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Author Topic: Boxer Rebellion project re-emerges, page 11, tiny update  (Read 21327 times)

Offline FifteensAway

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Re: The Tartar Wall (Page 4) (formerly I've "looted" China")
« Reply #75 on: May 14, 2018, 12:57:25 AM »
Painted wall sections looking good, Richard.  Unfortunately, I don't have the MBA Academy but looking at the windows and doors I'd say the base dimensions are going to be very similar to the Town Hall, both have seven windows spaced across the front and three on the sides.  Might not be a perfect match but I'd bet remarkably close - so 4" deep and 10" wide, roughly.  Hope that helps.

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (Page 4) (formerly I've "looted" China")
« Reply #76 on: May 14, 2018, 03:48:57 AM »
FifteensAway, thank you.  I think that's a good insight.  Today I my attention was pulled away from the Tartar Wall because my daughter sent me four sheets of homemade decals for my Post Apoc collection, and I couldn't resist putting some on the buildings.   I still plan to have the Tartar Wall completely done before the end of the week.  I went by Brookhurst Hobbies yesterday to buy the Evergreen Plastic I will need to build the internal structures of the pre-siege legation walls.  Hope to get them started before the week is done, but it will be a busy week... dentist, babysitting our granddaughter (more fun than a Tartar Wall), annual physical, and breakfast with a buddy just back from Budapest.  Post pictures of your work whenever you have them... helps keep my juices flowing in the right direction.  Richard

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (Page 4) (formerly I've "looted" China")
« Reply #77 on: May 16, 2018, 07:21:03 PM »
After finishing the painting of all the Tartar Wall sections, I decided to take a shot a painting the Japanese legation building.  I was surfing the web and found a later picture of the building in a significantly remodeled state.  What attracted me most about that picture was that it was color not colorized so decided to go with the color it offered even though it probably is different than the 1900 version.  My plan in painting these is to keep it simple.
IMG_1785 by Richard Garretson, on FlickrIMG_1786 by Richard Garretson, on Flickr

Offline FifteensAway

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Re: The Tartar Wall (Page 4) (formerly I've "looted" China")
« Reply #78 on: May 17, 2018, 03:25:34 AM »
Excellent job, Richard.  Looks the part admirably.  You are speeding out ahead. 

I've now received the balance of my Blue Moon structures - a total now of 25 civilian buildings, two that are one each, one that is three each, and the rest two each.  I've also laid in 21 of their different ruins (5 of the biggest and 4 each of the other four to go with some others I already have (not Blue Moon).  I also have enough walls and gates to create two large compounds one of which will certainly represent Prince Su's palace.  And, not to be forgotten, the last legation building for the British compound, the one that is open and roofed with pillars - but no interior.  Going to have to source a suitable clock tower.

I've also decided how to do the Tartar Wall and get the lower canal.  I will space the tables apart so that I can insert a "U" shaped canal into place with each side of the "U" capped with an inverted "L" to keep it in place.  And then on either side of the open space inside the legation area I'm going to build an "L" that is more of a "Z" but straight with the top much wider than the bottom that can also go below table level - this will give a sense of a depression and the canal.  Just have to 'anchor' this in place somehow but without screws or nails or such, likely use some sort of weight that can double as a terrain piece.  I came up with this when thinking about how to do the water gate.

And that lead me to decide to do two gates, one the water gate and another with a ground level gate so I can use the walls in other scenarios, like say an assault on the outer walls.  And that means also building a couple of corner pieces and a couple of 'filler' wall sections.  Should have all I need to do this with the moulding I bought.  Can also use in games unrelated to China.

Been trying to post some photos of the new stuff but it isn't going through yet.  I guess I need to clean out my email again.

Yeah!  Cleaned the email.



More here: https://steeplechasingzebras.blogspot.com
« Last Edit: May 17, 2018, 03:39:35 AM by FifteensAway »

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #79 on: May 17, 2018, 04:50:08 AM »
That's an impressive collection of structures, but it sounds like you will have a space that will handle it.  No question that your water gate and canal will be far more impressive than mine, but I made a decision years ago that the layouts I  do must fit on the two tables/boards I have and that I will not build ground terrain that can't be boxed up and stored.  That said, I love seeing the more dramatic things that others do, and I am looking forward to seeing how your plan develops.  My latest big struggle is/was how to use the legation gates/entrances I have for both pre-siege and siege looks for the legations.  It seemed to me that I had one of three choices.  The first and most obvious is to made new entrance gates for each legation much as I did with the British legation.  That is a huge amount of work.  Second is to cut the gates away from the fire step wall... to risky for my taste.  The third was to cheat and use the Blue Moon gates/entrances and hide the firing steps with removable shrubs/trees using Legos as a based that I cover with Milliput and then score.  It is a process that I use a lot (scored Milliput for shrubs).  I got the idea the other day when I was searching the web and found the Japanese legation I mentioned above.  It seemed to have lots trees on either side of the entrance on the inside of the wall.  Since I know of no pictures of the pre-siege legation grounds, it does not seem completely unrealistic that there would be trees and shrubs along the walls and by the gates.  Anyway, today I created two such areas one on either side of the interior entrance to the Japanese legation.  It took some time, but wasn't hard to do.  The Milliput will harden over night and be ready to paint tomorrow.  Because its removable, it will have no negative impact on the firing steps.  I will place patches of shrubs along the scratch built walls I am making for each legation thus providing a more unified look and providing a means of stable basing for the walls.  I think it will give the legations a nice look before they are confronted with the demands of siege warfare.  Richard

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #80 on: May 18, 2018, 12:44:54 AM »
In order to hide the firing steps on the legation wall sections attached to the legation gate entrances I have decided to building removable shrub pieces that can be placed over the firing steps when I am using the legations in their pre-siege state.  I did this by building an inner skeleton out of Legos that will fit over the firing steps and then covering the Lego skeleton with scored Milliput to give it the appearance of shrubs/trees.  The first one completed is for the Japanese gate entrance.  In the attached picture the entrance and walls are not painted yet.IMG_1794 by Richard Garretson, on Flickr

Offline FifteensAway

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #81 on: May 18, 2018, 12:58:35 PM »
That should work well.  There were plenty of trees.  However, you may want to include a variety of trunks and perhaps foliage debris piles in the siege variation to help 'link' them better.  Not strictly necessary but I think it will help make the connection.

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #82 on: May 18, 2018, 01:12:57 PM »
Good thought.  In doing this shrub cover up I was looking at all those firing steps and wondering where did those legations get all the wood used to build them on relatively short notice.

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #83 on: May 19, 2018, 02:20:08 AM »
FifteensAway, many years ago/decades Brookhurst Hobbies was the US distributor for Ian Weekley.  When Ian Weekley died, again long ago, Brookhurst put the remains of their Ian Weekley stock on sale… cheap.  I bought a lot.  Most of what I bought were things that I ultimately used in my Medieval siege collection… a keep, village buildings, a church, and a lot of tents.  But in addition to that I bought some odds and ends that fit in the “maybe-someday-I-will-need-them" category.  Until this week, last night actually, I had forgotten all about them.  Yesterday the mail delivered my 15mm Miniature Building Authority Town Hall.  It is a beautiful building, but it will overwhelm my 5 ft. x 7 ft. board given all that has to go on that space; your table area is twice what I am using.  Anyway, no regrets about buying the building; it will find use… maybe, like you, with my Blue Moon Musketeers.  But facing the size problem it caused I was forced to face the fact that while my Disney Haunted Mansion is great in terms of a general size comparison with the Blue Moon legation buildings it also overwhelms the space I have because it is simply too much building front to back.  That is when Ian Weekly and those long forgotten buildings came to mind.  I found them; their size is much to my liking and while there is a lot I could wish for in the square building (pictured on the left) in terms of its accuracy, it will serve my need as a placeholder for the Hotel de Pekin… I’ll do my best to make it look good.  I think with some small modification I will be able to make use of the other Ian Weekley buildings in this project as well.  It’s wonderful how these long ago purchases can find their way back to service an immediate need.  Anyway, that’s what I tell myself when I buy things for someday.  I managed to get one of the Weekly buildings painted.  It will probably serve as my alternate/pre-siege British legation building.  I should note that the figures are not mine.  I borrowed several Old Glory 15s Boxers from a friend of mine who has a growing painted Boxer force.  When possible I like having figures that others have painted or pictures of figures that I’m going to paint at hand as resources to get my painting juices going.  Today I also got a large Lego/Milliput hedge made to cover the firing steps attached to the entrance gate walls for the French legation.IMG_1796 by Richard Garretson, on FlickrIMG_1799 by Richard Garretson, on FlickrIMG_1800 by Richard Garretson, on Flickr

Offline Hu Rhu

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #84 on: May 20, 2018, 08:02:15 PM »
Wonderful stuff.  I like the idea of the shrubs/trees as a mask. Very simple and yet very effective.

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #85 on: May 21, 2018, 02:32:39 AM »
Hu Rhu, thanks so much for the kind words.  I’ve been using Milliput to make shrubs to hide things like roof snow on Lemax buildings or just to allow me to give two of the same buildings slightly different looks.  Milliput and Duplos/Legos are a basic part of what I do with just about every project I undertake.  Fortunately, I can find my Duplos and Legos at my swap meet at good prices.
Today and yesterday I worked on completing the Milliput-shrub-camo-cover-up of the firing steps on the US legations walls that are cast to the legation’s entrance gate.  Unfortunately, before I noticed the error I painted up the “finished” shrub cover only to find that I failed to completely cover the sandbags on the wall itself.  Consequently, late this afternoon I applied more Milliput to cover what I missed the first time around.  I’ll let it harden overnight and paint it tomorrow.  I also did a slight modification to the square Ian Weekley building.  It originally had a square flat topknot which looked unfinished.  If you are familiar with the Ian Weekley products you won’t find that unfinished look surprising.  I often felt that Weekley was intentionally selling products that required more work because he believed his customers should put in some work to make the piece their own.  I actually used a small piece of roof from another Ian Weekley item to give that topknot a bit of an oriental roof look.  Also when I first painted this building early today, I decided to give it a brightly colored roof.  Unfortunately, none of those color efforts worked with the building’s wall colors I selected so in the end, I painted the roof grey… not dramatic but okay.  I’m still seriously thinking about using this building to hold the position of the Hotel de Peking on my table.  My other thought and probably a better one is to use the Blue Moon Austrian legation building for that purpose.   My next task is to begin scratch building the pre-siege version of the legation walls.  I used the Milliput shrubs to hide the firing steps on the walls attached to the entrance gates for the US, French and Japanese legations.  I made a scratch built entrance gate for the British legation, and the Russian legation’s entrance gate is not attached to walls with firing steps so no hiding firing steps needed with those.  I will be building my pre-siege legation walls with Evergreen Plastic, and I plan to use Milliput to attach some interior wall shrubs to continue the shrub theme throughout the legations’ interiors but on a far more limited scale.   I will also use Milliput to create some ground cover at the base of the walls in order to make the walls more stable.

IMG_1807 by Richard Garretson, on FlickrIMG_1809 by Richard Garretson, on FlickrIMG_1810 by Richard Garretson, on Flickr

Offline FifteensAway

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #86 on: May 21, 2018, 05:19:19 AM »
Richard, you conjure pleasant memories at the mention of Ian Weekley's name.  I used to always read his construction articles with relish.  You must be one of Milliputs' best customers with the volume of the stuff you are using!  Your thought about using the Austrian legation building as a base for the Hotel d' Pekin is a good one.  Easy enough to extend two wings out to get that "U" shape of the version in place at the time of the siege - and then you could save the two front pieces for a separate project or maybe use it as part of this project.

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #87 on: May 21, 2018, 02:47:43 PM »
Weekley was a really important or at least recognized figure back in the day, and I feel fortunate to have quite a lot of his terrain/buildings and tents in my collections.  Milliput (yellow grey) has become a really significant element of my work over the years... love the stuff.  To be very honest, and why not, I hadn't really considered adding the low rear wings to the Austrian legation serving as the Hotel de Peking.  I will give it some thought.  The one thing I believe I would do if I did build the wings is that I would not permanently attach them to the Austrian legation building.  I would make them so they would simply butt up to that building and give the appearance of being attached... easier to store and would allow me to keep the original building as is.  My Austrian legation building is on order so I'll be thinking this through when it arrives and I can actually see what I'm dealing with.
 
Hope you will be finding some time to work on the Tartar War soon.  I'm really looking forward to seeing it.  Today I'm adding some Milliput bushes around the base of my square Ian Weekley building to soften the box look, and I'll be painting my extended shrub covering on the US legation walls... thus hiding those sandbags.  With that behind me, I will begin scratch building the pre-siege legation walls.

 I have a couple questions for you about some of the Blue Moon pieces you may have that I might be interested in, but I'll get back to you on that.  Richard

Offline FifteensAway

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #88 on: May 22, 2018, 02:36:49 AM »
Well, be patient.  Yesterday was a memorial for my mother here in town and next weekend I travel out of state for a memorial for a cousin who passed a week before her which has left little time for hobby activities.  However, once back home and into the next week I expect to have more time.

I have been giving thought to the wall and have made some changes.  I will build three 30" wall sections, two left pieces and two right pieces and each will have a bastion 18" from the 'gate' end with 6" on the far side of the bastion (or 19" and 7" if I decide to keep the bastions at only 4" along the wall).  The bastions will stick out 4" from the wall itself.

As mentioned earlier, I will build two 12" gates - the water gate and a land gate.  My challenge now is that I will build two 6" corner pieces and I have to deal with open ends (which need to stay open) when representing the Tartar Wall.  Best I've come up with so far is to build a removable 'false wall' to make the corners into 'reverse' bastions on the wrong side of the wall.  Still thinking on it. 

Did measure my moldings and they will allow the walls to be 5" tall not counting the small top wall and opposite crenellations.  Will probably use 1 x 6 lumber for the inner wall, two sides and a top and bottom plate.

Mom's memorial was a moving experience and 12 of her 22 descendants were on hand (others too far a field or without the resources to travel) - along with many more friends, neighbors and so on.  A DVD memorial I'm slowly working on in her memory is my other big distraction - and sorting out her final affairs on behalf of the family.  Then comes the kitchen remodel that will cause all sorts of household chaos.  Like I said, be patient.  Progress is made whenever I can turn towards the hobby stuff.

Edit: Realized the better solution for my corner pieces: reverse them to opposite ends so that the 'bastion' element is on the proper side of the wall.  Using them the other way around and using a wall section with each will allow games focused on the Hsiku Arsenal or Tientsin perhaps.  Versatility is always good in terrain.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2018, 01:07:24 PM by FifteensAway »

Offline War In 15MM

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Re: The Tartar Wall (new photos on Page 6)
« Reply #89 on: May 22, 2018, 03:33:37 AM »
FifteensAway, so very sorry to hear about these very sad events in your life.  My parents passed decades ago, but I still find myself thinking I have a question I'd like to ask them or a story about my daughter or granddaughter I would like to tell them.

The planning that goes into these projects is great fun.  You may be better at it than I am, but I generally find that once the planning is done and the work begins I discover that new issues arise that need to be resolved.  Today I began work on scratch building the pre-siege walls for the French legation, and I gave serious thought to leaving out the rear gatehouse to the legation grounds and just have it exist as wall.  Fortunately, I decided to take a shot at building that rear gatehouse, and I am very happy with the way it came out... not identical to the original, but it looks pretty good.  I used Duplos to the inner core and Legos to support the roof.  The exterior gatehouse walls are JTT Plastic HO scale brick, the trim is Evergreen Plastic and the tile roof is Plastruct.  I'll post a picture tomorrow.

Again, very sorry for the losses you are experiencing.  Be well.  Richard