Can You Tell What It Is Yet?

Wooden it be a good idea to make something from this little lot?

No? Then you are in good company because neither can I just yet - although I do have a (number of) cunning plans under consideration. In a nutshell what you see above is the result of yet another visit to my local joiner/carpenter chap and his wonderful array of power saws and such like. I have had another four boxes of blocks cut on a 75/25 basis (the earlier were on a 50/50) and also some test pieces of assorted diameter dowel rod. Oddly enough the latest block chopping is not at this stage for use with the block armies; rather they are for use in model making.

Now looking at the selection of assorted shapes above you could be forgiven for thinking that the curse of unemployment has finally addled what remained of my grey matter - but you would be wrong! These shapes are very much the tip of the iceberg in respect of what they can be used for and given that much of what I am considering is invariably 'boxy' in style then perhaps you see where this is going - or not!

I have absolutely no plans to emulate those marvellous models that Bob Cordery has produced as these are too large for my purposes (and for the record that is a statement of fact!) but his 'cartoon ship' idea in conjunction with Hexon is an absolute winner and so much of my remaining mental capacity has been juggling ship designs for the pre dreadnought era around a size of around 4" for a battleship and with everything else scaled back accordingly. The models are designed to fit on a single Hexon tile AND to be used in conjunction with 15mm figures (not that I have any - nor any intention of getting any!) and so are 'cartoon' in aspect, being not to scale lengthwise and vertically exaggerated. A good example of the concept in action can be seen here wargamingmiscellany and this illustrates the the type of model I am aspiring to. I am looking at models that are going to be generic and simple to look at and to make. The best analogy I can think of is the naval equivalent of an old style toy soldier.

I have a couple of designs that I am looking at and some of the provisional sizes to work to for which, as ever, I must thank Bob - as well as some stonking models featured on his blog by way of inspiration. With all of this amateur carpentry my local joiner is proving to be very useful for cutting purposes and using power tools for square cuts saves a lot of time and anguish - particularly with dowel rod, which is really useful for turrets and funnels.

In the meantime though - I have a load of labels to place on the new smaller blocks, some trees to finish off and the small matter of the NW Frontier to attend to although I have a very good excuse for not attending to that particular project in other than a written way - I need to acquire a usable selection of acrylic paints!