HOW TO MAKE A CAR BURNING (SCENERY AND TERRAIN)

Today I want to share with you how to make a burning car that looks ok on the game table, and with the plus that it seems that it is burning to make it more realistic ...

Starting on the post I made about vehicles to play wargames in 28mm (if you want to see it click HERE), I have selected a typical 1/43 scale car, the kind you can find at any gas station. To this choice we will add a fake led candle, the typical ones that we find anywhere at a bargain price.

We disassemble the vehicle in all its parts, some are disassembled in one way, others in another way, but ALL can be disassembled. If you do not know what assembly mode they have, use logic, and if that fails, use force... we are going to make a wrecked vehicle, who cares if it is damaged?

To my surprise, the vehicle I have chosen has a removable roof, but hey, it doesn't matter, it's exactly the same as any car that has the roof fixed.

Once disassembled we proceed to cut the front windows with kitchen scissors, to give the effect that the front windows are lowered or broken.

If you are going to put the vehicle on a base, keep the pieces of plastic to put it on the base as pieces of shattered glass, as it is not my case and it will go without a base, I discard them and throw them away.

Now let's go with the candle. The first thing is to disassemble it, and once it is disassembled, we will cut out all the parts that we don´t need when fitting it into the car, and then we proceed to paint all the parts in black.

Now we will adapt the interior and underbody of the car so that the candle can fit inside without problems. We will cut the front seats and once we have the rear ones loose we will glue them to the interior of the car.

With the bottom we will do a similar thing, we will cut the entire central part so that the candle fits, and the two parts we keep (front and rear) we will glue to the car.

With this we achieve a vehicle that is empty inside and below, so that we can place our candle inside.

We have the car almost ready, so let's get on with the smoke. For this we will take a few pieces of cotton and we will give them a light layer of black with a cheap black spray.

To hold the pieces of cotton we will use some special pieces that can be purchased in specific stores... no way... if you use two wooden sticks it is more than enough...

As we are changing the whole car, we are going to do a couple of details that look great on wrecked vehicles, and one of those details is the bullet holes in the windows.

For the bullet impacts we will use a nail, a wire or a fine precision screwdriver, we heat it with a lighter and when it is hot we go through the plastic of the glass, making a clear hole.

Once the hole is made, we proceed to scratch a "spider web" with a exacto knife, making it like a fragmented glass.

Then, using the same exacto knife technique, we will proceed to make a "spider web" on the front glass, to simulate that it has exploded due to the heat of the flames or any previous impact.

Once these details are done, what we will do is paint in the vehicle the marks that the fire would have left on it, focusing on the roof and the lower part of the windows.

We will use black and chocolate brown in the proportions that we see ok. The good thing about being a wrecked vehicle is that we can  test techniques, no matter hoe bad we do them.

Once we are happy with how it has been painted, we place the candle inside it and glue the pieces of cotton that will serve as smoke, and then... we have finished our vehicle burning in a realistic way.

Now we get to the best part...

Once we have finished the car, we press the switch below, and it will make the candle light up, giving that burning vehicle effect that we have been looking for since we started the post.

I hope you like the photos and videos, I have added some miniatures to give the scene more real effect.

And now that you have seen how I have done it ... I WANT TO SEE HOW YOU DO IT !!!

HOW TO MAKE AN ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN AND A SEARCHLIGHT (TERRAIN AND SCENERY)

Well, we continue with the tutorials to make low cost terrain and scenery for our games.

We start from the basis that there are anti-aircraft models and searchlights like these in model kits or miniatures for wargames, but their price is quite high if we are only going to use them as scenery and if we combine it with that when playing alone all the cost of the table falls on us...

For a next game I needed a German Anti-Aircraft gun as a target, and I thought to add an anti-aircraft searchlight to give more atmosphere to the scenario.

So the first thing was to create an anti-aircraft gun out of cheap materials, or even better, out of recycled materials, which have the virtue of being free.

With more enthusiasm than anything else, and without knowing very well how to carry it out, I set to work to create my own lowcost anti-aircraft gun.

I collected lollipop sticks, small discarded foam cardboard cutouts, a couple of wooden stirring sticks, and a piece of cardboard from a cookie box ...

With the foam cardboard we make the structure of the anti-aircraft, and we glue it with hot glue, using the wood sticks as a base.

We use the four lollipop sticks making cannons, and sticking them with normal glue into a piece of foam cardboard.

Finally, with the cardboard of the cookie box, we make the armored shield for the anti-aircraft gun.

With a cheap paint spray that we find almost anywhere we give it a coat of paint and ... Voila !!!!

Now, it only rests to give it some detail and dirt it a bit to give it a more real look (if possible, of course).

As a tip, after having done it, I would tell you that instead of lollipop sticks, use cotton bud sticks to clean your ears. They are thinner, they fit better and they are easier to find at home.

And once the anti-aircraft gun was finished, we went on to make a searchlight ...

For this we will collect a few recycled materials, a cap from a gum can, a plastic water bottle, some pieces of foam cardboard cutouts and a toy car.

From the base of the water bottle we cut a circle that fits the cap we have, but we do not glued it in place.

With the pieces of foam cardboard we make the structure of the searchlight, and we leave a hole underneath to place the wheels.

We glue the plastic cap on the structure and give it a coat of paint with a cheap spray paint of the appropriate color.

Once the paint dries, we glue the plastic circle that we cut from the base of the water bottle to the cap.

And finally, we remove the wheels from the toy car and put them on the structure.

All that remains is to give it some detail and get it dirty so that it looks fine on the game table.

Total cost of both pieces: NOTHING, and as an objective or scenery they will be nice in the game table. The level of quality of these pieces will depend on the ability, skill and level of demand of each one.

Many will think that it is a rather poor solution, but we have to see it from the perspective of a person who plays alone and assumes the cost of everything (miniatures of both sides, scenery, painting ...) so I hope that it will be good for some of you.