Treasures from Trash 2 - SOTR1949 - Secrets of the Third Reich - SOTR1949

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Treasures from Trash 2

Written by Michael Cannon

Thursday, 13 November 2008

Those of you who are in your 30s and above will remember the famous AOL cds that used to show up in everything from magazines and newspapers to cereal boxes. Many people found creative uses for them as you could find a replacement CD on almost any street corner. I thought that it would be an intriguing project to see what I could do with a single old CD, so here is part two of the terrain articles for this month.

	The first thing I did was draw on a template of how big I wanted the interior to be. I pulled out two of the figures I had mounted as I thought it should be at least the size of a machine gun team(on a 50 mm base) or two standard infantry men (30mm bases). I marked out 60mm width and 50 mm depth and swagged in some extra 'mm's as I wanted to make sure there was room. I made the rear of the positin expand out so I had still more room.You can see on the right that I eked out just enough room... shoulda used a thin tip marker!
	This was not going to be a major emplacement like the previous bunker. This one was designed to represent an outlying work that supported the main position by protecting a vulnerable flank or rear. A rounded shape to the earth used on the position would be fine. I broke off a few pieces of styrofoam and used wood glue to hold them on the cd so I could rough out the shape. Unfortunately, the cutting and sanding I needed to do was too much for the glue and they popped back off. I finished the shaping with the foam off of the cd and then glued them down again.
	I discovered that some of the resin flotsam I had lying around from casts of various molds would fit in the interior of the position so I used them to finish off the inside. (The stones are from a Hirst cavern mold, the wood from a Linka cabin mold.) I could have used balsa and putty but it would have required more shaping and drying time. I finished up the exterior of the foam with a thin layer of Magic-Sculpt (mentioned in the other article) so I could spray paint the emplacement and not have the foam melt. This also allowed me to fill in some of the gaps in the foam and give it more overall strength. Wood glue and ballast/gravel finished up the entry way into the position. Note that the figures determined the overall look of the position. Normall this type of entrenchment would be lower to the ground but then it would only protect the shins of the miniatures!
	I generally use cheap paints on terrain and the better ones on miniatures. The spray paint was a generic flat black from a local discount store and the rest acrylics from the craft section. I like black as the base as it makes the other colors pop out more. The wood and dirt were done in various shades of brown while the rock/slate flooring was done in greys with a light spotting of browns. The grass came from a GF9 canister of floc and was secured in place using wood glue.I finished up the entrenchment by spraying it with a matte spray in several coats to make sure the flock stayed secure. As you can see, it provides enough shelter for a fire team, machine gun crew, or mortar team.

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Back in the late 70s or early 80s, Duke Seifried evangelized the use of washes in painting miniatures. Once again he was ahead of his time. Lately, Dr. Phil Hendry has been doing something similar for Warlord Games with his use of Army Painter products and dipping. Now back in Texas there are really only two kinds of dip - one for sheep and one for the lower lip. I liked Phil's results, however, and decided to give it a shot with my US Armored infantry platoon.