Project Kursk Part 8: Dug in Artillery WIP

Firstly, welcome to Johan Krieg, the 225th follower of this humble blog.

This is a WIP to show how I'm basing artillery for Project Kursk. Basically, I wanted to work out a simple and interchangeable system that would allow guns to either stand alone on their own bases or slot into bases showing entrenched positions.

The bases are cut out of 2mm plastic card. To start with, I cut out a 7cm square, then cut out of that an insert measuring 3cm X 5cm, leaving me with a U-shaped base 2cm wide to build up as a reinforced position. As you might be able to see in the photo below, I found it helped to drill holes at the corners of the section I was going to cut out of the 7cm base, heavily score it then carefully snap out the 3cm X 5cm section. I cut off the corners of the U-shaped section and bevelled the edges.

Next, I constructed the wooden interior face of the entrenchment. The first version used bamboo skewers (that's the one on the left in the picture below), but that looked a little too big for 15mm, so I switched to toothpicks. I started by plonking on the uprights in some blobs of Tamiya model putty, then build up the horizontal logs with toothpicks and PVA. Five toothpicks seemed about the right height at the front of the position.

The earth bank at the front was simply made up with some Das air-drying clay I had lying around. The final position is suitable for the 45mm, 57mm and 76.2mm AT guns made by Plastic Soldier Company, and should work for most German guns as well.

So there we are. Simple and quick interchangeable bases.