Sunday 14 June 2020

Barns

Yep, making buildings again.  This time I thought I'd like to make a European sort of barn to go with the other 15mm half timbered buildings I'd made earlier.
So this is it, loosely based on a type of north german low barn, for example this one, except in my case I dispensed with the brick finish and more complicated roof structure and went for the painted half-timbered look instead.
Construction was the same as previously, with polystyrene walls and sliced up coffee stirrers for the woodwork.
The individually cut (from old business cards) and placed roof tiles did take a while though.  As with many of my wargame buildings the roof lifts off so that troops can be put inside, but it's quite neatly done (I think) so it's hard to see the join.

And of course, why make one barn when you can make two.  So I did this one as well in a different style.
I was inspired to make this based on an article by Tony Harwood in Minature Wargames magazine which I subscribed to for a year basically because there was an offer on (some interesting articles but overall too much fantasy, sci-fi and product placement for my liking).
Using this design as my starting point I bascially made this building the way I normally make them, with ploystyrene sheet walls, which were then PVA'd, coated in fine sand and painted. The fish-scale type roof tiles were actually quite straightfoward to do and with a bit of careful measurement they all matched up quite well.  I think I could make a couple of other buildings now with this roofing technique.
A nice detail was the small openings at the gable ends and I kept these in my version.  And in this case you can see the line where the roof lifts off to put figures inside.  Hopefully, with the intention to have a bit more terrain on the table, these should get an outing by the next time we get a game (Covid-19 situation permitting).

2 comments:

Tony said...

I'm pleased you found some inspiration in my article.

Well done in building your own example.

Tony Harwood

The Wishful Wargamer said...

Thanks Tony! The scratch building articles were one of the things I did appreciate about the magazine, and I really liked this design.

At the smaller scale I used, the roof tiles turned out a bit oversize (because I didn't scale them down), but I think it is a great effect, not to mention being somewhat quicker than cutting and fitting individual tiles, which is what I usually do (as per the other barn in my post).

Lockdown has taken its toll since I last posted, but once I get going again this year I'll definately be making more buildlings in this style (I've a church to make for starters).

Cheers WW