Cartoon Wednesday

 

Jigsaw Puzzles - Christmas Puzzles Next One Up

The parade of puzzles continues with "The Pine" this is a picture I took about 40 years ago when we hiked up to the 4th of July Mine above Eldora CO. The original is a slide that I had converted to a jpg file. I should have run it through some editing software first but I can do that with the next print I have made from this file.

I decided to do a more start to finish on this one.

This time around I opted to work my way around and do the entire edge first. I have been experimenting with the best way to start and puzzle and this seems to work the best for me.
Top Edge

Adding the left edge

Working across the bottom

And back up to the top.

And this is what's left after I have cut the edge away.

This one came in at 173 pieces (which is right in the range I was shooting for), it could have been a couple more but I decided to not cut any of the whimsies into multiple parts. I think this one is going to be a pretty hard to complete there isn't a whole lot to distinguish one tree from another.

Jigsaw Puzzles - Christmas Puzzles Started

I have finished off two Christmas puzzles. Not terribly happy with some of the cuts on the first one, so I may just hold that one back as a display puzzle. Here is the one I finished this week. This one came in at 216 pieces, which means I'm cutting some of the pieces to small. I'm shooting for 180 - 200 pieces for 8"x10" puzzles so I'm overthinking things a bit at the scroll saw. I use some templates I created for the "whimsies" other than that everything is cut freehand.

This is a Carol Highsmith photo from the Library of Congress. She donated her entire portfolio to the LOC.

After I finish a cutting there is a lot of sanding to be done on the back before I can wrap it up. Sometimes its easier to see the shapes from this side.

World War II Project - British Airborne - reboot prep

I have done all the initial prep work and the everything is ready for primer (or re-priming in some cases).

What you see is a British Airborne Platoon based on the organization in Chain of Command. I admit that I was unsure of the composition of Section 3 as it has two Bren gunners. After haunting some forums and digging deep I found that there was a spare Bren gun issue to the platoon. It makes sense that rather than waiting for one of the three assigned guns to break to assign it to a section and create a section that could serve as a base of fire for the platoon.

Everything is from Warlord Games. I started this platoon when all you could get was metal. The issue is there are way to many Sten guns and not enough rifles. I have a stash of Sten gun equipment soldiers now. I also built up as many of the support units that I could. That is why I have a fourth section of Airborne troops, there are 3 Vickers, 2 3" mortars to go with that. I still need to build a section of regulars that I is another support option. Hopefully I can use that as a nucleus for a British motor platoon.

Not sure when I'll have time to start priming but everything is sitting in the booth waiting for the fun to begin.

An overall look at the platoon with the supports. This is before I finished putting everything on 25mm bases.

I needed 8 more figures so I turned to the plastic Airborne box to flesh things out. Overall I'm pretty pleased with these, but they are definitely a bit bigger and bulkier than the metal troopers.

A look from the Back

Platoon HQ section

1st section.

2nd Section

3rd Section, they have the extra Bren gun and the sniper.

The extra Airborne section

Support weapons.  These are support weapons and crews. Within Chain of Command these need 5 man crews. Typically some kind of counter is used (a die or something equivalent) to count down casualties. I'm thinking something right on the base itself or maybe just go with kill rings.

Cartoon Wednesday