Townies, Cowboys, MIners and trappers

I recently purchased a small collection of 33 figures from Evilbay for the princely sum of £25 (incluing postage) which worked out at about 75p per figure - a lot cheaper than some plastics! 

They are all old 54mm Marx figures (probably recasts) in three colours (tan, brown and grey) and although there are a few duplicates (easilty modified for the most part) there are a lot of single, individual figures.

The photo above shows a small selection of the figures.

Here's photos of them all showing a figure's rear view where there are duplicates:

Robbbers, masked and carrying their swag

Shooters

A couple of cowboys (they have chaps)

Another pair of shooting figures

Yet more shooters

A couple of miners(imho), with a pouch of gold dust maybe  ?

Two racnher types with branding irons

Two drawing pistols

A pair of masked riders (obligatory blurry photo)

A single armed rider

Four unique hunter/trapper types

Four individual miner types

A couple of townies in fighting poses

Finally, an Indiana Jones wannabe

I'm more than happy with these wonderfully detailed and proporioned figures - no larger than life guns etc.

I haven't spent my week merely opening a box of figures and taking  photographs, I've been busily working on my next three buildings, making great inroads into finishing them. I guess I'm more than half-wy through the build, but carving bricks into foamboard takes a long time !  

The photograph on the right shows an early stage in the build (I've done a lot more since it was taken).

I've used all the scrap from the previous build, but will need another A2 sheet of foamboard to cut out a roof about 7" x 6" as I don't have a bit of scrap big enough.

At the rate I'm going it should be finished by this time next week (fingers crossed) and a report on the build will of course follow its completion. I did miss a whole day due to an excursion (obvioulsy game related) and will report on this in a future post.

That's it then for this week, hopefully there was something here if interest.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are welcomed and appreciated.

Building work finished!

 With a lot of effort on my part, getting motivated, I managed to finish the building aspect of my Arched building (shown right in its 'before' stage.
A lot of time was spent in the many boring, repitive tasks of cutting out seemingly hundreds of flat tiles for the roof parapet, or cutting and placing individual stones for the arches and individual cutting and fitting of reinforcement 'planks' for the fourteen doors.

Here's the photos :

The template for the seven arches I needed

The arches were made from the thickest card I had, then cut into individual bricks and stuck to the building.

Two cm wide strips, cut to length for the rear-doors' roofs

Strips of 1cm corrugated card, cut to reperesnt tiles

2cm strips glues to to 'step' the tiled roof

Shorter section of roof for the single rear door

Longer rear roof in place, with supports

Prep work for the next rwo buildings, done during 'drying time'

Doors, doors and more doors...

All of which, when thrown together gave this !

View through arch on right side of building...

...and corresponding view from left side of building

Rear view of building

View showing the roof parapet and all those 'tiles'

View showing roof tiles petering off towards the rear

Another view, showing loose tiles on the flat roof

View showing the internals underneath the newly cut roof

I'm very pleased with the progress I've made with this model, it was a strugle, especially with all th necessary cutting of small bits.

I've used quite a range of materials for this model, foamboard for the walls, matchstick for the pillars, card for the arches and corrugated card for roofs. The parapet was made from scrap 2mm mdf, cut into roughly 1cm x 1.5 cm rectangles - all four hundred or so of them ! Evostick wood adhesive (undiluted) was also used throughout..

I remains to have the filler added on columns etc. and of course same texturing on the walls, before finally being painted - though this will probably be put on hold until all eight (or nine) buildings are completed.

Along with making this in the last week, I have been planning the next three buildings, all to be made as a single piece.

This week, I also took my life in my hands and nabbed a lift to 'Wilkos', grabbed a spray can of primer (though not my usual white) and quicly retreated back home. All of which means I can re-visit the painting of my first batch of Mexican banditos.

The final thing to report was a strange email from "The team at Blogger", who stated 

"We have re-evaluated the post titled "WIPs" against Community 
Guidelines https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy. Upon review, the post has 
been reinstated. You may access the post at 
http://zabadakszombieworld.blogspot.com/2021/03/wips.html."

 - Strange because I had no knowledge of them evaluating it in the first place! The post was in early March and appeared in my blog list as a draft, as did the following one, "The Bear Essentials", but I've re-published both now. Maybe Blogger can't spell and thought I meant "Whips" and maybe "Bares" ? Maybe I'll be told that it too has been re-evaluated ? Who knows ?

That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit; I hope this build has been of some interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and truly appreciated.  I will get around to commenting on the blogs I normally comment upon, though Blaxx's Fantorical "Wix" website seems to hate me and won;t let me comment, despite my best efforts.

Arched Building Progress

 It's been a busy week at Casa de Zabadak, even with the disappointment of Tuesday !

Tuesday saw me sorting out a set of eight mounted and dismounted figures, matching the riders to their dismounted versions (that turned out not to be too difficult). When it came to undercoating them, my spray can of primer ran out, leaving me with half-undercoated figures.

I'm hoping to rectify the situation this week.

Sixteen figures, sorted

Matched up mounted and dismounted versions of the same figure

The half-undercoated figures !

Being unable to start the paint jobs on the Mexican Banditos, I turnend my attention to working on the "arched Building", namely the pillars, doorframes and doors.

Here's the photographic record of my progress:

The basic materials, matchsticks and coffee stirrers

Matchsticks glued into pairs - I ended up using about four hundred matchsticks !

Door Frames being added internally...

...and externally, with anti-warping devices in place.

Roof added and work on doors started too.

Columns started with card bases for 'bulk'...

...then trimmed down.

Adding matchstick detailing...

...and yet more matchsticks

...that required trimming down and a little filing too

All the gaps and mistakes will be covered with wall-filler...

...eventually.

At a conservative estimate I've spent about 12 hours over the last week on this build and I still have the stones over the arches to complete, a tile surround on the roof parapet and two sloping tiled  roofs over the backdoors, so still a lot to do !

Once the above is complete the lengthy task of covering the whole thing in filler will still have to be done (and I may also re-cut the roof as it's not a great fit) and of course, it has to be painted - something I'm not looking forward to.

That's it then for this week, nothing finished (nothing new - Ed.), but I feel I've certainly made great in-roads into the completion of this model.

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully boring wip pics were of some interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Mexican Peasants - Finished !

All my peasants, including the women from two weeks ago.

 A very busy week (for me at least) wherein I manage to finish off all my Mexican peasants, do some flash trimming on horses and a lot of work to get the basic structure of my arched building complete.

They've had some shading added to their clothing, skin tones added and facial features done. I also took advantage of a drop in gusting winds to get them all a matt spray varnish !

The photographs below show the various figure conversions with the original figure on the right and a bonus rear view of each group !

Charging with various weapons

Rear view (obviously)

Shooters, with muzzle loaders

Their rear view (bit boring)

Attacking with various weapons

Tediously boring rear view

More attackers with shovels and an adze

Their rear view (bored yet?)

Final group of shooters, with repeaters

Final rear view (thank goodness)

There was little that I could do with the shooters to vary either their pose or their armament, so I did as much as I could with their headgear (adding a couple of hats and a sash here and there to give some individuality to them. Those with pochos were given various coloured pochos and patterns to distinguish them. 

Here's a final photograph of the "Arched  Building's" progress - it's enormous ! To give sone idea, it's sitting on a sheet of A3 paper that doesn;t cover the entire footprint og the model - approx. 12" x 18" (30cm x 45cm) and I;m looking at making another building approximately the same size, but taller !

The arched building still has it's doors to be added and detailing on the arches and pillars too. 

That's it then from another week where I think I've made good progress and even managed to fit in an appointment for my second Covid vaccination.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are always welcomed and appreciated.