Statuary Or The Making of a Toff.

Statuary; Toffs love it, the working class wonder at it and the destitute lean against it. Statuary in Victorian London took a decidedly Romanesque turn as the Toffs likened themselves to the Caesars of old. I wanted to capture some of that feel in my London Board with a public street column and a Toff garden. Fortuitously I was offered some spures of 1/72 scale bendy plastics by a fellow blogger. I had access to some old HirstArt fantasy molds the two together equals statues!

This is a Dark Alliance fantasy Amazon mounted on a pillar as my column monument. I realize that this isn't very historically accurate but my post apocalyptic Victorian London will be darker (if that's possible) than the real thing. And she looks damn good up there. The pillar molds contain some sort of runes which will be filled in with milliput so don't worry about them.

More Dark Alliance Amazons and an Atlantic Greek civilian for the Toff garden. I squared off the Amazon bases I think I'll have to do that with the column one too.

This is an Atlantic Greek he is historical but I'm not sure he is right for a column. I do have two of them and they might look better flanking the entrance to a building. Let me know what you guys think. I'm starting a terrain binge for ZI and Frostgrave. Yes Frostgrave I've been bitten by the new & shinny bug and I just can't help it.


 

Linkas Test

I've made some casts of the Linka molds I acquired last year I cast most of the molds twice and here are a few things I learned. Number one the molds cast up real nice the details are very sharp.

Its recommended you use PVA glue to put them together. My figures were a little dusty when I applied the PVA here as you can see.

I also noticed that these molds are designed for 20mm! See the Westwind 28mm EOTD armed Brother next to the door for scale comparison.

Linka World says that you can upscale these by adding a couple of rows to the bottom of the floors.

The Quest for Glue

Sunday I showed pictures of my London board progress and mention that the strange properties of the textured vinyl I'm using has been causing me trouble. So today I stopped by my local hardware store (not a big box store) and told my adhesive troubles to the owner a rather nice bloke. "Vinyl on wood?" he said and then pointed out this adhesive made to glued down vinyl floor tiles. I'll let you know next week how well it worked.

Adhesive Recap!!!!

 PVA

It would not hold you can pull the vinyl right off. 

Verdict NO GOOD

 CONTACT CEMENT

Not even an act of Congress will separate it once the vinyl is placed down but if you don't get the brick registry perfect on your first try (I didn't) you're left with a piece of crap. 

Verdict NO GOOD

  CA GLUE

Ca glue works great for sticking anything together I've had great success using to glue the vinyl to plastic card bases. But again no dry time so you need to get the registry just right and its impracticable for large jobs like the street boards. 

Verdict GOOD FOR SMALL JOBS

The vinyl mat glued to Rendra 40mm plastic bases with CA glue.

1/6th of London

Ladies and Gentlemen this is 1/6th of my London Board project pictured above consisting of 2 "building boards" in this case the church & churchyard and 2 "street boards". I'll need 12 "building boards" and 12 "street boards" to make up a 4'x4' table. I've never tired constructing such an elaborate board before especially one with so many built up areas. On top of that I decided to do this literally within weeks of buying my first Victorian figures. Over the course of about two years now I've bought, traded and yes begged enough materials to do this project. All I need now is to eek out regular hobby time again and we'll be off!

As some of you may have noticed I haven't had much time this holiday season to blog or keep up with everyone's very fine blogs. I should be getting back to that on a weekly basis again starting this week.

The project has also suffered an irritating materials set back as the Lemax brick matting I've been using won't stay glued with PVA it looked like it would but the corners came up weeks later and you can just pull it right off the hard board. I've successfully used CA and contact cement, the stuff you used for kitchen tiles, but I need a glue that isn't instant so I can make sure the brick pattern registers right. Once its on it does look great and I have more than enough for the whole project.

Church Base

Church Yard with sidewalk

I varied the brick direction for the sidewalks like I've seen in period pictures of the streets of Whitechaple.

Knuckling Down

I've been slowly plugging away at the churchyard and church blocks of the London board though that currently consists of gluing bits of brick embossed vinyl onto the blocks for sidewalks and an alleyway. I'm also using a tombstone made of the rubbery plastic the Reaper Bones figures use so that piece required a watered down coat of Elmers (PVA) glue to prep it for painting. None of these steps make for compelling pictures but hopefully when the glue dries I'll have more pictures for Sunday. I'm knuckling down in an effort to get these two blocks finished by the new year.

Streets

Not a very sexy update I'm afraid just streets for the London board. These street boards pictured above are 12"x7" and they will be painted to match my cobble stone bases. The 4'x4' London board will be made up of 24 1/4" hardboard sections 12 12"x7" street sections and 12 12"x9" city block sections with the buildings mounted on top. Now some will say this concept won't allow a lot of different set up options but setup it's self shouldn't take to long as all the buildings will be glued to the city block boards.

A Little More Done This Week

Ok principle construction is now finished the blank spaces on the board are for trees there will be two of them. The tombs & tombstones are a combination of Ainsty Castings, Lemax, GW and home made. Next up will be some putty landscaping and the brick sidewalks.

Churchyard Re-Built

Some of you dear readers my recall my old graveyard piece this terrain bit suffered two brutal assaults (knocked of the shelf) by the Devil's Kitten (see here) and was in very sorry shape the foam tombstones didn't survive. I've re-built it or in the processes anyway by adding Aintsy Casting monuments & tombs and Lemax  Halloween village tombstones.

Linka World

 

Many of you who have been following this blog know that I've been trying to create a Victorian London playing board for The Zombie Incident of 1888 and EOTD this project has been on hold for a while as I haven't found the best way to do it see here and here. The Lunatic produced a series of foam core buildings covered in textured paper see here, he wasn't happen with the joints and I wasn't happy with the lack of texture on the paper so they have been abandoned. Finally a very old model railroad system was rediscovered (I remember when this was being sold back in 1989.) Linka World formally know as Linka Systems a set of building part molds used with plaster. I now have a full set of all the brick molds and roof slate molds.
These molds can be purchased here shipping world wide is only $6 US orders of $100 are shipped free!!! A full set of all the brick molds and the roof molds will cost close to $100, there are stone, timber and wooden siding molds too. Detailed plans on how to build various buildings are available as free PDFs on the Linka World site.

There are PDFs on how to build the tricky bits with photos too.

Needless to say Linka mold casting will begin this week.

There are now many new readers to the blog I'm afraid I don't have time to welcome you all now but I will surely do so next post.

Corner Store WIP

Here are some photos of a Victorian corner store the lunatic id working on. He built it of foam core covered in textured paper he got from a model railroad shop. What do you guys think?

London Board- Some Progress.

I've managed to over common some minor camera issues and can now post photos of the other two blocks in progress alluded to here.

First up is the church purchased at the railroad shop. Its been primed grey and it looks better all ready. It will get a full on paint job soon. The church is getting a field stone pavement and wooden flooring for the interior. The interior will have pews and an alter glued to the floor. The church is one piece with a hollow interior so the church will simply be placed on top of the interior affixed to the base. The 1" areas at the edge of the block bases are for the side walks. More information on that in the future. Yes we have a plan for that hopefully it will work as planed.

Next up is the rustic Inn block. The Inn was actually constructed years ago using the GW terrain book they used to put out in the 1990s. It was part of a now defunct Mordheim project. Its not Victorian, but I like it and felt it deserved a second chance at life. We need to fix the roof & chimney and add gutters and a rain barrel in the front. I'm going to landscape the block base on which it sits with dirt and grass. It will most likely be moved to the country board in the future. This building was constructed from cardboard so I textured the cardboard walls with liquid green stuff that's what gives the walls the green color. I got the idea from this video.

London Board Update Graveyard

We've been working on the London Board in earnest. We're constructing 3 of  the 12 boards need to produce our little corner of London. Today I'm showing some work in progress photos of the graveyard. The graveyard will connect directly behind the church block to form one long block at the south edge of our table.

 

 front

back

side

An Angel will be mounted on top of the pillar.

As you can see this is still very much a work in progress. More pictures will be posted over the weekend.

Trip to the Model Railroad Store

Lunatic R. and I to a trip to the last Model Railroad store in Manhattan it’s in a basement crammed floor to ceiling with stuff. O scale is the model railroad scale to corresponds to 28mm.  This shop also sells a large number of scale model military kits. Our mission was to find items for the London board, specifically brick pattern plastic card sheets. We spent an hour or so searching through dusty corners and looking through the top most shelves we achieved success! We found sheets of 3 different brick patterns that we are happy with. You’ll see these in the future on streets and buildings of the London board.

Lunatic R. found this manor wall plastic kit.

The kit came with 2 sprues of street lights, lanterns, and what I think are iron gates. None of these parts are listed in the one sheet instructions so I guessing at some of that.

This is a 1/32 military scenery kit by the company MiniArt. If anyone knows what these parts are for please let me know. The mystery parts not withstanding this is a great kit.

 I found this little beauty.

This is the Plasticville cathedral from Bachman. It is available as a kit or fully assembled.

London Board Accessories

I've just ordered a number of Lideo Diecast vehicles, which I intend to use as London board accessories from Recreational Conflict. I've been looking for these as alternative vehicles for some time now. I've been scanning ebay for them without luck. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Recreational Conflict had a bunch of them on sale.  The Lideo horse drawn vehicles are listed as 20-25mm in scale, which would make them a little small. But at $3 a piece how can I go wrong? They will do nicely as stand ins until West Wind offers there new vehicles.

Here are some of the vehicles I ordered.

I think some of them will be useable with the West Wind by swapping out the horse with a 25mm one and adding a 25mm driver from Old Glory or RAFM. Like these models pictures below:

I'll take comparison shots once the arrive in the post.