9 months have gone and passed...

Hoi,

As is the destiny of this blog it has taken me about 9 months before I have been able to get the project to the next level. The last two weeks I have  been off from work and thus I took out the diorama and gave the plates their final layers of paint. The paint used are two colours of Valejo textured paint. I started out with Brown Earth and dry-brushed it with Desert Sand.
Now I just have a few spots to touch up and than I will have to decide whether I want to put on a layer of gloss varnish to help protect the surface.

 Well without further ado, here are the pictures.

An overview of the entire table:

A look from the Allied left flank upon the French position:

A look from the French position (upon the hill) down to the Allied position:

The upper half of this picture shows the position of the British Artillery, upon the heights and in the lower left corner there will be a clash of French and Portuguese cavalry.

Cheers Sander 

Next phase: Priming!

The project is entering the next phase in it's development: priming of the plates! Some days ago the weather was finally good and dry enough for me to basecoat all the dio plates with Rat Fur primer from Armypainter. Sadly I had used up all my primer (3 spraycans!) with 1,5 plates still to go...
Oh well, I guess I need to go to the shop for a new one then ;-)

I took a lot of pictures but most are overexposed, so I only have 2 more or less decent ones to show you guys:

Cheers Sander

Landscaping: a good start of 2014!

Hoi,

Let's start with wishing you all the best for 2014! If 2013 has been rather slow, progress in 2014 is off with a bang. I have managed to put some muck on the diorama modules. This is a mix of wall-plaster, white wood glue and modelling grit. 

This left the plates looking pretty much like this:

Not bad at all, but they had some unnatural straight lines made by my painter's knife during the application of the muck. Which I sanded off before finishing the plates with a layer of thick gloss varnish.

When all plates were supplied with some varnish, which I applied to make sure that the plaster-mixture is less sponge-like, one of the plates had dried enough for a test-layer of spraypaint. I am using Army painter Rat Fur for this and due to lighting problems it looks a lot more reddish in the pictures then it does in real life.

The whole lot drying in their cases:

For highlighting the plates I have obtained a pot of Valejo desert colour structure paint, which I am anxious to apply and see the result of but time is the enemy here!
  
That's it again for today's update!

Cheers Sander

Doing the numbers...

Hoi,

A while ago I laid out the modules in my table again, and just to try out how it looked I took some HäT Peninsular British and set them on the board where they will end up in time for real. This made me realise that I have made a startling mistake in the first place: my ground-scale and figure-ratio are not compatible! I had planned the first British brigade to have regiments of about 250 figures each, after putting figures on the board this showed that I can have regiments of about 40 figures instead!

This means I will have to do the numbers all over again. But on the bright side is the notion that I will be able to finish earlier since I have to do less figures.

Cheers Sander

They have arrived!

Huzzah!

As I posted earlier today, on the 196th birthday of the Battle of Waterloo, the diorama modules for my Salamanca Project have arrived at my home.

Hans Slaager of Waterloo and Cambrai fame delivered them this morning and together we unpacked them into my purpose build table. Without further ado I hereby present you some pictures of the occasion:

Hans showing the modules in their excellent cassettes.

Of course I had the honour to put in place the first plate in the table...

...and the final one!

Enjoying Hans' handiwork together.

If you have never seen any of Hans' work up close and personal you cannot begin to perceive how excellent and with just how much eye for detail he makes his masterpieces. This isn't only true for his landscapes but also for the cassettes they come in. It all fits like a glove.

At first we were a little afraid the modules wouldn't fit in the table, but as we put them in place we discovered we actually have about 2 cm's to spare, which is no problem since it makes retrieving the modules from the table easier by far.

I'll make some detail shots later on, and leave this with just one more really big THANK YOU to Hans.

Cheers Sander

diorama base here we come!

Hello!

Since updates on this blog don't pop up too often I'd like to bring you a bombshell each time they do! So here are some pictures of the modular plates the diorama will consist of.

First up a birds' view of the lot:

Next a side shot with some 1:72 figures for scale reference

Then a picture with the plates and the travelling casettes to the right:

And last a picture of the modules in their casettes.

All the work has been done by Hans of waterama fame http://www.historyinminiature.nl/ who has done them exactly after my "instructions" the final details I'll have to do myself and then the great "placing of figures will start!"

Hans you're the best!

Cheers Sander