Sunday, October 21, 2012

Details 4: Gears and Grates

Found a couple of really nice molds you might find useful. Both are from http://keeblerstudios.com/?product_cat=silicone-molds . Although made for resin casting, I’m using dental plaster because they will be in a static display and won‘t have to be durable.
The gear mold has lots of different sizes and types. Factory worker Tony Cogges (Foundry figure?) sees potential for these for large mechanical machination projects. And if you filed the teeth off they’d make interesting vehicle wheels.

On some of the gears I glued on strips of card, round labels and paper reinforcements for detail.

Painting gear spokes goes fast with a piece of chenille or pipe cleaner.

Prepainted grommets were added by very carefully drilling out the centers of the brittle plaster gear by holding the drill bit by hand. Here are some finished gears. And they all mesh with each other!

Here is the grate mold. Again, lots of variety.

Finished examples. Tony says they’re grrrrrrr-ATE! (Tony thinks he’s funny.)

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Quar 15.7: 15mm Quar Invade Pacificon 2012

Stanley Stinnett helped run a “Screaming Quar” scenario at Pacificon 2012 in Santa Clara, California (August 31-Sepember 3). Brian Miller was kind enough to send photos. Here are the ones with the mounds in them so you can get an idea what they look like on the tabletop.

As the game gets set up Stanley calmly awaits the outcome of the some skullduggery going on at the other end of the table…

Pete Grose (right) tries to bribe GM John Sullins with some nifty new dice. But John has known Pete for waaaay too many years and laughs off the blatant attempt.

Troops deploy. Things are quiet now but that won’t last long.

As aircraft begin their barrage GM John calculates how many kill rings will be needed by the time they‘ve reached his end of the table.

Stanley pretends not to notice the tanks making a feeble attempt to sneak in from the side incognito as a wandering gaggle of geese (with eggs).

During the battle, a tank gets blasted. Note empty donut box in background. Mmmmmm… donuts…

THAT’S IT! Stanley says everyone but the Quar wearing white life preservers had a great time. The End.