Above is a pic of Lt. Colonel James Galbraith, Regimental Colour in hand, alongside Bobbie the regimental dog and some of the other "Last Eleven" survivors of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment, making their last stand in one of the walled gardens just South of Khig village, a few miles West of the Afghan town of Maiwand.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Sneak peek of Logar River...

Well, it's been a few months now since I started building my Logar River boards for use in my Battle of Charasiab terrain lay-out.  It's been an extremely busy time for me, at work, at home, and also with an unfortunate call to serve on Jury Duty, which lasted almost three weeks.  Nonetheless, I have kept working to finish this seemingly unfinishable project, and though not done yet, have managed to make some real progress.

Unfortunately I missed putting up a post on the recent 134th anniversary of Maiwand Day, during which I was down in San Diego with my two daughters who wanted to visit Comicon.  We had a great time and I was able to answer a fellow hobbyist's Second Afghan War-related question on TMP before midnight hit on July 28th (the day AFTER Maiwand Day), so at least I felt like I had done something appropriate to commemorate the day.

Right now I am in the midst of compiling one of my typical posts complete with a ton of WIP pics and some hopefully useful tutorial details concerning how I built these river boards, but it won't be done for some time yet, and to be honest, I'm tired of waiting to show this stuff off!

So I've decided to cut to the chase by posting a handful of pics I took after putting the first coat of artist's acrylic paint down onto the base of the river channel on these two 2'x2' boards.

It's not really the end of "The Chase", as these boards still need some work done, as I have to do some touch-ups in places along the river's edge, and will likely add another coat to tweek the exact mix of colors in a few spots.  Then I will glue down some REEDS -- courtesy of an inexpensive whisk brown bought at my local Hardware Store -- along the river's edge, and then -- finally -- I'll be able to do what I've been looking forward to doing since I started cooking up this epic enchilada months ago: pour on several coats of clear two-part EnviroTex Lite resin.  The first pour will be clear, the next two or three (each 1/8" deep) will receive a drop of brown and possibly also a drop of green artist's ink.

Then... I will collapse -- but only from an overabundance of joy course!

So without further ado, here's where they're at right now...










The next question for me is whether I am going to go on and truly complete this pair of boards for the Logar River, or just do my touch-ups and probable second coat, glue on the reeds, and then shift gears to build the 6'x2' Kabul river board for use along the other -- Western -- flank of the table.  Then when I've reached this same point, with the base of the river channel painted, I'll be able to pour the resin onto all three boards at the same time, so their tint, depth, etc., will hopefully all match as closely as possible.  I'm not sure yet how I'll proceed, but I'll have to make a decision pretty soon, as these two boards really don't have much work left to be done to them before it's time to fill their river channels with some resin.

6 comments:

  1. That does look wonderful, can't wait to see the eosin go on though.

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  2. Thanks very much, Michael! You and me both, with regard to being impatient to see these river boards get poured full of resin. Hopefully it will happen before too much more time passes...

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  3. Thanks very much, Willie! Of course by now I have already undone the work pictured above by painting over it in greener hues... but I think it still looks quite good, and a bit more accurate for the location. Hopefully I'll advance to the next stage of completing these river boards soon and blog about it soon after!

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  4. Once again you've raised wargaming terrain to a new level. I love how you use the tree bark, it really stands out.

    I've searched far and wide here in Massachusetts for similar bark without any success. Should you find yourself with excess when your project is completed, let me know!

    Sincerely,

    Tom

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  5. Tom,

    Very sorry it took me so very long to spot your comment – yikes, 10 months, virtually a year, for which I apologize once again!

    Thanks for taking the time to leave your positive comment re: the terrain I’d built.

    Now re: tree bark chips... well, I feel bad about having ignored your comment for almost a year, so... if you happen to come across this post again, just leave a comment on whatever the current post is on the homepage of this blog and let me know your email address so I can get directly in touch with you and we can work out a way for me to send you a package with some of my left-over garden wood-chips.

    I tried to track you down via Blogger but it seems you don’t have a blog of your own, which unfortunately makes that pretty much impossible, at least for me.

    Hope to hear from you before too much longer, Tom!

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