Welcome to Field Scraps, a scratch building warhammer blog. I am Michael, the owner of this blog. So, here’s a little about myself. I am 28 years old and have been involved in the warhammer hobby going on 17 years. I can still remember wandering into the back of a model shop, seeing the table with the flocked hills and that big blocky red… thing standing on the hill with a large pair of cannons for an arm. The thing was actually an old style Blood Angels dreadnought, but it was enough to get me hooked. Now here I am 17 years later. I’ve played dozens of armies, amassed a rather hefty collections of parts and pieces, and a plethora of tools and paints. So why did I start this blog?
Well, about a year and a half ago I was laid off from my job. With no regular source of income, and thinking it was just a short term situation, my warhammer playing went on hold for a while. Well the short term situation has continued on. While I get short term and seasonal jobs here and there, I have yet to land to a regular job or procure a means of income to amount to much. Well, I’ve had to find ways to entertain myself. Problem is, I like building things. Things like models. And Models take money. And money is something I have little of.
One day I was bored and I happened upon a set of templates for a Hell Blade. With nothing better to do I gave it a whirl and built it. Using some scrap cardboard I had lying around I followed the template exactly and finished it in a day. I was less than impressed with the end result so I stuck on the shelf next to my desk and went to doing whatever else I could find to keep my attention. I can remember looking over at the cardboard model and thinking about what I didn’t like about it. And then I started to think about what I would change about it. And then how I would change it. Before long I had Photoshop open, a note book out, a ruler in hand and was making notes in the note book and drawing shapes in Photoshop that would eventually amount to a modified template for the Hell Blade.
That was when I truly realized what “Scratch Building” meant. It’s not about putting a box on the table and calling it a tank. It’s about putting your tank on the table. It’s about being able to point to a flyer and say “I made that”, not just that you built the kit. So it is in that spirit that I founded this blog.
Heavily influenced by In the Grim Cheapness of the future, Field Scraps is about making good models on a budget. The idea being use what you have and try to avoid buying materials unless there is absolutely no other way to accomplish it. It’s amazing what you will find you can do when you have to improvise.
