B is for Bellona Bell Tents

This is a long-planned follow-up to someone else's post, and really only to confirm my comments there, at the time (2015) and to look more closely at a comparison between the two versions of Bellona product and try to work out how they are related from a technical point of view.

The inner pair is undecorated, latex rubber; the outer pair is from the later vac-formed polystyrene-sheet which also contained a set of pup-tents (so crude I threw them away I think, or were they on another sheet?) and a more medieval-looking marquee or staff tent. I opened the 'doorways' with a sharp knife!

Holding the slight squeeze out of them, by counter-squeezing; when I obtained these about eleven-years ago (one of Andy Harfield's shows down in Kent I think) they were pretty-much pristine, and remained-so when they went into storage in 2011

However they have suffered slightly from the conditions in the shipping container, getting slight blemishes of shiny perished latex where they were touching each-other and the holding bag (that squeezed them out of shape slightly), yet otherwise they are still flexible and will need to be painted in the near future to protect them further, finding a paint for latex, or that is latex safe might need to be a consideration?

The more interesting thing about these latex items is that while they conform to the later vac-forms in both shape and catalogue codes, they are otherwise very different items, however, the one clearly lead to the other.

Above - not the best image (I've stopped-it right down), but the best I could do (try tipping your screen back slightly, or dipping your head, to see the vac-form's marks clearer), you can see how the three lines and the arrowed dink/blemish are carried on to the underside of the vac-form, from the surface of the latex moulding

The vac form has - like all these large sheet vac-forms - the better detail on the underside, as it is pulled onto the mould by suction, but that detail matches the finer detail on the surface of the smaller latex mould, as if it had been removed from the vac-form.

But it's not as clear as someone taking latex moulds from Bellona vac-forms and passing them off as Bellona (the cynical- or suspicions-thinking behind my original comment on Clive's post), because there is extra detail on the rubber versions; with these tents it's the air-flap 'barb' at the apex of the bell, and the overhang between bell and skirt-sides.

Likewise on the cottages over at Clive's blog, you can see the dormer windows on the rubber versions have an overhang to the roof which were smoothed back on the vac-forms. These features had to be removed from the tool/moulding to allow for the release of the vac-form, after cooling; a similar problem for the tooling engineers to that of 'undercuts' on dynamically posed figures.

How the one became the other is only to be guessed at, but must have involved taking a more substantial moulding from the tent's tool, to get a solid lump resembling the hollow latex product, removing all the overhangs, joining them together with the other tents on a level 'sheet', taking another, negative mould of that, and producing the metal final-tool as a third [positive] from the second [negative]?  .. . . . . ...  . . I think!

As an aside; there is a 12-panel 1930-50's British army bell-tent in the attic, my brother and I would spend a few weeks in it each summer, as kids. I keep meaning to get it out and set it up to see if the moths have been kind to it . . . or not.

It's interesting in being fully reversible, white on one side for winter-warfare and a non-standard camouflage on the other. By non-standard I mean it's not a WWII Micky-mouse black/grey cloud on green, nor sweeping swathes of contrasting colours, not a Denison smock type, nor a 1970's DPM, and will I suspect (I'm sure there are various labels on it and its canvas carry-all) date from either the inter-war period or the Korea era?

But it is a dead ringer for Bellona's little beauty, even to the air-flaps creating a spear's-head at the top if it's breezy!

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Here's one I made earlier!

As a Brucey-bonus, I knocked this up from a piece of cartridge-paper years ago, then added some slivers of weathered plywood for poles and coloured-it-in with art-markers. I think the 'eyes' were Tippex and another - green - marker!

If I did it again I'd run the poles all the way down and make them from something stronger as they have mostly broken-off and the smoke-hole now looks like Hannibal Lectors' mask! I'd probably also wet the paper after shaping to produce some sag between the poles; colouring-in after it had dried?

I took the pattern from something commercial like Fiddler's Green or Usbourn, or even a cut-out freebee in White Dwarf? It's basically a cone with the tip cut-off and it's a bit too geometric!

A is for Almark Publishing - Books and Pamphlets

There is a strange thing happening with reference books these days, too many of them get filled with 'Internet Bubble' falsehoods and urban myths, rumor and plain old poor research, yet are without doubt very well illustrated. If you could only take the images from modern works and marry them to the text of the old standards, you'd have a hell of a library! These are Almark, who along with Bellona (couple of them sneaked into the picture - bottom left), Arms & Armour Press, Osprey and Ian Alan provided most of our needs in the 1970's and early '80's. What's even more useful is that Almark's were very well illustrated as well!

V is for Vac-forms, Part 1 - Airfix & Atlantic

Vac-forms (for; Vacuum-Formed) have been an integral part of the modeling and war-gaming scene since quite early in it's inception, and for AFV modelers, dioramists and war-gamers they have produced a wide variety of items to enhance a scene or provide authentic (or not so authentic) background to the gaming table.

From the Sublime (2 foot by 3 foot play bases from Bellona) to the ridiculous (horrid little plinths from er...Bellona!), this is my take on them, it's a three-part'er, so keep scrolling when you get to the end of this post!

Airfix, and their partner in the US (MPC) produced quite a number of vac-forms over the years, and indeed are doing so again. This is from the Battlefront play-set El Alamien, Allied Attack Force, and is presented - for your ridicule - as painted by my younger self, some 30 odd years ago! In front of which you can see two plaster-of-paris moulds I took of the revetments, in order I should protect a few more AFV's from the German Paratroop Officer (who was always 'last man standing'!), the funny thing about taking mouldings from Vac-forms is; they end up with better detail, as vac-forms are 'pulled' onto a former (by vacuum - of course!) so end up with the finer detail of the master on the underside, consequently taking a negative cast provides better mouldings with less rounding/smoothing-off of detail.

More Airfix, more plaster casts, more ridicule to be poured on my teenage colour schemes! The beauty of these plaster moulds was that as/when they got chipped (or miscast) I just brushed in a bit more mud or dirt, and when they broke, I could either glue them or make them into a smaller defence work, hence the little one-man thing on the left-hand end. These are all taken from the storage sheds and Sand-bagged post in the Forward Command Post (CP) set.

Top right are actually Bellona, who are dealt with in the next post down. Note how the original painted sandbag guard-post is shot-to-bits with cracks, the Airfix vac-forms were among the thinnest in the business. Basing - as in the pile of stores from Bellona makes for a much more rigid plaything.

About fifteen years ago I tried to cast the Cantina from the AMT/MPC/Airfix Star Wars vac-formed play-set base (made far more substantially than the earlier stuff), but thought I'd be clever by using wall-plaster mixed with PVA/wood-glue and water at a 1:1 ratio, six months later it was still damp, and I managed to destroy both the moulding and the base, separating one from the other! Still, if you don't try, you don't learn...Airfix purists would hate to know what I've done to boxes over the years teaching myself how to renovate them, Ha-hah!

Atlantic were also a prolific maker of 'value-added' bases, and painted theirs to boot! If you call that 'painting'? These are from the medium-sized sets of Wild West, and were designed to fit together as they are photographed. Inside the fold-out cover of the box, there is an illustration suggesting a 1E and 1F to come, as far as I know, they have never seen the light of day?

Variations of 1A, note how the upper one has had a better defined paint job than the lower one, these look - upon a quick glance - to have been airbrushed, but closer inspection reveals they have been done with sponge in the traditional way, Messerschmitt fuselage uppers - oh I remember it well, grey finger-nails for a week!...with a duck-egg blue undercoat...the fingers as well as the fuselage!!!

The bases are very smooth however, so there must be some sort of protective coating applied after painting, in a semi-silk finish. Given the number of vac-forms Atlantic indulged in, and given that the colours don't run into each other, i.e.; Were allowed to dry between stages, it's no wonder they went bust, their labor-costs must have been horrendous, even if they were paying peanuts to the poorer workers in the South.

One of the smaller play-sets from the 'modern' sets, there were umpteen of these in all sizes, I'm showing this one as it was meant to be cut into even smaller vac-formlettes! as can be seen in the arrowed flier. Note also how the vac-forms in the flier are a darn-sight better painted than the ones that left the factory...disappointment being another good reason for eventual bankruptcy!

V is for Vac-forms, Part 2 - Bellona Battlefields, Powerplay Battleground & Efka Battle-Ho-Rama

Bellona set on the left, this is one of the smaller sets from Micro Mould Plastics (Unifax group), and they have appeared in various header-cards over the years, all white, and green that I know of and were sold as Bellona, Mico Mold, and Almark, they also supplied some to Roco Minitanks. I've recently seen it said Bellona were 'Always in a dark brown colour', as will become apparent further down the post, they actually came in a wide verity of colours, from pure white and grey to dark olive covering most shades of sand and fawn on the way! I'm also pretty sure the upper cottage of the two was copied by Skytrex in 1:300 scale lead!

To the right a Battleground set, these were made in Stockport in the UK, by Power Play/Mainstream Products, but seem to have been mostly sold in the US, probably so's not to get into a major war with Bellona. Some sets are similar to Bellona, others however, are quite unique. There seem to have been at least 18 in the rage of which I now know of 13.

To the left are a couple of Battle-Ho-Rama's from Efka, which I am pretty sure is a Belgian company, Unlike Battleground, these are all straight copies on Bellona ideas, tweaked to be less than identical. On the right we see the Bellona 'Small Bridge' with the Efka copy - Campaign Bridge with 2 machine-gun posts - behind, their walls, tents and gun-positions are all equally similar, and the 'Albert Canal' base in the bigger bag is clearly aping Bellona's 'Canal Wharf' set.

Going back to the bridges, you can see two treatments, either cutting them out with the culvert filled and painting it a dark colour, which leaves a little strength in a flimsy moulding (bough-in in a mixed lot of tat), or as I began to do (20+ years ago!), base it and cut out the culvert arches ready to paint 'water', the base giving it a strength that will help it survive a hundred war-games.

Of the various vac-form companies, Bellona seem to have been the most prolific, both in number of sets (40 or more in the final list) and in production, model shops still had large quantities of these to shift in the late '90's. Top right shows a couple of roofed bunkers, quite a few of both Bellona's and Efka's pieces were of this 'constructional' type, they called for a steady hand with the knife/scissors!

Here we see more examples of mine and another's work's to strengthen/enhance them for war-gaming, A) shows the basing of the set to the left, with two different approaches to cutting it out, the other guy (far left) will get cracks forming inward from the acute angles he's cut at the back of the position, cutting straight, on the flat area of 'waste' sheet prevents that, basing gives stability. B) Filling the gaps in a tightly-trimmed piece and starting to landscape with door-mat beatings.

C) shows a plaster-cast I've taken from the shell-scrape to the right, you can make quite a few castings before the vac-form starts to suffer damage. D) Is two treatments of a shell scrape to show in the upper example; a 'usable' (by troops) 'shell-scrape', in the lower one; a mud-filled 'shell-hole'. Humm...not much difference between shell-hole and hell-hole, huh?

The wall's (top left); Showing the way I created the one in the middle, first I cut the ends off two short sections (I couldn't wait for Tangley or Concord Models to get the long lengths in!) and glued them together before highlighting the 'gaps' in the dry-stone with matt black (1), then painted the stones in one-at-a-time with different shades of grey, keeping the darker 'Atlantic Grey' as the predominant shade (2) and finally dry-brushed in pale gray before flocking the base with saw-dust 'scatter'. Twenty-plus years and I've got one length finished!! Ah...you either collect, or war-game, or model, if you try to do all three you're bound to fail at at-least two of them!

I've also shown made and unmade corner pieces, note there are at least four colours/shades of plastic here, if someone tells you otherwise, send them here!

Again Efka produced a very similar sheet (I recon - if treated the same as mine they'd be hard to tell apart), but with angled sections at about 50% and a strange corner piece that meant you couldn't produce a usable enclosure (or 'run') from even two sheets?

The Bellona tentage, I seem to have lost the pup-tents that came with this set, but they were a bit shite! I added flaps to the bell-tents (a common design dating from before the Crimean War until well after WWII, and taking in most of the main campaigns of the Colonial period and the ACW.

The other tent is a bit of a dead-loss, can't get it to look realistic enough for my taste and if I re-did it now, I'd replace my rather weird attempt at a rolled up door with something bunched in ties, from tissue-paper. Efka went with a slightly more plausible medieval looking thing, but binned the Bell-tents for two horrendous 'coconut-shies' and had a similar number of blobby Pup-tents.