Mold #74: Fieldstone Walls

Things are starting to return back to normal. The holidays are coming to an end and the kids are going back to school. I haven't been able to do much hobby related work during the holidays. I kinda took a break of all that. Sometimes a break is all you need to rekindle the interest in the hobby. Especially when you're painting Warhammer Forty Kay.

Remember my previous article of me Going Pro. Well, I used 2nd edition Space Hulk Terminators to experiment and practise my airbrush techniques. I never really liked painting Forty Kay or Terminators in particular, but I thought it would be different painting them with an Airbrush. The Airbrush part was really fun and exciting, but I'm having a real hard time finishing them. They're so boring I actually fell asleep one time while painting.

In an effort to keep me interested I decided to shift my focus on a little terrain project together with the kids. I'm always looking for ways to include the kids in one of my hobby adventures. Usually those endeavours end up with me being highly agitated, but this time I actually enjoyed the whole process and more importantly I think they did too.

A while ago I made a Fieldstone Bridge from a Hirst Arts mold. In that post I mentioned you could make stone wall sections with the same mold. I still had a lot material left from doing the bridges, so I figured to make some wall sections while the kids joined me and played around with the remaining materials.

Wall sections (picture made by Thantsants)

My sons are four and a half and two and a half years old. We did the whole process of creating the molds, glueing the parts, sealing with e-poxy (the wife really enjoyed that part), painting and varnishing together. I really tried to let them do their thing without me trying to intervene too much.

We didn't do everything in one day. We did one step of the process a day. Glueing the parts or dry brushing one color would be done during a session of 30 minutes or less. In total it took about one week to finish the whole process. Each time I told them we would do some hobby work they would burst with excitement.

Results made by oldest son

Results made by youngest son

So, while the kids were busy doing their thing, I tried to replicate a couple of the modular wall sections shown above. Most of us need terrain, but when it comes down to it we prefer to spend our time on painting miniatures. Maybe this offers a solution. You get terrain done and at the same time introduce your kids to the wonderful world of wargaming or at least spend some quality time with them.