Friday, October 30, 2015

Tutorial: Galen's Artillery Strike Markers


So I'm not a huge fan of using markers on a table. I use glass beads for pin markers, but that's really it. So I decided to make Mortar and Artillery strike markers to use on the table that blend in to the scenery.  So I thought I would share my process.

Materials:
  • 60mm Bases
  • 17ga Wire
  • Stuffing (Poly-Fil)
  • Super glue
  • PVA Glue/ Modge Podge
  • Washers/Coins
  • Spray Paint
  • Hair Spray
  • Aerosol sealant

I had some old Warmachine/Hordes bases sitting around, the Warjacks have fallen off so they were pretty useless for basing support weapons for Bolt Action. So I decided to use them to build my Artillery markers. I found out that when you spray paint stuffing it stiffens the material. I use the same method to make destroyed tank markers.


Step 1:
Take a length of wire and fold it in half begin to twist it around itself. make sure you leave a loop at the bottom. This will be what you glue to the base. Bend the wire so that you have a base and then glue it to your base. I then glued about 75 cents onto the base to give it some weight.

The smaller base in the background is one I'm using for Mortars
Step 2:
Add armatures to the central wire by additional strands around the central bit (technical turn) and glue those in place. I used 4-5 additional arms, but you could do as many as you want.

Step 3:
Take your stuffing and roll it into a cylindrical shape.

Step 4:  Coat the wires with your favorite brand of white glue or PVA; I use
Modge Podge, and dress the wires with the stuffing. You could also use super glue if you're impatient like me. but you will have stuffing fiber get stuck to your hands.

Optional: Spray it down with Hair Spray.


Step 5:
Take your marker outside or to your spray station, and spray paint it black. I used a generic brand from Wally-World. Make sure you get all of it painted, so you don't get a grey look.


These are the paints I used.
Step 6:
Spray paint it Brown and then Khaki. I used Rust-oleum American Accents Primer Brown, and Rust-oleum Camoflauge Tan.


Step 7:
Coat it in clear sealant, which stiffens the material further.


Step 8 (Optional)
You can take White Spray Paint to make it look snowy. You could also switch up the other colours for different terrain types.

Gandalf for scale.
You might not want to make them as large as mine, the taller one is about 11 inches tall.

This whole thing took me like 10 minutes to make the frame work and glue the stuffing and like 10 minutes to paint them. You could also use clump foam if you wanted too. I also have scaled it down to make Mortar Strike markers, taking care to leave a space for a d6 on the base, for zeroing in.


2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks! It's been rainy here and I took advantage of the break to get some hobby in! I also made some Smoke markers 3" and 4". I'm going to use CDs for the 5" ones.

      Delete