Harlen's Hobbies

 First of the Line  Recap: By way of a quick recap, I am working on building and painting a unit of 28mm American Civil War miniatures based on the 5th United States Colored Troops -- a regiment raised and trained in Delaware, Ohio. I am using Perry Miniatures' plastic "American Civil War Union Infantry 1861-1865," set as a base. Perry makes a set of metal replacement heads called, "Black Union heads wearing forage caps," that I am using to give the figures African American features. I'm using a variety of painting techniques for darker skin tones to create a more realistic and varied appearance. You can read about all of that in my first post. Thus far, I have built and painted the command stand (officer, drummer, and two flag-bearers). Now, it's time to tackle the first of the line infantry.     Me with the completed command stand Construction: In the previous edition, I talked about removing the plastic head and about selecting an appropriate replacem...

 T-54 in 1/144 I was doing some holiday shopping on Sprue Brothers . When I'm ordering something, I sometimes poke around and see if there isn't anything I can add on while I'm paying for shipping anyways. This time, I looked in the armor section and set it to, "lowest price first." These little kits from U-Star popped up and I was curious. They ran about $6 each and, from some of the pictures online,  it looked like they afforded a fair amount of detail. I already had Iraqi paints from my Type 69-II and so I decided to get the T-54 and do it in an Iraqi color scheme. The kit is understandably small. When I opened it, I was surprised to see that, in addition to the sprues, there was a small set of photo etched (PE) hand rails.    The kit looked okay. My only complaint was that the connection point for the tracks wasn't hidden in any way. They'd be hard to see under the fenders, but it still bothered me. I told myself, "it only cost $6," and moved...

Background:      I was poking around on the Ammo by Mig website, when I noticed they had paired some models with paint sets. It seemed like a good way to get everything for a project for a reasonable price. I really like the Ammo paints because they seem well formulated for my airbrush. I'm not very confident yet at mixing my own colors and thinning them appropriately, so this is takes away a lot of the hassle. I looked at a French auto-loader, but ultimately settled on this Chinese tank in Iraqi service. I've always been interested in the Gulf War as it's one of the first world events I really remember.     Construction     Looking at the kit, the thing that made me nervous was the slat armor around the turret. I was a little worried it would be made of or include photo-etched parts. Those can add a lot of detail but I find them a bear to work with. There was a lot of nice PE on the kit, but fortunately the slats were plastic. They had deep ...

             This is my third unit of 28mm war-gaming miniatures and my first American Civil War subject. I had previously modeled a unit from the 92nd Division -- the Buffalo Soldiers. This was a segregated African American unit from the Second World War. I was really intrigued by the idea of painting a range of skin tones in a single unit. I looked online for different methods of painting skin from the very dark to the light and I amassed a little collection of appropriate paints. When I looked at doing an ACW unit, I realized choosing one from the United States Colored Troops would allow me to practice that skill and get more mileage out of those paints.     I chose the 5th U.S. Colored Troops because they were raised and trained in Delaware, Ohio. My father grew up in Delaware and I attended the Methodist Theological Seminary there. I had seen a historic marker and the photo above (thank you Wikimedia Commons) many times. I...