Carrots and spuds....

...fish, pots, baskets, wine and spices. The Market has got it´s supplies and the good folk of Styrow on the Foam can go shopping!!

Three boxes of market goods from Nikolai. They are white resin and took less than an hour to paint.

The potter sisters (no broomsticks here though) and the wine seller.

Veg stall and fish a nuts stall

 Enough of the stalls..off to market!!

Couillard (scratch built)

Bit of an odd one this device, not commonly seen and  I only came across it whilst researching about trebuchets.
Put it into a web search...there´s a couple of bits about it,  mostly in French and virtually no pics.
This one is a big version..they appear to have been about twice the height of a man  but I prefer big stone throwers. The range was apparently 180 meters with a 50kg shot and needed a crew of 8 to fire at a rate of 10 shots an hour.

Here´s a video of one firing. Thiers has a "running board" for the sling but some were just launched from the ground. The firing action looks pretty "violent", the counterweights wobbling all over the place.

Trebuchet (Fredericus-rex)

This is a monster!!!!  No castle walls are safe, MUH HA HA, MUH HA HA!!!!
Another lasercut model from the house of Fredericus - rex.
As with the houses this kit  can be painted with Acrylics and this time I´ve got over my initial fear of damaging the material by using the paint too watery ( swelling or warping) and I just sloshed it on. This kit got 4 seperate layers of paint added and absolutely no ill affects. The walls of the bucket warped with the first layer of paint but went back to their original flat condition after a minute or so.

 Vital stats : H: 11cm´s W: 12cms L: 18cm´s..

 Notice...the winding gear and the rope on the throwing arm are not connected....it´s in the moment of "just about to launch"

 Crew from Fredericus-rex plus a couple of bods from orion and Zvezda.

Both my Trebuchets together. The one in the background is a resin kit from MiniHistory. All that´s missing now is the Zvezda one and I´ll have the three sisters, "Faith, Hope and Charity"

The kit fits together really easily, all that´s needed are scalpel, tweezers and woodglue.
I recommend painting up ALL the parts before fitting, as when it´s put together it would be IMHO pretty fiddly to get into all the corners. The ladder. In the instructions it shows fitting the rungs in one go, they come on a sort of comb but it is impossible to get all the rungs lined up with the holes so I cut off every rung from the "sprue"  and fitted them individually, lining them up by laying the ladder on it´s back and using two CD boxes pushed up from left and right. I dripped revell liquid contact glue onto the ladder to "plastify" it and make it stronger.
The thread provided is a bit white..so I put it in a cup of hot water, added two old teabags and a teaspoon of coffee powder and  left it for 1/2 an hour  ;-D

Medieval Town House (Fredericus-rex)

Mrs Miggins Pie shop. After years of hard work kneading and baking Mrs Miggins has finally scraped enough groats together to buy herself a House. And what better choice could she make than to get one from Fredericus-rex.
This house measures 19cm´s Tall, 7.5cms wide and 10cm´s long.
All the Fredericus-rex buildings (and the range is already enough to build a small town) are lasercut wood / card,  so all you need to build one is a scalpel and some woodglue. It is recommended to use oils to paint them but I´ve used Acrylics and had no problems, which was one reason I was mildly put off getting any of these houses. I´ve never used oils in  model painting but even when used quite "wet" the acrylics didn´t affect the materials.

Mrs Miggins enjoying the spring sunshine and deciding what type of base she will give her new house.

Above the shop window, next to the two small windows, the kit allows an extra glased window to be added.

Each floor is individual which means they can be swopped from back to front so from this one kit you could get 6 slightly different looking houses. Also, being individual you could take the floors apart and fit the interiors out.

The Detail is superb!!!. Windowframes, hinges etc are all included on laser cut card. The wood work (either on card or balsawood ) has the grain cut into it and the stonework (which also comes of card) has a realistic stone finish.Basically, everything has been thought of.
Tips. 
Some of the printed sheets, for example the wood for the upper storey in this building, are very thin. I recommend putting the sheets (which are A4 size) into a folder with each Sheet   numbered sheet in order. This not only  prevents any damge that may occur if they were just in a pile or spread about but it also speeds up the construction time.
Pre paint and prefit all pieces before final glueing and take your time...it´s worth going slow on these :-D

Anglo - Egyptian army (Waterloo 1815)

Anglo-egyptian army? Not in my world..I´m calling these are Tarbooshis from Tarhoosha, a land not far away from Khandibar  
I´ve named after thier hats and a good excuse for me to give them a unionjack flag as I couldn´t find out wether or what type of flag egyptian troops of the period carried) 

Part 9 of the Pirate Cutter scratchbuild....the Anchor and some Pulleys. The pulleys are the big ones for masts etc..smaller ones need creating for lines

Trojan command and Female hoplite (warning..nudity!)

Both available from Toys & More. The Trojans are from Newline designs, the Female hoplite by Alex

The set has a commander, a horn blower and two standard bearers, but i only used the one.

To give anyone the chance to stop and not go any further due to the unclothed condition of the Hoplite, Part 7 of the Pirate cutter scratch build.

Rudder added and a Spar  created using the handle from an old paint brush and an old clothesline peg.

She comes supplied with wings but as she might get a few girlfriends truning up soo I´v decided to leave them off

Catapult Crew (Fredericus-rex)

Sculpted by Markus Eckmann and available from Fredericus-rex, this set can be used for not just catapults and trebuchets but as handworkers, labourers etc.. I really like the style of these sculpts..all very natural looking  and  I hope Markus adds expands the range

Here they are Manning a mangonel from Zvezda

16th Century German Peasants

The final set 02 from Germania Figuren painted and the whole mob based for Impetus.
Right.!! ..Where´s that tax collector lads!!!!

I´ve based them to look as if they are either just moving into position or just starting to move off.

Part 6 of the Pirate boat. It´s had a lick of paint Next the railing along the Bow and then the masts !!

German peasants 16th century (Command)

Set number 01 from the Germania Fíguren German peasant wars series. I reckon they are a command group, the clothing, feathers in thier hats etc,  look a bit more "I´m in charge"
To show that the metal casts are no different in detail from the Resin ones, ....this lot are a mix of the two materials, and to be honest..unless I pick them up I can´t tell which are which.

Part 5 of the Pirate Cutter. The stairs took 2 attempts to get looking half decent. The hatch is made from thin card with a foam core and  a bit of Flynetting for the grating.

German Peasants 16th Century

Set 3 sculpted by Alex for  Germania Figuren,  and represent German peasants from the period of the Deutscher Bauernkrieg (German peasant war 1524-1526) This insurection followed similar goals and tactics as with the Hussite wars and met the same end.....defeat. Still...they had a go :-D

They aren´t based yet as they will be based as a group.

The weapons look lethal. Imagine having the staff club bounced off your head!!!

They have some great little details...like the rips and tears in the clothing

Part 4 of the Pirate Cutter. Most of the hull is now finished..steps, cargohold cover,  a door etc need adding

Medieval Women

Another great set of medieval civilians from Erik Trauner of  Nikolai..
As Female bods are in short supply in 1/72nd in any era, a specialist set like this is very welcome and I reckon that they could be used in a very large range of eras...right up to the 20th century.

I made a couple of mistakes with the painting. The women with the bag...She has an Apron which reaches only to her waist but before I realised my mistake I´d extended it too far. Also, the mother and child..I painted two pieces of material hanging down from the childs wrappings as part of the Apron...

A rarity , a baby on the mothers breast.

Stage three of the Pirate Cutter. The planking.
Made from strips of thin card it took an absolute age with pinning etc to get all the planking fitted.

Revell Fokker Dr 1 (Nr 2)

It´s been a while since I got stuck into one of these but another pause from bod painting was called for.
This one is Revell´s 1984 tooling  of the little Fokker which I´ve built OOB...well I would have, but it came in a plastic tagbag..so it´s OOPTB

The colours I made up from a couple of designs I Found on the web, one of the best recources is Will´s Blog WWI Aviation Illustration

Being a kit from 1984 the transfers have yellowed with age!!!

The differences between this kit and the new tooling ? The wingskids are molded onto the wings, the engine couling has virtually no detail, the  step into the cockpit is missing as is the cockpit control panel. The main difference is the wingstrutts. On the new tooling they are in one piece..you shove the a bar through the middle wing and then add the top and bottom wings. With the 1984 tooling  they are in 4 pieces..which makes putting the wings on a bit like balancing jelly on a greased football.

During the "letting glue dry" breaks a bit more progress was made to the Pirate Cutter. 

Great stuff breakfast cereal cardboard :-D