carry on camping

ok, just to explain that I haven't been completely idle for the last few weeks - although due to a couple of weeks required for cat sitting in November, can't guarantee how much will be happening next month... anyhoo, this little project has been bubbling away for a while and mainly involves the simply splendid APEX Investigators from Fenris... what those figures initially led me to, was a kind of field research team, useable for UNIT or even a SG-1 kind of set up... the main requirement was a main research tent and that took some working out... but I got there in the end...

all very army surplus and Time Team and I have two of them - it's essentially made from a basic frame of metal tubing which kept the basic cereal card cladding in place, additional tubing was added inside to represent the rest of the frame, thin wire was glued on the outside to match the inside upright tubes and then clad over in normal paper (did experiment with tissue paper but didn't work)... the roof is lift off, and is essentially a normal build for any kind of roof, but with tubing and paper cladding to give it some more shape and I reckon it works... the only stumbling block now is whether I try for a wooden sheet floor or plain grass - both appear equally common on photos of the real thing....

now, all the lab equipment inside needs power, so I needed a generator... this came from a handy sci-fi crate again from Fenris. I added some wire for the stand/handle thing, added a petrol cap with some tube and g/s and tweaked some of the detail to show as somekind of dial indicators, need to add some buttons still...

now the crate had no detail on one side from the casting, so I press moulded the grill pattern on one side with siligum and made a g/s copy on the otherside (sorry Ian)... it's not brilliant, does the job and may well get hidden a bit by a bush or something, but after the 2nd attempt, I was happy enough...

a bit big maybe, but for a chunky robust portable generator it does the job...

next was some flood lights, annoyingly this was the greatest time sink after the field tent, as I was happily press moulding the lights I'd made as and when I had a spare bit of g/s - but when I came to add them, I realised that design wouldn't look right - they are good, and will come in handy with the planned bunker as they look more like wall emergency lights I now realise... my second attempt has proved not very press mould friendly, so I need to rethink... but I have a few of these at least...

the final need for this little project were tents for the field workers themselves, so I cut a bit of bluefoam to shape, added wire for the supports and g/s'd it to get a nice smooth(ish) finish... a bit of detail was added for the access flap, seams and so on and tried to make it match one from Argos... there is a vent flap on the back, but it doesn't show up on the photo... all it really needs now is some cleaning up and adding the zip tab thingy... not sure how well that will press mould though as I would like a couple...

strong box cart

I had to make the order up when I got the new windows for the blacksmiths from 4ground, otherwise the postage would have been more than the windows, so I went for this strong box cart...

apparently equally used for powder storage as well as money, it's a nice little kit, very easy to assemble...

of course, I had to tart it up a bit, but that was easy as well, a bit of thin card (one of those business cards you get in with your ebay order actually) to make the main supporting beams stand out a bit more, and some narrow plastic rod put into the hinge recess...

I had toyed with a big sheet metal cross on the back, so the hunters could use it as a mobile altar, but this was a) too GW and b) bordered on the kind of thing puritans didn't do anyway... but as it was more likely to be used with the hunters anyway, it went black... hey ho...

and, as I realised I hadn't done a comparison shot for the blacksmith...