Friday, February 1, 2013

15mm French House for Napoleonics to WWII - DS

I picked this building in the late 80s on a trip to Baltimore.  Let's just say, it has been sitting around for a while waiting to be painted.  It is from the now defunct games and miniatures distributor Armory Distribution Inc.   This building was made by one of their side companies Gallia.

I paid a call on the Armory during a trip visiting relatives.  The owner's son, Skip Lipmann, gave me a tour of the facility.  They had just opened up a retail store front as I guess Baltimore didn't have any gaming stores to speak of.  Skip was a nice guy and I enjoyed the couple of conversations we had over the years talking shop and gaming.  Armory Distribution was a typical warehouse full of all the products needed to stock hobby stores.  It smelled of cardboard!  Having worked in a warehouse before that smell always makes me nostalgic.

The production area for Gallia was located inside the warehouse and consisted of a couple of  long work  tables attended by an older woman, whose name I do not recall. She checked the orders, poured the resin, and packed the final products to be shipped.

Incidentally, the terrain boards I use to photograph the figures on were a product line made by Skip.  They are 1' x 1' styrofoam and have a couple different different features on them.  There are roads, rivers, creeks, depressions/ditches, and shoreline.  A couple of them have a painted green or straw colored area that one might use for forests or wheatfields.  Skip found a spray flock for the grass that made production quicker than gluing it down by hand.  They are nice and convenient but not great.  I would like to try my hand at making some more realistic and varied terrain boards someday.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments