Review - Products East Riding Miniatures, MDF Bases

I have been asked a few times what I use for bases and I must admit to being a little bone idal when it comes to basing, in addition I have an enduring allergy to right angles that means when I cut something its a less than reasonable approximation to 90 degrees. In order to overcome these rather irritating traits I resort to buying pre cut MDF bases which I generally buy from East Riding Miniatures. Four reasons:

• Good range of base sizes and shapes.
• Superbly consistant quality
• Reasonable price
• Un-erringly good service

Before looking at the products its probably worth mentioning why I base as its a bit of a personal choice, for me

• Makes the Model looks good
• Protects the model from rough handling
• Reduces the amount of grease from fingers getting onto paint jobs
• Allows for Handling during painting, I always base then paint

on the down side its less hot when the wagons are on roads, and adds an amount of effort into the production process.

All of the products are laser cut from 2mm thick MDF and come in a range of shapes and sizes to either metric or imperial measurements.  Of those available I currently use three

• Square cut bases,
• Round bases
• Slota bases for figures

Over the last few years I have evolved my basing to a fairly standard sizing:

• Sp Weapons and Aircraft. Are based on Circular bases of 40mm or 60mm Diameter, if they dont fit on either of these sizes they go on a CD ROM.

• Medium Trucks. 40mm x 80mm,  In this category go the larger utility vehicles HMMWVs, 1 Tonne Landrovers, Gaz 66 Trucks and 3 tonne trucks such as the British Bedford or Stalwart.

• Lt Wheeled AFVs 50mm x 80mm, BRDM2s  

• heavy Wheeled AFVs and Large Trucks, 50mm x 100mm mostly for 8 wheeler APCs but also the larger Sovite trucks.

• Lt Tracked AFVs 50mm x 90mm, mostly tracked APCs and IFVs such as BMP, FV 432, Warrior but also including the smaller Soviet Tanks T-55, T-34

• Medium Tracked AFVs 60mm x 100mm, Cheiftain, T-72 and T-80

• Heavy Tracked AFVs 60mm x 120mm, used for larger MBTs and Artillery Systems such as Chellenger, M1, 2S6 

• Minefields 6 inches x 6 inches used for either Scatmin or deliberate minefields

Whilst I base all my figures individually, the slota bases produced by East Riding create an attractive way to squad base. The bases again are Pre cut and drilled for figures based on pennies and offer great flexibility allowing you to scale up from skirmish games.

All up a useful range of products which keep me producing at a far higher rate than if I had to produce my own.

Posted with Blogsy

Review - Product, Coresec Flight Stands

Corsec Engineering are a US company offering a wide range of flight stands and other gameing accessories.  As I am currently working a large Soviet Airmobile force I thought I would take a look at what they have to offer to see if they were worth buying.  The Aircraft I am aiming to mount using the Corsec system are 20mm or 1/72 plastic aircraft from the cold war.  The majority are helicopters which suit quite small stands in the 1" - 3" category although the aircraft needed something with a bit more height.

In addition some of the models notably the Mi 26 Halo and Mi 6 Hook are not small and you need a degree of assurance with larger models that what your building is robust.  Having reviewed the product range I went for:

• 20mm plastic bases

• 3" screw top flight stands

• 17" Telescopic Flight stands

• Mounting pegs

The flight stands have been made by attaching the 20mm bases to either CD Roms for the large Helicopters or High Flying aircraft and 60mm laser cut MDF bases from East Riding Miniatures.  Whilst I have yet to use the product and the resulting stands in action I have been very impressed with the service, the quality of the products, the ease of use and the ease of storage.  

Drilling a 5mm hole in the base of the aircraft and inserting and gluing a mounting peg sorts the aircraft end of the problem.

Glueing the plastic base ti the CD ROM or MDF base sorts the other after that you just screw in the rod to the base of the aircraft and the stand and your done.  Which is an immensly time efficient solution compared to most methods I have tried.  In addition it all collapses for storage - so in summary:

• excellent product
• excellent service
• simple time efficient solution