Snow

This is the forgotten post. It was nearly ready just after I finished my Winter War Russians earlier this year, then forgotten until now. Enjoy!

For my Winter War troops I needed snow-covered bases. A quick check of the closest gaming stores got me two different snow-effect thingies suitable for basing.

I basecoated all bases in white before I started with the snow-effect.

Heki Shneeglitzer

Made for the railroad crowd and at 250 g it will last a long time. I applied a thick coat of white glue to the bases and dipped them. The result is very sparkling and it looks like ice-crystals. Suitable for dry snow.

Tamiya – Diorama Texture Paint – Snow Effect White

This rather big pot, 100ml, will last a while. It is a thick paste that is easy to paint on to the bases, it sticks well and looks like wet snow when set. Sparkly and nice.

Both works well, but my favourite is the Tamiya snow effect.

Finland in WWII – 160 000 photos!

This Thursday the Finnish Defence Forces made public their war-time photo archive. The interest was enormous, so the site crashed rather immediately. Fixed now.

So, if you have any interest in the Winter War, the Continuation War or the Lapland War you will find something here. You've got some 160 000 photos!

Swedish troops in Kemi, January 1940. Source SA-Kuva.

More Swedes, with a Bofors ATG. Source SA-Kuva.

Fronline. Source SA-Kuva.

Raate road. Source SA-Kuva.

Suomussalmi. Source SA-Kuva.

Just 15995 to go. Enjoy!

Movie review – Tali Ihantala 1944

The Winter War and Continuation War are conflicts that interests me, and the gaming group play Winter War with IABSM.

There are quite a few interesting Finnish movies about these conflicts worthy of more widespread knowledge. They are often far more dark than the Hollywood war movies, something they have common with German films.

I have a few Finnish movies I’d like to share, and reviewing them gives me a good reason to see them again.

Tali Inhantala 1944 (from 2007) is a about one of the final battles to stop the Soviet advance into Finland, the battles to ensure that Finland was able to negotiate a peace that still had Finland as an independent state. This battle is the largest ever fought in the Nordic countries. 

The movie is based on real people and what happened to them. There are five stories going on, about several people, and that makes this film special.

I first saw this movie with my ‘video gang’, a couple of friends having seen ‘videos’ together a couple of times each year for ages. We usually blend movies, pizzas, beer, wine, GT, snacks and discussions into a rather enjoyable evening. We usually see a zombie movie and something else, and in this case the something else was Tali Ihantala. Two of us being something of WWII-nerds we commented gear, tanks, airplanes etc, and we had a rather good time, but after the movie our feeling was: “What was the movie all about?”.  And that is this movie’s problem, there are several parallel stories going on, and you have to concentrate on them. So it is not a beer and pretzel kind of movie.

I saw it again the other day, and it was a completely different experience. If you concentrate on the movie it is much more enjoyable, and will give you a feel of the war. You follow ordinary people, and as it is based on what really happened you never know who will survive, and who will not.

This is not a pretty movie, it is very realistic in places and if you’re interested in these conflicts there is a lot to look at. We will, among other things, see the Finnish Stug IIIG:s in action (see my book review on the Lagus assault guns. This was a treat as you will recognize a lot of the action and people from that book), a lot of small arms and uniforms, Soviet armour (and Finnish too, mostly the same as the Finns used a lot of scrounged soviet gear), German Focke-Wulfs, artillery pieces etc.

Also an interesting ‘Making of…’ as extra material.

All in all, a good movie that demands a bit more of the viewer. I give it a rating of 4.

Bofors 37mm anti-tank gun, camouflage

Bofors 37mm anti-tank
Time to experiment, you remember the ripped bed-sheets camouflaging the Finnish AT-gun. In order not to experiment my nice gun to pieces, I built a mock-up from plasticard and brass wire.

Ripped sheets – paper anyone?

Silk paper

I bought a couple of sheets of silk paper in an arts shop and I got more paper than I will ever use for less than SEK 20 (approx $3/£2/€2). I need white camouflage, and the paper was white.
I cut thin strips of silk paper with a new blade in my knife. After that I try to get them in place, and get them to look like cloth and nothing else. Sounds simple…

- Silk paper – dry

When I take my thin strip and try to wrap it around the gun, I quickly find that the down-side of silk paper is that it is ***** thin. To have a strip stay in a singular form is easier said than done. And the result… well, it doesn’t look like anything even remotely close to what I saw in the movie. And it falls off as soon as you stare at it.

- Silk paper - whet

To get an authentic fall of the “cloth” I had the excellent idea of wetting the paper-strip before wrapping it around the gun. Considering my previous statement about fragile silk paper, this was positively stupid. I might as well dip the gun into paper pulp. Would have been easier too.

- Silk paper –dry and wet

I started with dry paper, drape it around the gun, wet it to get a natural fall. Hey, that doesn’t look to bad. You can call me the Miniature Armani! Or not…
Well, not. Wet paper dries, and it turned out to be rubbish. But I might be closer to the solution.

- Silk paper – now with glue!

I got this excellent idea! I wet the silk paper strips with diluted white glue instead of water. Then I let them dry for a while, to get optimal strength, and I easily drape them over the gun to get an outstanding result. That’s my theory.
“There is nothing as practical as a good theory” I had a colleague once tell me. He was smart.
I guess he wouldn’t give this theory much credit. Fortunately I can rinse my mock-up, my hands and clothes…

- Silk paper – all in one

I wrap the bleedin' gun with dry paper, wet it with glue, and…
That will be a future project. It might even work.

Ripped sheets – why not plate armour

When I discussed this via e-mail with a fellow gamer (this is entirely your fault, Thomas!) he suggested metal foil. Let’s see how it turns out…

Aluminium foil

This should solve the strength issues I had with silk paper. Metal = high strength! Right?
I grab my trusted knife and carve me some thin strips.

- Kitchen foil

I wrap thin strips of kitchen foil (the type you wrap food with) around my mock-up. It looks just as if the Finns had wrapped their gun with plate armour, even when painted. Cloth doesn’t look like this, I’m sure. Not a good result.

- Champagne!

I will do everything for you, dear reader. I went out and bought a bottle of champagne, just to get my hands on the soft metal foil that is wrapped around the neck and cork on the more expensive brands. Hmm, hobby or pleasure, how do I account this? (Well, I’ve had this foil laying around in a bits-and-pieces box for quite some time. I knew I would find a use for it!)

Not too bad, it’s falling much more naturally. It looks just like the Finns had melted a long strip of lead-plate and draped it over the gun. I guess the gun would have been a hit in Ukraine nearly fifty years later (or Fukushima around now, when I translate this into English).

(The picture was so blurred you could think it was taken in Area 51, but believe me, you won’t miss anything.)

No more experiments with metal foil!

This is it for the time being. When my blood pressure is back to normal (in a couple of months) I’ll continue my quest for Finnish bed-sheets.

Note: No liver was damaged during these experiments

Bofors 37mm anti-tank gun from SHQ

Bofors 37 mm anti-tank
This model comes from SHQ Miniatures (£4,50) and you’ll find it amongst their Polish stuff. Good details, but it is made of rather soft tin, so I had to pin one of the ‘legs' when it decided to live its own life. It’s darn thin and the pinning was really fiddly.
This gun will serve in the 1939-40 Winter War, obviously on the Finnish side.
Painted in Vallejo 888 Olive Grey and then unevenly with white paint. Finished with a wash of Devlan Mud and of course matte varnish.

It could have been finished now, but why do something in a simple way…?

I want to do something like the camouflage seen in the excellent film Winter War/Talvisota. In the film some soldiers push a Bofors-gun through the woods, and fire a shot against a T-26, and then they quickly drag it away. That gun is wrapped in white cloth to break up the silhouette.
But how to do this in 20mm?

More on this later.