I also want to add some small bushes and hedges.