Wednesday 22 March 2017

The King and Queen go for a walk round the palace gardens .....

Its a lovely sunny day and the King and Queen have gone out to see how the palace gardens look now it has all been planted up.

The King and Queen wander down the lime walk towards the orangery....
 Diligent work by the head gardener has born fruit - the first oranges ....
 The head gardener shows the King and Queen the pinery, the pineapple plants have survived the winter and he his hopeful they may produce something this year ...
 The King and Queen have a walk on the terrace ....
 and take in the view of the park landscape ...
 they then move down towards the centre of the garden, past the pavilion where the palace musicians are playing some music ...
They stop to admire the centre piece .....
a final last look at the borders before they head back to the palace ....



---oxo---

an overview of the palace gardens .....




Sunday 19 March 2017

28mm Transport Barges for the River Oudear ...

After finishing work on the rowing boats, before getting on with the painting I decided to build some transport barges....

I started off by making up an outline on a piece of card and arranging the figures on it. I decided to have 6 rowers and be able to hold 12+ figures.
The construction method would use the same scheme as for the small boats I made for use on my 17C bridge of Boats. 

I made the base out of thicker cardboard, with a spacer from foamboard and a deck from cardboard.
 seats added (foamboard strips with thin card on top), with converted rowers from Britannia miniatures naval landing boat
 sides added using Daler mounting board, and a test with a typical load of 12 figures ...
also I wanted to allow for an optional removable centre mast. A suitable hole was made in the right position in the boat. The mast is made from an old paintbrush handle and a spar from a wooden hibachi skewer. The spar attachment is done using a piece of wire, which allows swap of furled and open sail configurations
I made three barges, here they are painted with masts in position - two with sail furled and one with the sail unfurled...

Thursday 16 March 2017

making a list ...

The head gardener is working with his assistant to make a list of the plants needed to fill the remaining empty areas of the garden...
[ the hedges were made from strips of thin plastic sponge painted green]

Wednesday 15 March 2017

at work in the garden .....

while a gardener is busy tidying up the borders...
the head gardener checks out some of the plants from the orangery which have been brought outside ...
[ new garden items: border plants - mix of old bits of trees and foliage clumps on painted card bases with flowers added using some dabs of paint; orangery plants - bits of plastic aquarium plants in dolls house flower pots]

Monday 13 March 2017

The King takes a break ....

The King has taken a break from catching up on paperwork and has gone for a quick walk round the garden, he is pleased to see the pavilion has been put up and the borders surrounding it planted. He stops for a while to have a chat with the head gardener ...

Saturday 11 March 2017

28mm Rowing Boats for the River Oudear (WIP)

I've been planning some improvements to boats etc for use in games. I decided to make up a small rowing boat and I wanted a larger boat for transporting troops for small raids etc. 

To start with I bought a Britannia Miniatures royal navy landing boat with crew (code BRW4); this gave me 10 rowers and some seated figures - these are napoleonic naval figures so they need some conversion.

I made up the small rowing boat first, by making an insert to fit into one of the boats I made for my 17C bridge of boats.  The insert is just smaller than the base of the boat and the seats are made using
foamboard strips with Daler mounting board on top
The Britannia Miniatures were modified: the marines had their heads swapped to ones with tricornes and the rest had their hats removed and altered to be bareheaded. I altered the tiller man to have a tricorne as well.  In addition I made up two officers by converting two cart driver figures from Colonel Bills.

The small row boat ...
the resin landing boat from Britannia with the rest of the figures ....
to allow for better use in games, I made a deck insert for the resin boat
this will allow the use of 4 rowers and a tillerman,  with figures standing on the planked deck (saves me having lots of sets of seated figures).

now what about transport and landing barges ? hmm ... more work for the shipyards 😀

Wednesday 8 March 2017

The King reviews the artillery ....

After visiting Vanderhof the King returned to Wittenberg. The usual round of courtly activities followed. However he was soon out again reviewing his upgraded field artillery...

 The King has joined the Field Marshal to review the artillery of the Wittenland and Guard corps..
 the artillery moves into the inspection area ....
then  unlimbers and sets up for firing practice ...

 The King is very pleased that his artillery is now ready for forthcoming campaigns...

[recently re-furbished artillery: cannons and crew repainted; new scratchbuilt limbers made from spare wheels, card and cocktail sticks for the centre pole; limber horse teams increased to 4 horses per cannon]


Saturday 4 March 2017

The King enjoys a trip on the river .....

The King has travelled to Vanderhof to inspect the refurbished small galley Lupin, flagship of the river flotilla commanded by Count Ernst Eindekker..  The galley has moved downstream to a wider part of the river Oudear for some practice manouvres....
 The King is enjoying his river trip ...
the galley comes about ...
 practices firing of the cannon ....
then returns to Vanderhof. The King disembarks and returns to the river fleet HQ to discuss the state of the flotilla ships and what is needed in terms of reinforcements and extra ships to deal with any threat from downstream and what ships could be sent up-stream to be used by Fenwick in their border trade wars....

[the galley is made using a small ship  I had used for pirate games, modified to have removable banks of oars made using cocktail sticks stuck into a strip of stiff cardboard]