Another Building

I had so much fun with the Bakehouse that I decided to do another building, this time a bit smaller and simpler. I wanted some very rough drystone huts, inspired by this; 

"Four tumbledown one-room houses of un-mortared stone surrounded an empty sheepfold and a well.  The houses were roofed with sod, the windows shuttered with ragged pieces of hide"

Clash of Kings p185

I remembered the Sod Houses in the old 'Tragedy of McDeath' warhammer pack and thought these might be about the right size and shape. I don't think they made it over to the Warhammer Townscape set, but I still had copies of my original, and I even found my first attempt at building one of them. 

One of the sod houses from McDeath made, as was all my terrain at the time from thick card covered in filler.

There are two different huts in McDeath that do duty for the clans in the first game, the malters in the second, and the orcs and goblins in the third.  I chose the smaller as a base to see if my ideas worked. 

The walls are made from offcuts of XPS foam. When I make some more I'll cut pieces specially, these pieces were slightly different widths and in some cases of varying thickness. 

I traced the plan onto the foam, cut it out with a sharp craft knife and then glued it, pinning it and putting rubber bands round it to keep it square (ish).

I glued some card on the top to help keep things together for the texturing stage.  This will come off later as the original has a timber frame below the roof, so I'll add some balsa. 

Once the glue was dry I drew on a very rough stone pattern with a pencil, then cut into the foam along these lines. Then I deepened the gaps with a sharp pencil. 

I textured the foam with a ball of foil, but I felt it still looked too flat. So using a filing stick I pushed some of the stones further in and also rounded the edges to make the stone look more worn. Now I think it looks pretty good. 

I'll need to give the whole thing a coat of modpodge to strengthen the foam.  There are some bits of balsa to add for the various wooden features.

Then I have to think how to model a sod roof.  Has anyone done this?  If so, please share your techniques.

The Great Terrain Build Off- part six

I've finally finished the Bakehouse. I took longer than I thought, partly because I kept 'messing' with  it, hoping to improve it, but probably making it worse.

I did have a minor disaster when I gave the whole building a wash. This is a step I do as standard when making dungeon terrain, but for the bakehouse I think it made everything too dark, and killed the rather nice brownish tan I had.

Trial painted panels, I went for the one on the left

Still, a couple of drybrushes later and I don't think it looks too bad.  I also added some 'bits' to the base to reinforce the story behind it.   

The woodpile, very important for the bakehouse ovens.  Sticks dried and coated in PVA, then washed in Army Painter soft tone.  I also painted up an axe, but it's gone missing.

That chimney looks suitably impressive

Barrels of something important to the baking, or maybe just small beer for the baker.  Renedra barrels, with a poor join between the two halves.

Sacks of flour ready for use, kitchen towel with a suitable texture folded and soaked in water and PVA glue.

The least interesting angle of the building

The windows were painted black, then when all the rest of the painting, washing and drybrushing was finished, I carefully painted white between the glazing bars.  When everything was dry I used a tip from Merjin's Another Wargaming Blog, Citadel Soulstone Blue for the glass.  I haven't quite got this right, but I'm please with the results, and I'll certainly use this technique again in the future.

I added some moss made from old sawdust flock to the roof and washed some green ink along the edges of the timbers, anywhere where I felt dripping water would allow algae to grow.

If you think the idea of a bakehouse or bakery sounds a bit modern, they date back to at least early medieval times.  It was common practice to leave either flour or unbaked loaves to be baked.  Loaves or cakes would be marked, to identify them after baking.  This is why, in the nursery rhyme 'Pat-a-cake' the cake is marked with a 'B'. 

Well this was never really a competition, but I have enjoyed building this along with Merlin, and seeing how different they turned out. You can see his version here. I have thought what I want to build next, though I may do some very ordinary buildings to try something out first.

The Great Terrain Build Off - Part 5

The Bakehouse is now complete, I just need to paint it and base it.

I used the thick card from envelopes again for the tiles. I had planned to use cereal box card, but I think I prefer the slightly thicker tiles.

Rather than stick individual tiles on I cut strips. Each was 15mm wide and overlapped the roof by 5mm either side. 

I have a craft guillotine, which makes it quicker and easier. 

Then taking three strips at a time I cut in every 8 to 12 mm (roughly) and then clipped off corners, shortened some tiles and generally made them look uneven.

Preparing three strips at once helps add to the random look. 

The main roof and the extension had strips glued on every 7.5mm, I had the lines as guidelines, though they were every 5mm, meaning a bit of fudging, but again, that helps with the hand-crafted look. The lean-to had smaller tiles, I imagine it's a recent addition.

The ridge tiles were glued on as individual tiles, I used one of the folds already present in the envelope, great for this and also for gluing on the edge of buildings. 

I've also gone over the daub, adding a second coat to fill the panels out a bit, and added card hinges to the doors. 

Just the painting to do now, oh, and a base of course. 

The Great Terrain Build Off - Part 4

I see Merlin has been working on his cottage, so I've got a bit further on the Bakehouse.

Like him I have made the windows separately, they will get glued in place as I timber the building. 

I like the effect that Merijin of 'Another Wargames Blog' gets in his Warhammer Townscape builds (he talks further about it here), so I bought some plasterboard tape and cut coffee stir sticks into 2mm wide strips to build some frames.

I laid two 15mm long strips down on masking tape 5mm apart, then cut two more strips for the top and bottom of the frame. 

Then plasterboard tape was carefully placed on top, using the tape to represent glazing bars. The tape is slightly sticky on one side, so this helps keep everything together. 

Then I ran a thin bead of superglue over the joints and the tape where it touched the wood and gave a quick spray of superglue accelerant. 

Apologies for the blurred photo, I hope you can see what is going on here.

Two completed windows

Once I had the windows built I was able to start the timbering. 

I started with the timbers along the base of the building, I presume the builders started out with a wooden frame marking out the footprint of the building. I then moved on to the corners, which ended up as pretty chunky bits of timber. 

I then superglued the windows in place then added balsa around, roughly matching the pattern of the original model. 

I used three different thicknesses of balsa to try to emphasise the main frame and the secondary support timbers, I'm not sure how well this comes out. 

The daub texture was simply filler, watered down slightly to help coverage and applied with a stiff bristled brush. 

Finally the wood for the doors and the lean-to was added, thin balsa with planks marked in first with a craft knife and then with a pencil. 

A bit of extra texture was added to the woodwork simply by carving off a few corners pto make the building look worn.

Next, my favourite bit (not).  Tiling the roof.

The Great Terrain Build Off - Part 3

Still more progress on my version of building 19 from the Warhammer Townscape. You can see part 1 here, and part 2 here.

I've got the base for the roofs done. This is simply a card cover that I will later tile. The card is another delivery envelope from that well known online delivery company; its just a bit thicker and stronger than cereal box card, and I'm tempted to use it for the tiles as well.
I also drew guide lines at 5mm intervals to help when I stick the tiles on later.

I pinned the card in place while the glue dries, after first making holes in the card.

You can see where I've sketched in the positions of the timbers, though I've still not finalised this.

I mentioned previously that I suspected the scanned Warhammer Townscape might not be to scale. A quick bit of comparative measurement proves it, the Townscape is about 115% the size of the originals, at least with the buildings from Terror of the Lichemaster. It doesn't matter of course. In any case I suspect minis themselves have grown more than that in the thirty odd years since original publication.

Next will be timbering and texturing.

The Great Terrain Build Off - Part 2

I've made a bit progress on the Bake House, as I am calling my version of building 19.

I've made a suitably imposing chimney out of an odd piece of XPS foam. I cut a notch so the foam would slot over the wall. The gaps between the stones were lightly penciled in, then I used a scalpel to make cuts along the lines and then textured the foam using crunched up foil. The cuts were deepened with a pencil and I hollowed out the top of the chimney.

The chimney was then glued in place with tacky glue and pinned while the glue dried.

When I built the extensions I added foam board strips along the base to strengthen them. This was a last minute thought, mostly because I had just trimmed the lean-to down and so had a piece already the right size. 

I decided to do the same for the top of each extension to give the roof bases extra stability. These were cut to size, chamfered to match the slope of the roof, then glued in place. The main roof got a double thickness piece along the ridge. 

These would, of course, have been better fitted as each extension was built, though the bake house bit has had a section cut out to fit around the chimney.

Next up will be fitting the roof base.

Gunthor Son of Gurn of the Stone Crows

You might have noticed this chap in the background in the last post.

He is my take on Gunthor, described as a thin man in a horned helmet armed with a long knife.

The body and arms are from North Star's Oathmark goblins and the head is from the Frostgrave barbarians set.

I had to make a hole for the head to sit in as the two makes don't always play together nicely. The long knife is a cut down sword, I may have trimmed it a bit much actually, but it will do for now. 

I need to greenstuff the cloth round his neck to cover the top of his shoulders, and a little bit in a hole in his neck as well. 

I had originally planned to use the nice new Dark Age Irish from Wargames Atlantic, but when I re-read the description the clans are equipped in boiled leather, oddments of armour and barred halfhelms. I thought the goblin bodies fitted this description nicely, I can find the heads on some of the many plastic sprues I have collected over the years.

I plan to eventually build more of these clansmen; this was simply an experiment to see how well I could match the description.  I'm pretty pleased with how he has turned out.

Why? well, I have a new project in mind, but I have plenty to do first, so you'll have to wait a while to find out more, but a no prize if anyone can identify where he is from.