Dad's Army 6 - Finished

I was on holiday last week, so took the opportunity to finish the diorama (pictures at the bottom for the impatient).

Following the abandonment of the full church hall model, I scribed a new floor piece, and started painting it.

Painting the floor

I spray undercoated the floor in black, then used a mixture of drybrushing and washes to paint it. The original flooring in the show was very light grey. However, I decided that if I tried to match that, it would look like concrete, so I settled on a "scruffy brown" look.

I started the washes using a largish flat brush. A number of passes later, when nothing much had changed, I realised that this wasn't the correct approach. I was sure I had some foam brushes, but couldn't find them. I picked up a packet of twenty for £1.99 from one of the local discount book places, and tried again.

Using a two inch foam brush proved much faster, and gave a better finish. I ended up with an approach where I put some paint on, decided it was too much, then washed it much thinner with the foam brush. Weird, but it worked.

Due to the washes going everywhere (as is the nature of washes), I had to redo the gaps between the boards, but the end result looks reasonably floor-like. Annoyingly, I forgot to do the edges, and only noticed when all the paint was packed away and I'd all but forgotten what colours I'd used. This was the first of a few occasions where I had to try and colour match what was largely free-painting (a term I may have just invented :-)), but I got away with it

The nameplate

I ordered a name plate from NameIt, with the inspiring text of "Walmington-on-Sea Church Hall". It's not very exciting, but should at least let people know what it's meant to be.

I had trouble getting the name plate aligned on a previous figure, so this time I was ready for it. I used masking tape to mark out the border of where the name plate would go. This also let me use pencil on the tape, so I could get it centered vertically on the plinth. A further piece of tape along the bottom edge let me drop the name plate against it, ensuring it was horizontal. This would be much easier to see in a picture, but I forgot to take any of that stage :-(

The name plate sticks reasonably well, but not was well as I'd hoped. The plinth is varnished, and I suspect it might be something to do with that. The next time I'll roughen up the plinth surface first, or use glue in addition to the sticky pad thing on the name plate.

Putting it all together

The final piece of the puzzle was drilling out the holes in the floor for the figures and gluing them in place. I was about half way through when I realised that I didn't have to drill out holes for both feet, and, in fact, one hole would give me more flexibility for the final positioning.

I altered the positions of a few figures from what I had planned. The biggest change was moving Mr Hodges to point at Pike, who's messing around at the edge of the board. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had drilled two holes for Mr Hodges, I couldn't quite get him positioned as I wanted: to do so would have exposed one of the holes. In the end, however, it's not too bad, so I'm happy enough with it.

One very unexpected occurrence was that the superglue lifted the paint off the floor at a couple of the figures. Worst affected was Mrs Fox, where the paint between her feet disappeared almost back to the plasticard. I touched it up without too much trouble, although colour matching was (again) a pain.

Still, everybody's in and settled. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it. It would have been great to have done the whole church hall, but it wasn't to be. I have learned a lot, even from the failed attempt, so there's probably one more blog post to come regarding lessons learned and future approaches to adopt.

Some pictures below of the completed piece.

It breaks down into five small groups:

Sergeant Wilson and Mrs Pike. Presumably Sergeant Wilson has upset Mrs Pike again, and is trying to apologise.

Mr Blewitt, Private Fraser and Private Godfrey. The Fraser figure is kneeling, which proved problematic when trying to find a reason for him to be there. In the end, I'm assuming he's pointing out Mr Blewitt to Private Godfrey, who's going to see if he can help - reaching, I know...

Captain Mainwaring and the Vicar having a chat. Warden Hodges is also part of that group, but has turned around to shout at Pike.

The aforementioned Warden shouting at Pike, who's probably acting out a scene from a movie he's seen recently.

Corporal Jones regaling Mrs Fox and the Verger with one of his old war stories.

Finally, the group shot

Final challenge

The final challenge is to transport the diorama, possibly in a rucksack, on public transport. I have some boxes that should fit nicely, but I need to make sure I don't scrape any paint off during the move.

Wish me luck