First, I want to thank every who has stopped by to check out the blog. I've gotten quite a lot of traffic from TMP, almost as much as my previous blog did after several years. I think it shows that interest in 3mm is really growing over time. I've been quiet for the last week or so but that's because I've been busy trying out a few new ideas for the project I'm working on.
For those of you just checking out the blog for the first time, that project is to create a trial section of Wagram for Blucher where the figures, basing and terrain all work together to create a seamless (as possible) final result. Along the way I want to try to solve some of the lingering problems with the scale, as I see them, which I know a lot of other people have as well and which might be keeping some of them on the fence about jumping in.
That being said, I have a lot to cover in this post, including some how-to's and a BIG SAFETY WARNING for those who might try out the same techniques that I did.
I'll get to the eye-candy first. Villages and woods have been one of the biggest issues people have with the scale. There simply aren't many products out there at the moment, although WeeWars is working on some and has a few pics over at TMP showing his current projects, but I don't know how far they are from market and I wanted to try out a classic alternative.
There's two things going in these pics. First, there's the Bruce Wiegle (of 1870 fame) inspired buildings, which I've scaled to 3mm (actually 4mm, but more on that revelation below…). I've always thought his set-ups were some of the best ever done, with the only issue there being the air-brushed landscape, which seems to take a lot of space and equipment. Also, they lack the portability of a mat-type layout. Anyways, I thought his buildings were the way to go, so I tried it out and am pretty pleased with the result. If you haven't tried to make some yet I highly recommend just going for it. You can solve the problem of the dearth of 3mm buildings in a few simple steps and for almost nothing price-wise.
This picture shows all you need to make an almost endless amount of 3mm buildings. The razor saw and mitre box from Xacto is a must, but it only costs $20 and $5 for a replacement blade. Then, get yourself some of the light weight balsa sticks at a hobby store and a nail file. Rough cut all sorts of sizes and shapes with the saw and then fine tune the buildings with the nail file. Then use some hobby paints and either technical or felt-tipped pens to paint the houses up. The ones you see here are very simple, but you can get more complex as you get into it. Here's a few shots of my first "historic" building, the granary at Aspern-Essling:
It's made from two 40mm x 20mm bases, two 20mm squares and two square pieces of balsa cut to fit. It's not quite done (obviously) but I wanted to show how it's being made. It's really quite easy to do. Also, it's almost at the exact scale height of the real thing. It's 35mm tall, which, if you take it that 3mm figs are 5.5 feet tall, would make it 55 scale feet. The real thing is 40 odd feet tall. The thing is, it doesn't look too big when next to the figs. So, I measured the figs again, for the first time in years. It turns out that the "3mm" Napoleonics actually suffer from some scale creep. From the feet to the top of the shako the figs are actually a little in excess of 4mm. I'd always thought it was almost exactly 3mm, for some reason. This changes a few things. First, it means that with 10 figures on a 20mm strip you're looking at almost 1:1 ground scale, granting each file 24", which is about standard-ish. Anyways, not a complaint, just an observation. This also means my granary is only about half the area of the real one. Not a real problem, since the area covered by the model is nearly 300m square. This is ok for a brigade-level game though. The village I layer out is almost 600m long, but this is actually pretty accurate when you look at the Ferraris maps, for instance. The BUAs we see in war-games are necessarily reductive, since a lot of the BUA itself is really small farm fields, walled groves of fruit trees and various other "clutter' that can hardly be re-created in 28mm
Anyways, the buildings were really easy to make and if anyone is worried about the lack of buildings in the scale I recommend you try this technique out before writing it off. They really looked good when put together with some trees. I want to find a way to weather them a bit so they don't pop so much, but when you step back they look even better as in the first two pics up top.
The trees are the other big feature that really help 3mm along and make it more viable. They are actually disguised thumb tacks holding the mat down to a rubber backing (the interlocking kind you get at a hardware store). They are also used to lock the larger building bases down onto the mat so they don't appear to ride above the grass (this is very annoying, and was a major problem for me until I came with this fix today).
This is basically how you make them:
Use a green thumb tack or else spray paint a bunch of them green or brown. Use super glue to wrap a piece of canopy-type foliage around the thumb tack. You can also use regular clump foliage but I find that the canopy stuff is a bit easier to work with. After you get that wrapped around, put some liquid glue on the foliage and add some fine flock. Use enough PVA/clear glue glue to really saturate the flock then stick it into some styrofoam to dry over night. When it finally dries it'll be tough and spongy, allowing you to sticking it through the battle mat with ease. These can then be used at the corners of the buildings as seen in this pic:
A simple solution for several very vexing problems. They also lend a bit more complexity to the village layouts than they'd otherwise have, plus they let you create tree lined roads. But most importantly they hide the means by which you're attaching the flocked mat to the thick rubber under-mat. These trees also have the advantage of being very easy to make quickly.
Ok, time for the BIG SAFETY WARNING if you're going to try this out.
Generally I don't get allergy attacks, although when I was working in AZ for a year or two I began to get terrible ones as well as asthma attacks from the sand storms and agricultural dust that'd be kicked up. I ended up getting a rescue inhaler because they got so bad. After moving to LA I ceased to get the attacks. Then, yesterday, I got a MAJOR asthma attack while working on my granary. The day or so prior I'd been working on other buildings and had developed a sort of allergic reaction while sanding the balsa wood. Clearly, this was from the dust. These earlier attacks when just working with balsa wood weren't nearly as bad as last night. So what was different about the granary?
Well, if you look at the pic above, you can see it was made with Gale Force 9 bases, which are made from MDF (as opposed to Litko Aerobases plywood). I had to sand some of the MDF along with the balsa in order to get it to blend together, which meant there was MDF dust in the air. Now, along with the MDF were was also DRIED SUPER GLUE in the mix as well, and I think this combination gave me a really bad asthma attack, the likes of which I haven't had in a few years. Fortunately I had my inhaler around, so I took few puffs on that, which helped somewhat. It still kept me awake most of the night. My lungs feel better now, although I still have a runny nose and puffy eye issue. My cat, unfortunately, was sitting next to me when I did the sanding and he sneezed all night too. I really didn't sand very much MDF or super glue at all, but I think that was really the difference, since all the balsa I'd been breathing throughout the week didn't cause nearly the reaction and didn't affect the cat at all.
So, basically, if you're not aware already, be really careful sanding MDF, have plenty of ventilation, and avoid it if possible. I'm going to keep working with the balsa but I'll do so outside and wear a mask. I'll avoid sanding super glue at all, and maybe look into the low-emmission versions when I get the chance. It ended up being worth it as the end product worked.
The cat is now fine, BTW:
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