Some Old, Badly Staged Photos of Little Planes, Ships, Tanks and Infantry

While I take some time to think up a more interesting subject, organise my existing miniatures and start a new project to document, here are some pictures taken a long time ago of various things I've painted. There are also some pictures of battles I've fought with some of them.

First, something completely unrelated to 6mm: A 15mm British Para and a fighter in civilian clothing that I painted for fun.

An early 20th Century Insurgent (Eureka Miniatures).

WW2 British Paratrooper (Old Glory miniatures).

Some of my 6mm stuff when I had it on display.

And now for some water craft:

A 1:1200 French 74 in progress (Navwar miniatures)

Finished: The French 74 (3rd Rate Ship of the Line) 'Le Superbe' now completed, including paper flags, cotton thread and flywire rigging (Navwar miniatures).

A 1:3000 Royal Navy frigate (Navwar miniatures) initially intended for a Cold War era game in the North Atlantic. The transparent base is cut from a plastic takeaway food container and the wake is simply Selleys pasted on and shaped with a toothpick.

I really enjoyed making these 1:1200 Spartan Triremes, and was pretty happy with my hand-painted sail symbols - the Lambda and the Gorgon (Navwar miniatures).

Team Yankee looks pretty good in 6mm. Here, the National Volksarmee takes on the Czech army (due to some Cold War backstabbing):

A Motor Schutzen Battalion advances (GHQ miniatures, CinC miniatures).

Motor Schutzen Company holds off the Czechs (GHQ miniatures, CinC miniatures).

East German T-72Ms enter a town in 1985 (GHQ miniatures).

A Norman Church. The graveyard headstones and low wall are just carved-up matchsticks (Scotia Grendel miniatures):

Some 6mm aircraft of various makes:

Messerschmitt Bf 110C night fighter (Heroics & Ros).

CAC Boomerang. My dad painted this one: he had never painted a miniature before (Scotia Grendel miniatures).

Fireforce! Rhodesian units, including Hawker Hunter (Scotia Grendel), Alouette III (Heroics & Ros) and Rhodesian Light Infantry (GHQ Afrika Korps riflemen), individually based as an experiment on whether skirmish-level games can be played at 6mm.

Various things prepared for undercoating (Baccus 6mm figures, and aircraft from various manufacturers including Scotia Grendel, Heroics & Ros, Raiden).

Stripping paint from plastic and metal miniatures

[A post I wrote a long time ago and never published. I'm publishing it now because it can serve as a reminder for a hobby technique I find useful.]

Some miniatures are painted terribly. Some miniatures aren’t painted so good. Sometimes a basecoat sprays on way too thick. I wished there was a way to fix these errors – to reclaim the pristine miniature. 

Well, there is a way:

http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-Paint-from-Metal-and-Plastic-Models-with-Dettol

http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/how-to-use-dettol-to-best-clean-up.html

Following advice from the above websites, I decided to give it a go with Dettol, a toothbrush, a pin and some dish-washing detergent. My first test was on one of the ‘Emperor’s Rejects’ – a plastic Space Marine sold for $1 at a gaming convention.

The Basic Technique

I left the miniatures in the Dettol at least 24 hours, up to 48 hours and let them soak a couple of days in water with a very good proportion of dish-washing detergent after cleaning off the dissolving paint with a toothbrush and a pin (for picking the paint out of the recesses).

I have since used this technique with success on numerous other miniatures both plastic and metal, in scales ranging from 6mm to 28mm. I've also left plastic and metal miniatures in the Dettol for literally months without any problems (although I wouldn't recommend it - who knows what might go wrong).

The Results

The Marine recovered fully from the stripping and cleaning operation without any damage to the plastic surface and all, or almost all,  The black spray undercoat adhered without any problems, as did all the Vallejo paints applied atop it.

Here are the results:

Documenting All The Miniatures

Painted miniatures spend a lot more time in storage or sitting, un-looked-at, on shelves than they do on the gaming table or in some crystal display case in a public area for all to appreciate.

If a miniature is painted and based in a little room and then sits in a box where nobody can see it, was it really painted and based?

Is it fun to look at other people's painted miniatures on the internet when looking for ideas for one's own hobbying? (Yes it is).

Therefore, I thought I'd photograph all the miniatures I've painted and commit them to the internet, so they may be shared with any who wish to look upon them.

Also gaming is fun, so I'll do a lot more of that this year, so there will be pictures of that, hopefully: