Painting handles

I've designed and printed my own painting handles to help hold the miniatures that I recently started to paint.

When I used to do this, 30 years ago, I awkwardly held the bases, because I didn't know any other way. More recently I tend to fix things that I want to paint, on to bits of timber, often using sticky tack  (Blu Tack, White Tack, etc..)

Catching up with modern trends, I see most people using a comfortable looking handle with the miniature clamped or stuck in place.

There are a number on the market or available as 3D print files, of various shapes and sizes. Some with added features, like finger rests and clamps. I have bought a Citadel handle and that is great for miniatures with some shapes of bases but it is not really versatile.

There was no one handle that stood out as being exactly what I wanted. Of course, that led me to come up with my own.

I've now had the opportunity to use my own take on a handle and it was exactly what I hoped for. In use, I did not think about the handle and was easily able to move the model into the position I needed.

I've only used the stick on version, so far, but I've designed and printed 3 variants ready for different situations. 

A magnetic holder using a 16mm diameter x 5mm deep magnet, held on using a countersunk M3 nut and bolt.

A version that fits a cork, so wire can be pushed into it and the one I expect to use the most, a flat top for sticking things to it.

All three are designed to print unsupported on either a resin or a filament printer.

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Download:

Painting Handles STL and STEP files (zip)

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In-car reminder binnacle

This evolved out of a comment made about remembering to help out a neighbour on the way home every Monday. I could not resist coming up with a solution.

It was quickly thrown together, over a couple of weekends, using an off the shelf 12V timer that can be set for times and days of the week.

I designed and 3D printed a small binnacle that fits neatly in the corner of a Land Rover Defender TDCi (Puma) dash. It's vaguely in the same style as the rest of the display. I bought some pre-wired 12V LED's and had my choice of colour for the light.

The timer fits on the shelf next to the steering column. As always the longest task was taking the dash apart to find an ignition switched feed and an earth.

I used a Cricut vinyl cutter to make the lettering. It is printed in reverse to apply to some satin translucent plastic sheet. With the light off, the legend is barely visible. The lettering could easily be swapped out.

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Ready for the swallows

The swallows took advantage of the relocated stables last year while the new shed was being built.  I am expecting them to be eager to establish new homes this summer.

During the build, I'd taken advantage of the scaffold tower to put up a couple of artificial nests. Today I put up two salvaged nests.

We've done this before when we demolished previous dilapidated outbuildings. I've tried to pick spots similar to locations that the swallows choose for themselves. They appear to like them in the shadows. I've also added some perches. I have noticed that the adult swallows like to line up outside their nests when they are building them and when feeding their young. The young fledglings like to return to perch near to their nest.

The nests are light enough that they are easily held up with a liberal application of builders adhesive. From past experience, we know that the swallows will repurpose and repair the salvaged nests.

We are looking forward to them arriving.

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Solution to the OneDrive Personal Vault login

I have used OneDrive online, for many years and find it very useful. 

There are features I could moan about, but nothing too significant, with the online version.

However, like many others, using OneDrive to synchronise my personal folders to a computer has been mildly traumatic.

I work in IT so I experience this sort of thing all the time, and it never ceases to amaze me the choices that some developers take.

That moan over, the OneDrive setup did two things that caused me problems, both I managed to solve in very similar ways.

Too Many Folder

It would not have been my choice of default, but upon enabling OneDrive to backup to the cloud it automatically started to synchronise the 10's of thousands of files I had stored in organised folder in OneDrive online! All I wanted was the standard Documents folder with my current working files in it.

My laptop ground to a near halt, making it very difficult to access the options to disable sync., on the folders I did not want.

By pausing the sync, I eventually managed to reduce it to the standard minimal set. Although I have a feeling it might need to sync everything before it let me change it. I know it took a while.

Repeatedly Authenticating the Personal Vault

This is the most annoying issue. It breaks OneDrive synchronisation. It shows as an error inside the app, and appears to stop. The error is because it cannot open the Personal Vault folder because it is locked.

To get past the error, the Personal Vault needs to be manually unlocked, every session. That is even if the vault is empty and has never been used!

According to reports on the internet, Microsoft have removed the option to disable the Personal Vault, as a solution to people losing files.

Solution

I am not sure if the following need to be done in the correct order to avoid accidentally deleting the online copies of the files and folders. I was able to stop synchronising the folder that I did not need on my local machine. The actions I did were:

• Stop folders from synchronising (not applicable to the Personal Vault.)

• Remove the local copy.

The option to stop a folder synchronising is in the Account option of the OneDrive app on the computer.. After I had stopped them sync'ing, the day after, the folders disappeared from the OneDrive tree in Windows Explorer.

What was a surprise to me, was that by deleting the local copy of the "Personal Vault" folder, from the OneDrive -Personal tree section in Windows Explorer, The OneDrive app no longer attempted to synchronise it.

The Personal Vault folder has re-instated itself, but, so far, after three days, I have not had the error about unlocking the personal vault.

Conclusion

In typical IT fashion, these instructions may only remain valid for a short period of time, it's March 2025 as I write this, and in the same way, they may not work for everyone. They worked for me and my laptop is usable again.

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This seasons nest boxes

Last year, with the building works, was a bit of a change for the bird population, but they appeared to adapt well. This year we've been able to add a few more places for them to nest.

Within minutes of putting them up we saw interest from a few blue tits.

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Miniature Painting... again

It's been over 30 years since I last painted miniatures. In between I've painted model cars and some artwork on bikes, but not very often. I was inspired by a friends Warhammer hobby to try painting a few miniatures again, for a bit of relaxation. I have not started yet, but the world has changed.

When I last did this, I learnt one technique at a time from a magazine or by talking to other people at clubs. While tidying up my old paints, I found my little blue book. This contains my notes on mixing specific colours, what they worked for and what techniques to use. I had just started to get the hang of washes and dry brushing when I stopped.

Now, whatever I want to know and more techniques than I can even remember, let alone master, are available at the click of a button with an almost endless choice of video tutorials.

For my own benefit, I'm keeping this list of resources for reference:

Layer painting colour charts:

Layer painting is the most common technique used for miniatures. Simple to understand, but still needs practice. It uses multiple layers, usually starting at the darkest and working up to the highlights. Each layer covering less and less of the area with brighter and brighter tones.

To help pick the colours, there are a number of charts and guides available.

Citadel do an app, which I might use. Pick a base colour and it will suggest, from their range of paints, the base, mid-tone and highlight layer colours to use. With an example image. Very handy.

https://citadelcolour.com/citadel-colour-the-app/

They also do a handy chart, which I need to find a large enough wall to display it on.

I can't find an official link, but there was a copy to download from this site:

https://spikeybits.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Citadel-Painting-Chart-pdf.pdf

or a higher res image from this site:

https://amulettejewelry.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/citadel-paint-chart-datas.jpg

Colour Theory

I used to mix some of my own paints based on a very vague understanding of pigments and colour theory.

Although I buy miniature specific acrylic paints, I also buy tubes of artists acrylic colours because they tend to come with a better range of hews in the primary colours.

There are articles that explain this:

Exploring Color Theory: How to Create Stunning Art with Acrylic Paints — Body Kun

The following article includes this handy colour wheel:

How to Mix Colours When Painting in Acrylics - Blue Beach House Art

Colours next to each other on the colour wheel are secondary colours and the next away is a tertiary colour. That is, they have equal amounts of the colour between them and their neighbour mixed in. 

Temperature is used to describe the colours. Warmer colours are towards the red and yellow and cooler colours are towards the blue and green. So a slightly purple red, is called a cool red but a slightly orange red is called a warm red.

Opposite colours on the colour wheel are complimentary colours. When complimentary colours are mixed they produce black, browns and greys.

Acrylics vs Oils

I only use water based paints, except when I have no alternative. For whatever reason, prolonged exposure to oil based paints, or their thinners, always make it hard for me to breath. This applies to decorating the house or painting miniatures.

For that reason I use water based acrylic paint and did, even 30 years ago.

Most of my modern paints are by Vallejo, however my older pots are a mix of Citadel, Tamiya and Humbrol.

Aside

While I was tidying up my paints and sorting out the, over 30 year old, acrylic colours I had, I was surprised that quite a few of my paints were still in a usable state. Some had set solid, but a number had formed a gel. With a bit of water and mixing they returned to a usable pigment.

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Blender Add-ons and tips for 3D printing

These are tools and techniques I'm trying out to help create meshes suitable for 3D printing. That is manifold and non-intersecting.

3D Print Toolbox

This is a useful set of tools for analysing a 3D model. It can identify if the mesh is non-manifold and  if it has intersecting faces.

https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/print3d-toolbox/

Press the "Solid" or "Intersections" buttons to generate the statistics on the selected object.

I do not use the "Clean Up" tools. They are not as effective, in my opinion, as other methods.

Creating a Manifold Mesh

My preferred method is to join my meshes together into one object then use the Remesh Modifier.

Joining Meshes into One Object (simple and quick)

This is the fairly basic method of adding several meshes into one object.

In Object mode, select the first object then use [SHIFT][LMB] to select others.

When they are all selected, press [CTRL][J].

They will all merge into the first of the selected objects.

Remesh Modifier

I have found this a fairly reliable method to make a tidy manifold mesh out of a mess. The result is suitable for 3D printing, however, none of the options retained the originals quality.

Remesh Modifier - Blender 4.3 Manual

In my experience, only a Voxel remesh creates a manifold non-intersecting mesh. The other options, such as Sharp with an Octree depth of 10 or above, produced a better quality result, but did not help for 3D printing.

Sharp with Octree Depth = 10

The quality depends a lot on the original model.

My preferred solution to create a manifold and non-intersecting mesh, suitable for 3D printing is to use the Voxel setting, with a size of 0.03mm. That is the thinnest layer that my resin 3D printer will produce.

Remesh Voxel Size = 0.03mm

Original Version

However, it's important to keep the original model, should I need to make any edits. The remesh is always the last process just as a means of satisfying the slicer software.

This gave good enough results, and the time to process was acceptable.

For larger, or complex models, this produced a lot of vertices. 34 million in one case. As I only usually print at a resolution of 50µm (micrometres), 0.05mm, for those models, I remesh at 0.05mm.

I'll continue to experiment with this.

For scenery, where the detail is not so critical, a Voxel Remesh, with a size of 0.05mm or even 0.1mm was sufficient and quick.

Apply the modifier to be able to check the result.

The Voxel remesh is also useful to make models used for boolean difference cuts. I have found that large faces often do not cut or join very well with the boolean tools. Remeshing can help.

Separating Parts of a Mesh

In Edit mode, select the vertices to include in another object of their own and press [P].

If the vertices are all connected, using [L] to select all connected vertices is a quick way to remove whole areas.

An Alternative to Individual Boolean Unions

This method leaves a hollow shell using a Cube with a Boolean Intersect modifier.

The result is similar to using boolean unions on individual mesh objects. In my attempts to use boolean unions on lots of detailed meshes, I found that it was very time consuming and would often fail. By using the cube with an intersection, all of the individual parts are made one in a single boolean operation.

Using the cube method does not create a manifold mesh, which is disappointing.

The method to create a single mesh is:

Create or import a model made of intersecting parts.

Join all objects in to one object using [Ctrl][J].

Create a cube larger than the object. Make sure it encompasses the whole object.

Add a boolean modifier to the Cube.

Set to "intersect".

Add the multi-part object to it.

And wait.

When done, Apply that modifier.

And wait again.

The result should be a single mesh but, probably, with lots of self intersecting faces.

Auto-Merge Vertices

This is off by default, but when trying to create or keep a mesh manifold, my prior experience is that it is easier if this is on.

In Edit Mode, top right of the window.

It does sometimes make unwanted connections but they are less than the confusion of the mesh looking visually correct but still having a hole in it.

It does this as you go, it does not fix all existing doubled up vertices.

Merge all Duplicate Vertices in an Existing Mesh

This is useful for fixing exiting meshes.

In edit mode, select all the vertices [A].

Use the right click menu or [M] to merge vertices.

"By Distance" is probably the most appropriate to use.

I work in millimetres so the default distance of 0.0001 is probably appropriate.

It's useful to have the Scene Statistics enabled to see it do something.

Show the Vertices Count, Scene Statistics

This is useful when carrying out several remedial tasks.

Simply [RIGHT-CLICK] on the status bar at the bottom of the Blender Window.

Tick to enable "Scene Statistics"

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