Blood & Wonder

First off – yay! – I got a mention on the Unofficial Hobby Hangout – thanks Sundancer and Gerry. Also thanks Gerry for saying that yeah – I could go a bit bigger before this …

Second – so I know I said I wouldn’t print any more minis till I got my  plastic but hey – what gamer doesn’t lie about their pile of plastic and resin.

Also decided to try one of the terrain pieces from the set – and what could be more appropriate than the final destination for most pirates of that era – the gallows!

Done at 80% it fit on my Saturn 2 print bed perfectly as  provided with no supports. But obviously this was designed with FDM printers in mind and *damn* was it a ballicks to get off the print bed. I ended up breaking 2 of the legs and the noose. But hey – superglue works wonders – but for future terrain pieces I think I’ll rotate them on the bed and add supports – this piece didn’t have the largest footprint by a mile – I’d hate to try and pry some of those boats off!

So I printed 3 of the Treasure Island minis at 80% to test the scale against the metal B&P minis. Reckon they came out pretty close. Might be able to go up to 85% but you guys let me know what  you think.

Woo the mighty Cosco Shipping Star has arrived in Felixstowe just an hour and a half behind the predicted arrival. With any luck the Kickstarter should be delivered to those of us in the UK and Ireland this coming week!

It’s only at this point that it occurred to me that I should check the scale of the 3D prints in relation to existing B&P minis. Oops. So after a little digging in the Pile of Potential I had my answer …

As you can see there is a little bit of a difference. Incidentally the bases I printed for them was a free 25mm wooden base I found on MMF and of course the metal B&P figs come on a 20mm base.

Free Wooden Base

I’ve no idea how the new plastic minis will compare in scale to the old metal ones, so I’ll mostly hold off on more prints but I might do one scaling test. I scaled the base to 20mm which worked out about an 20% reduction (I know – math could have told me this but .. brain) so I picked a couple more models and set them to 80% and will see how they come out.

On the plus side, if the 80% scaling works out, it means that some of the larger terrain pieces and ships that came with the Treasure Island set will fit much better on my print bed.

While I wait for the Kickstarter I decided to fire up the 3D printer. Well more accurately, first I decided to upgrade the printer! After a bit of an accident, I was left with some cured resin on the LCD of my Mars 2 Pro. I tried everything to get it off – alcohol, heat, meth and lots of scaping but only small amounts were coming off. Well  I figured – it’s an old printer anyway so why not upgrade 🙂

After a bit of research I settled on the Saturn 2 8K – quite  the improvement on my old model.

Pro Tip: I ordered this printer directly from the Elegoo website on a Monday. On Amazon this price ranged from £530-560 with guaranteed delivery by Thursday. From Elegoo direct it ended up costing £485 and it arrived on Wed!

Now time to find some STL’s – after a bit of searching I can across the Treasure Island bundle by Iain Lovecraft which fit the bill perfectly. Plenty of minis, terrain and even ships – which might actually now fit on my new printer.

Iain Lovecraft – Treasure Island

Very pleased with how these first prints came out. Aside from a couple of calibration prints, these were the first things I’ve printed on the Saturn 2 and the detail is great and  so far no failures.

It’s been over 2 years since I backed the Raise the Black Kickstarter and finally, finally – it’s almost here. Firelock have been kind enough to provide details of the cargo container as it makes it’s way from China. So my morning ritual every day now is to check in and see how she’s doing!

While I wait I may as well browse through the deluxe rule book I bought many moons ago and dig out the unopened Unaligned Nationality box from wherever it’s hidden.

… or maybe fire up the 3D printer! 🙂