Next week (1 Oct through 5 Oct) I will be out of town (in Boston) for a software testing conference, so email responses will be rather slow. Alison will be here and production will continue, but at a slightly slower pace.

I’ve been fiddling with ways to produce some pre-painted tank models and I think I have a system (mostly) down that will allow us to produce these. I’m still working on the first test models, and they are coming out well. The base model I’m working with right now is the Bloodaxe T-34, so we are not talking about a highly detailed model, but something very functional on the table top. The models are assembled (soldered, not glued) and painted in our shop (made and painted in Wisconsin!). The paint jobs are simple and the models will be ready for the game table as soon as you take them out of the box (of course, you may to add additional details).

I’m still working on making some of the process a bit easy/quicker to complete. Once I have all the steps simplified as much as possible, I’ll be showing Alison how it all works. From there we can begin production. The first completed models should be on display (and for sale) at Rock-Con in November. When I get back from Boston, we should be able to post a few pictures of the current prototypes (you will notice that they have been done with a few different colours – I am still making final paint choices). At this point I should mention our target price; for the T-34s we are presently looking at a price somewhere around $8.00 – this isn’t a firm or final price, but we should be close to this mark when all is said and done.

Assuming this project continues to roll along as well as it has so far, we will continue with the Russian theme and add pre-painted trucks to the line up. After that, well we shall see how things go. I’ll likely take a look at the n-gauge models next – since these were created for Afrika Korps games, they will be done in a desert scheme. If nothing else, we will accomplish getting the n-gauge tanks into new molds, so even if the pre-paint project doesn’t pan out the raw castings will be cleaner than they ever have been.

As you can see, we are as ever working on way too many projects, but the good news is that we are having fun!