500

500 is not the name of some new Hollywood blockbuster, but it is a fitting title for my 500th post, much better then "Gunfighter #5", which is what the photograph on the right is. "Britt" is the knife-fighter of the gunfighters, using an anachronistic flick-knife (switch-blade to our colonial cousins). The last two gunfighters of the set are proably the most difficult (for me at least) to paint, "Lee" (a bit of a dandy) has a thin striped waistcoart (vest) and "Harry" has a dark brown shirt with a  (almost un-noticeable) thin black check.
Here's a few more photographs of "Britt":

 

 

(obligatory boring photo)

The blade of his knife can just about be seen in the palm of his right hand

Although all the models are 54mm, he is slightly taller than the others

Another full frontal (ooh err missus)

Group shot of the famous (?) five

And that's it, I wasn;t able to do any more work on the church, as I've been unable to renew my depleted pot of filler, but I will try and get it finished at some point.

 In the meantime, I haven't anything else that I wish to post about , after nearly ten years of blogging.

Over 10,000  comments (half are replies by myself), nearlya quarter of a million vies (mostly bots, I'm guessing), 134 followers, (most of whom don't follow imho) and not a single follower from my first year of blogging still commenting ! Over the years I don't think a single blog that I followed in that first year, still  survives. 

Such is the way, it's been a wild ride, thanks for taking the time to visit.

Church Tower

What I would normally do in a single week of effort (even at my rate) has taken seven days, spread over two weeks, with real life rearing its ugly head to prevent me completing the church tower. A routine clinic visit and a weekend away were the main culprits, hence just seven sessions of hobby work. There was a lot of waiting for glue and plaster to dry toov(of course). 

The photograph on the right shows the assembled towere, awaiting its covering of filler.

 

Here's the rest of the photo record: 

 

 

 

 

 

The collection of bits for the top of the tower 

The bits for the top of the tower, in the photograph above, were, left to right: a piece of polystyrene, top of a Kinder egg top, a piece of cork, two beads and a piece of sprue. The kinder-egg/cork arrangement was discarded in favour of a perspirent spray top ! 

Top of the towere, showing the cut-down foam block insert and packing for the higher bit.

Top of the tower surround - cane and BBQ skewers

Upper bit of the tower, needing filing and filler

Bell housing being fitted

Tower in place (but not fitted), before filler added

Tower after gunging with filler

The tower still need a lot of filing and sanding down before fitting/attaching to the church and it'll then be glued in place. It also needs four pieces added to the four small block, which I'm still sourcing.

Given all the issues I've had though I'm happy enough with the progress I've made and another few sessions will get it to the stage where it can be painted with the rest of the models.

That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit and as always, your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Mayhem

I finally managed, after two weeks of email exchanges and the petrol 'crisis', to meet Michael, who is not a figure collector, games player or painter and who doesn't make model buidlings of any sort either !

So whilst he may not be recognisable to many bloggers, his surname will almost certainly be.
Michael Scott is the younger brother of Bryan (Vampifan) and has the task of clearing out his late borther's possessions and collections. I was ably helped by my daughter, Michael, his daughter and two lovely neighbours - Ken and Dorothy.

We were there for a little over two hours, sorting through box after box of figures, buildings and games (a lot of Bryan's games have been donated to charity).   After a while it became very apparent that you couldn't believe what what was said on any box cover as the contents rarely were as stated on the box!

Micahel merely wanted the room cleared and knewthat I was on hand, so to speak, living very close to Bryan and had a very  lengthy enchanges of emails over the years (300+).  After the two hours, my daughter's car was full to overflowing and we called it a day. I very much doubt we'd loaded more than a quarter of the  "Aladdin's Cave" that was Byran's room, but I will be back to help out again.

This is a BIG model !

The header pgotograph show an outstanding model, I'd never seen or heard about  in all the years I knew Bryan - It's the Mayhem Haulage Company warehouse, (built by Bryan of course), but what was surprsing to me was its size. The model is little under a foot tall and about one and a half foot long.

The other most interestng thing about it, is its scale - it's 1/32, suitable for 54mm figures !

I never new Bryan had any 54mm figures, let alone western figures (I did know he dabbled in 28mm westerners)

 

Rear view

Of course it has a detailed interior too !

The wall and floor removed,  to reveal underneath the 'office'

Great detailed interior and note the removed end section

 So where were the figures that were used with this building? In the great  collection of drawers shown below was the answer !

Would the labelled drawers hold what they're labelled ?

I opted to show off couple of drawers

Not too carefully stored - a feature of many of Bryan's figures

A selection of the 'heroes'

I recognised many of the figures throughout the boxes, early Swoppets, Timpo, Britains and Atlanttic figures among quite a few converions there may also have been afootballer or two !

The heroes had a sprinkling of contemporary figures too !

The civilans' box, with many conversions

One of the drawers containing Atlantic figures

Better packed in than most !

Boxes of stuff, don't be fooled by any labels you can read

Mayhem city boards and more

More stuff under the table...

...and stacked high on the table !

I have a lot of things still to open and sort (and maybe pack a little better) and  lot of figures that I have no idea what they are.

In other news I've done a little more on my church, but I've got a lot more to blog about now !

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully my adventure was of interest and as ever, your comments, thoght s queries etc. are always welcomed and appreciated.

The Church (again - wip #4)

 My enthusiasm for this build is dwindling as time goes on and consequently I haven't managed as much as I would have liked. Once again, I spent a lot of time waiting for things to dry out, both glue and filler. Neverthelss I have managed some progress as shown below.

The photogrpah to the right shows two of the four buttresses - I went for four, despite having no evidence for two of them, mostly because I like symmetry.
The yellow arrow shows one  of the four that I have no clear evidence of its existence!

The tower was the main objective of progress this week, requiring a lot of cutting and glueing , but the main body of the church had a lot of filler added too.

Here's the photographs:

The parts needed for the 'bell housing'

The housing itself, still needs filing, filler and bells!

The main body of the tower.

The tower with a block of foam inserted, that I was going to use for the tower originally

The foam from above, showing its trapezoid cross-section.

The trapezoid nature of the foam prevented me using it, but I will be cutting it down a lot and I'll use it to reinforce the structure of the tower.

 

The right hand side of the church. suitably gunged with filler.

The arrow on the above picture shows one of the two buttresses that I do have evidence for,

The apse at the rear of the church, gunged up

The left-hand side of the Church, the buttress on the right I have no evidence for,

The front left corner showing where the tower will fit and why the buttress looks very rough.

So that's the sum total of my efforts this week, not much but still progress. I did spend a lot f time looking at photographs of the tower and considering how it will fit into the church and there's little to no evidence of that !

In other news:

I did mention last week that I had some very intersting news to share, which unfortunately never came to fruition, in part due to  the petrol shortage, but the 'event' has been re-scheduled for this weekend. Hopefully I will have some interesting things to report upon next week, which should alleviate the tedium of yet another 'work in progress' post !

That's it then for another week, I was heartened by the responses to last week's post as it's the followers'

comments, criticisms, suggestions etc. that have kept me plodding along over the last nine years.

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully there was something (however small) that was of interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and truly appreciated.