A classic stone building at 1/32

Buildings are a cool thing to have when you do war gaming at 1/32.

It’s especially true when you use Nerf gun to emulate artillery bombardment.  If you built your building in such a way that it could be destructible, you ended up with a lot of fun.

This being said, I wanted this time to build something that has the classic look of a stone building.

To do so, I use foam blocks.  It was the first time I use those blocks I bought at the dollar store.

I can say that they are very handy.  Once painted, they emulate well stone/concrete construction.

I let you see by yourself.

What about a historical picture of the stone building?  

Let's get back to color!

That's the result after being hit by a number of big caliber shells

A Nebelwerfer at 1/32 scale

A short project to equip the Petite Infanterie german army with a rocket launcher.: the Nebelwerfer 42.

Let’s look at what Wikipedia has to say about the Nebelwerfer 42

“The 21 cm NbW 42 was a five-barreled multiple rocket launcher mounted on the towed carriage derived from that of the 3.7 cm PaK 36 anti-tank gun. A pivoting stabilizer was added to the front of the carriage to steady the launcher when firing.
The 21 cm Wurfgranate (thrower-shell) 42 rockets were spin-stabilized, electrically-fired and only had high-explosive warheads. The rocket nozzle assembly contained 22 orifices evenly spaced around the rim of the nozzle with the orifices set an angle of 16° from the axis of the rocket to give the rocket clockwise rotation.^[4] The rockets had a prominent exhaust trail that kicked up a substantial amount of dust and debris, so the crew had to seek shelter before firing. This meant that they were easily located and had to displace quickly to avoid counter-battery fire. The rockets were fired one at a time, in a timed ripple, but the launcher had no capability to fire single rockets.^[5] The rockets could be fitted with either impact or delay fuses as necessary. Liner rails could be fitted to allow the launcher to use 15 cm Wurfgranate 41 rockets with their HE, smoke and poison gas warheads.”

What about the miniature Nebelwerfer 42?

Yes I know, I cheated…those troops are Italian.  I haven’t any german at hand when I took the picture.

I haven’t found the right « rocket emulator ».  

I bought the disk gun when Target closed in Canada.  The feed always jammed.

What I need his a nerf gun with multiple shots.  I am still looking around.

What about seeing the Nebelwerfer in real?

That, all folks!  Your comments are always welcome.  

How to make your own mini barbed wire

Basic idea behind the mini barbed wire

Mini barbed wire is always an interesting accessory in any war gaming theater.

We can find many very good tutorials on how to make mini barbed wire on the web.  Unfortunately, most of them use actual wire to build the miniature mini barbed wire.  It looks more realistic in a diorama but it does have a down side.  I tried that technique and I ended up having my mini barbed wire all entangled the second time I used it.   

What I propose is an easy way of building a mini barbed wire network.  It’s very fast to do and very fast to deploy on the field.  Considering that I use pickets to hold everything in place, some can argue that those mini barbed wire are more a “WWI” type.  I cannot disagree with them! 

Material required to make the mini barbed wire

To be able to build our mini barbed wire, we will need the following material:

-          -  Plastic netting like the one use to package vegetables at the grocery store

-         -   Grey and silver paints

-          -  Press wood board or Styrofoam board

-          -  Bamboo skewer

-          -  Hot clue

The useful tools for the work are:

- Glue gun

- Pair of scissor

- Cutter

- Paint brush

Assembly technique of the mini barbed wire

Step one:  prepare the mini barbed wire itself

Any plastic netting can be used.  Ideally, choose the elastic ones.  There are some which are “not elastic” and they will not give the barbed wire look.

That type of netting is not suitable to do barbwire 

This is the type to choose

The plastic netting could be difficult to unfold.    The best is to cut open the net and then use an iron to straight it.  To avoid to have melted plastic on your iron, put the temperature at the lowest and place your plastic net between two sheets of waxed paper.  Just iron it like any piece of clothing.

Step two: paint the mini barbed wire

To get the steel color of the mini barbed wire, we must paint the netting with a silver paint.  Don’t worry if there is some uncolored parts, it will add to the realism of your mini barbed wire.

Step three: prepare the pickets which hold the mini barbed wire

Barbed wire is not a fence.   Your mini barbed wire should not stand like it.  It can loosely hold in place.  Ideally, poles holding the barbed wire should be thin as possible.  Personally, I use mini bamboo skewer.  Those are a little bit out of scale but it gives a better stability to your wire.   The base in which the pole is fixed can be either foam board or wood board.  I prefer the latter because the weight of the materiel avoids the mini barbed wire to type over.

Step four: assemble the mini barbed wire

We are almost there.  We have everything at hand to install our mini barbed wire in the field.

The very last thing to do and the most enjoyable one is to use these mini barbed wire in action.

Your comments are always welcome.

The Panzerjager 1

Original idea behind Panzerjager 1

My brother has always loved the Czech-made  Skoda  47 mm  anti-tank gun and he had no intention to build a Panzerjager 1 at first.   He wanted to build the towed version instead.  He changed his mind after a war game in which we did reenacting the Battle of France.  At that time, our German army had no anti-tank gun at all and we desperately needed something to give an advantage to the German army over the French one.  After all, the French did lose the battle!

History of the Panzerjager 1

The Panzerjager 1 was the first attempt by German army  to produce a cheap tank destroyer.  It was clearly a stopgap solution.  

There two production runs for a total of 202 vehicles.  There were two versions built.  The first batch had a five-sided shield and the second a seven-sided gun shield.  In both versions, the Panzerjager 1 was not a success even though the 47 mm was a good anti-tank gun at that time. 

The Panzerjager 1 was a very small tank as our scale model shows

The crew as almost no protection against enemy fire

As mention in Wikipedia, the testimonies of the crews who served them are appalling:

"The 4.7 cm armor-piercing shells (Panzergranaten) are very good against 45 to 50 millimetres (1.8 to 2.0 in) thick armor at ranges up to 500 metres (550 yd) - sufficient to 600 metres (660 yd). Observation is very bad. You have to look over the shield to observe to the front, resulting in head shots (Kopfschüsse)! In effect the crew are blind when attacking in villages or against street barricades, M.G. nests and individual tanks".

Anti-tank Battalion 643 25 July 1940

"The effective range of the 4.7 cm Pak(t) is 1,000 to 1,200 metres (1,100 to 1,300 yd) with a maximum range of 1,500 metres (1,600 yd). When attacking an enemy position equipped with anti-tank guns and artillery, as occurred near Mogilev and Rogachev, because of its high superstructure that presents a good target for artillery and anti-tank guns, the Panzerjäger is destroyed before it can get into action."

Anti-tank Battalion 521 July 1941

Original drawing of the Pazerjager 1

George Bradford “German early war armored fighting vehicles” provide the scale drawing required to cut the parts.

Pictures from the book “Standard catalog of German military vehicles” had been used “to polish” the work.  By the way, if you find that book, I strongly recommend buying it

Building of the Panzerjager 1 fact sheets

The version built of our Panzerjager 1 was the second one with the seven-sided gun shield.

Everything is in pine wood. 

The running gear was drawn which is the standard technic of my brother.

Our total production of this miniature Panzerjager was  2.

Your comments are always welcome.

How to make your own miniature artillery

I was asked lately by a miniature enthusiast to demonstrate what is our technique to build artillery.

The technique describe below is for 1/32 miniatures.  It could apply to other scales I suppose.  There are no such things as “the approach” to do things.  That’s the basics of scratch built; the only limit is your imagination.

Miniature artillery prerequisite 1: Material required

There is no “standard” list of material.  You could use whatever fits your project.

This stated, it could be possible that your imagination need to be stimulated for your first project.

I can suggest the following list of material for a first built.

- Squared rods : available in renovation centers

- Round rods; available in dollar stores

- Carpenter glue/white glue : available in Renovation center/stationery store

« popsicle » sticks : available at dollar store (Note :  I strongly suggest not to take the ones tinted; those are almost impossible to paint)

- Thin plywood :  could be bought in specialized stores but it could be pretty expensive.   Let be imaginative for that one.  In North America, we are found of a fruit calls « Clementine ».  Those fruits from Morocco come in wooden crate.   It’s cheap way to get thin ply wood. I suppose you can find something like that in your country.

Miniature artillery prerequisite 2: Tools required

I use a press drill and a band saw when i do my miniatures.

If you don’t have those tools, there are hand tools which could be used to do the same tasks.

A heat gun or hairdryer could be useful for step 3.

Miniature artillery step 1: Choose a good drawing

The best is to find a scaled drawing of the gun you wish to build.

Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to find one.  It’s especially true with guns.  There some good sources for tanks and armored cars but less for guns.

For historical accuracy…

Even though it’s not primarily goal, it’s still important.

It allow you to scale you model to avoid such common mistakes like having a too short barrel, a too big breach etc..

This 25 pounders is to small compare to a real one

Miniature artillery step 2: Find the wheels

You need to have the wheel going into any design of your gun.  Based on the model you want to do, you have 2 possibilities to get wheels : buy or make.

Buy wheel:

You can buy wooden wheel on the web or in specialized stores.  That’s the most expensive way to get wheels.

You can also re-use wheel from an old toy for example.  You can also bought one at a dollar store and dismantle it to get your wheels.  Almost 100% of the time, it will be  plastic wheels.

Make wheel

You can make wheel with a press drill and a hole saw.

Again, we are not all equipped with that kind of tools.  You can still make your own wheel.  Everything which is round can be use.  Day to day products like pills container , juice bottle etc.  could be a source of wheels.  There are 3 things to consider in your choice: diameter required overall look (both based on the model you chose at Step 1) and already marked center.  For the later, if it is not the case, you will have to find the center of the wheel yourself.  It could be tricky.  If you are not ”bang on” the center, your gun will have a “bumpy” rolling.

Miniature artillery step 3; Design the parts

There are 2 schools of thought related to the design.

My brother (who is an engineer) prefers to draw the different parts on paper before cutting anything.  By drawing the gun on paper, you can rapidly see if something is wrong (barrel too long, tails too short etc).    The pros of that technique is to avoid wasting wood and other materials because you should be close to the right thing from the beginning.   The cons are that you work in a 2D environment which require to “imagine” you work in 3D.  It’s not necessarily easy to do.   There are 3D software on the market to do that kind of drawing but I am not familiar with those.

I prefer to do my miniature in a “work in progress” approach.  Said in others words , to actually build the thing from ground up.  .  It could be possible that you will have to redo some parts but that’s the fun part of scratch building.  This is one reason why I don’t use expensive material.  If you make a mistake, it’s not a problem.  You just discard the piece and begin again.

Step 3.1   

The first step is to cut the barrel.  With the barrel and the wheels, you can “adjust” the dimension of the carriage, tails and shield if any.

Barrels can have many shapes.  The main idea is to reproduce the general silhouette of the barrel.  Don’t consider all the details but the overall shape.  It’s especially true if it’s your first design.

Barrel off-sets

One way of doing the barrel off-sets is to use a lathe. 

I don’t have one so I had to think about another way of doing things. 

One approach I have developed is to use heat shrink tubing.  

Those tubes can be bought at a hardware store on the web

Breech bloc

You can cut it from the squared rod mention in the material list or from any square piece of wood which fits.

Another way of doing a good breech bloc is with dollar store jewel pearls.  Some of them are squared and already have a hole which is very handy.

Recoil cylinder

Most of the time, round rods will be use to reproduce the recoil mechanism.

Miniature artillery step 4: Build the carriage

The carriage will hold the barrel, the wheels and the tail.

It’s basically a frame.  The squared rods and “popsicle” sticks can be used to build a “chassis” on which you will put the others parts.

Depending of the type of wheels you have and the type of gun you want to make, you will need to adjust the carriage structure.

They are many ways.  Here some examples

Miniature artillery step 5; the trail

The trail can be either fixed or mobile.

Again, it depends on the model chosen.

Fixed trail is easier to make.  Here some examples:

The open ones require to build swivel arms. The technique is always the same and can be seen in the following pictures:  

Miniature artillery step 6: Shield and Muzzle brake

Not all guns have shield and muzzle brakes.

To make a shield gun, the important is to have the right thickness of material.  Usually the thinner, the better.   If you do war gaming like we do, you also have to consider “sturdiness”.  Often, you will have to do compromise between look and sturdiness.  You don’t want to have you shield  broken after one game.

The muzzle brake is usually done by adding to your “rod” barrel the appropriate cylinder.   It is also possible to sculpt it but it requires more skills. 

That’s all. 

I hope that introduction to making miniature artillery will help you in your projects.