Thanks to Dave Glasco, I’ve now got pictures of Marine Corps unit insignia, so they’ll be in the rotation.  So the current schedule is the crest for the USS John C. Stennis (aircraft carrier), then the crest for the 12th Marine Regt, then an as yet undetermined Air Force unit.

Usually I base my decisions on what to model next on deployments.  For instance, the John C. Stennis is currently deployed to the Persian gulf.  I get my “deployment intelligence” by googling for news stories about deployed units.  Sometimes, I use a different standard, like in the case of the 12th Marine Regt.  I was looking at pictures of crests and just liked the looks of this one.  It’s an attractive design and doesn’t have an eagle.  I’ve made 4 different eagles in the last two weeks and will be working on the 5th one shortly.  Gettin’ a little tired of eagles.  I’m doing it to myself, though, since only one of those eagles was by request.

Anyway, here’s what I have so far.  I’ve been working on the ship.  It’s kind of a weird angle.  There will be a lot of changes to what’s already there for the ship.  Once I have all the parts made I’ll be changing heights and blending them together to make it more cohesive.

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I’ve just uploaded the 16th Field Artillery Regiment crest to the site.  This completes the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division.  Next up will be the Military Police emblem.  No request, but I made a pistol for the Seal Trident so this is basically low hanging fruit.  I expect to have that up tomorrow, then I start rotating between Navy, Army, and Air Force units.

For the moment Marine Corps emblems will be by request only for the simple reason that I’m having trouble finding good pictures to work from.  The US Army Institute of Heraldry handles the emblems for the other services but the Marine Corps has their own group to handle their emblems.

So if you know where to find pictures of Marine Corps emblems please let me know in the comments.

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The USMC rank is completed, uploaded, and available on the site.  I’ve updated the combo pack to include Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force ranks, no change to the pricing.

Next up (barring a request) is the 16th Field Artillery Regiment which will complete the 4th ID 2nd Brigade Combat Team.

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I’m still making components for the Marine Corps rank insignia.  The Eagle Globe and Anchor goes in the center of the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps rank.  I’ll need to make a bomb for Master Gunnery Sergeant, but right now I’m modelling an M14 for the rest of the rank.  I need crossed rifles, and they look like M14’s.  And as with the E G and A and the Great Seal, if I have to make it I’m going to make a good one that I can use for other items, so I’m modelling a full M14.  This won’t be offered for sale as a stand alone model, rather it will be a component I’ll use in future models.

So far I’ve done seven 2 rail sweeps.  Once I get all the parts made I’ll fit them together and do whatever sculpting I need.  The stock is 1 sweep but using 7  profiles. 

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I have just added the US Marine Corps Eagle Globe and Anchor emblem to the site.

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I finished the Seal Trident and posted it to the site.  Next up, back to working on the Marine Corps rank insignia.

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By request I’m making the US Navy Seal emblem.  Any requested item will always have priority over non-requested items, and since no one asked for the Marine rank it’s on the back burner.

I mentioned this to someone in an email this morning but thought I’d put it out there.  My goal is to offer every unit insignia for every military unit in the world.  If someone makes a request for a specific unit I don’t consider that custom work, I just move that unit up in the queue.  Even if no one requests it I’ll eventually make it anyway so doing it sooner is no problem.

Needless to say my initial non-requested offerings will be mostly US and European simply because that’s where CNC machines are most prevalent.  And since I loathe Chavez, Kirchner, and Imadinnerjacket Venezuela, Argentina, and Iran are not high on my list.

Trident, anchor, and pistol for the Seal emblem.

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My previous post was mostly about the problems I’ve been having with vodahost.  I got moved from customer service to server technician to server administration without anyone really knowing what to do.  Then this morning I had an email from customer service again, so I figured I was starting all over again.  But this time was different.  When I emailed my reply, Hank, my new CS agent, actually responded in the same day.  And fixed the problem.  Holy mackerel, someone there has a clue!  That’s two people out of around 10 that had a clue.  So I wanted to give credit where due.  So the two people are Hank and …Hank?  Wait a minute, this is the same guy that fixed my earlier problem.  Well, at least there’s one person there with a clue.

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Well, it’s been a struggle but I finally managed to get some new models loaded to the site, as well as a slight re-design.  Aside from the rank previously mentioned I’ve also added 305th MI Bn unit crest by request.

Now for the struggle part:  I can’t publish to the website using the site builder or the ftp program that comes with it.  I can upload a few files at a time using Vodahost’s web ftp file manager, but they keep blocking me.  I keep having to reboot my router to get assigned a new ip.  So tonight I’ve rebooted my router about 15 times in order to get all the pics uploaded.  I also got the new pages uploaded by previewing them in Firefox, saving the page source, then uploading that via ftp.

In a nutshell, vodahost customer service is worthless.  It appears that each shift change someone notices my ticket is still open, sends me an email saying something inane like “I’ve rebooted the firewall, try it now.”  Believe it or not this is the response I got after the third escalation.  I tried it, and emailed back that it didn’t make any difference 15 hours ago.  I suspect that I’ll have an email from them waiting for me in the morning suggesting I reboot my computer but hold my tongue out the side of my mouth and squint so the computer will think I’m serious about it.

So, to make a long story no shorter, I’m shopping for new hosting.  At least with all the rigmarole I’ve gone through to get my pages uploaded I now know I can use their web page generator for any hosting.

Anyway, here’s some pics of the new stuff.  Marine Corps rank should be ready in a day or two.

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but not available.  I’m having hosting problems, and while the models have been uploaded to my fulfilment provider I’m unable to access my site to provide links to them.  They’re working on it so hopefully it will all be up soon.

In the mean time, I’m sort of working on Marine Corps rank.  By that I mean I’m doing the Eagle, Globe and Anchor that I can then use on 1 enlisted rank insignia.  This is similar to the way I ended up doing the Great Seal despite having no desire to offer it.  I needed the Seal for 2 enlisted ranks so I made a full size one so I could offer it separately.  Similarly I’ll be offering the E,G, and A as a stand along product.

I will update again when the rank is available on the web site.

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