Market Hall finished - more or less

Finished Market Hall - well pretty much finished. Anything else will just be furniture and not bolted down.

Windows added. One day I will add them before any painting as they are a bloody pain and if you look closely some are bent and very knackered looking as I forced them in place.

I added a pamphlet about trials to the outer landing as that seemed apt. 

There is also an odd dead space above the outer stairs, so a Crooked Dice chest fills that nicely.

Market Hall WIP 6

The Market Hall gaol gets some straw and a slop bucket. The straw is bristles cut from an old toothbrush, the bucket from a very handy set of market goods from Etsy.

Mainly baskets , barrels and sacks of grain and veg, a couple of empty baskets and half barrels allowed for dressing both the gaol and also the base of the orange trees I did, complete with some oranges that came off the Temu trees.

This is the rest of the set in progress. That’s a lot of fennel…

 

Market Hall - a splash of colour

I needed to paint some colour… and the plan was always to have some decorative bits.

 

Market Hall WIP 5

And timbers and plaster done - well barring a bit of a dry brush and any touch ups. It doesn’t match the older buildings, but then none of those paints exist anymore so I had to try closest matches. But then some variety doesn’t hurt either.

Tiles to do, but for now think I may change tack a bit and do something a bit different. Quite happy with this though, the doors work well.

Market Hall WIP 4

Plodding on, not had much mojo lately, but doing little bits often so getting stuff progressing… just the roof tiles to add then painting…

I wanted something carved on the topmost roof section, so I could ID which way round it goes instantly. Toyed with various options, but decided a carved relief of some kind. Much searching and a callout on Lead Adventure provided a bit from the Pegasus Hobbies grim dark cathedral sets.

Now the downside with adding balsa is everything gets a touch bigger. So roof extensions. But the end result should be good. Need to tidy my desk I think.

Market Hall WIP 3

 Market Hall pimping and October is flying by… anyhoo, settled on what I wanted to do for the viewing gallery, stairs from Petite Properties and a new gallery floor giving more space and an overhang. Chair and table for the judge, but no room really for a useable dock in the middle.

Fun fact - dock comes from the Dutch for chicken coop.

Market Hall WIP 2

First two floors almost done. Haven’t settled on the stairs yet. I want to do a courtroom and have the mezzanine as a viewing gallery. If I do an accused box, it won’t be able to take a 25mm base, that would be too big. I’m thinking of just a judges chair and table and a clerks desk. But waiting on that to arrive before committing. Still need to hit the balsa with a wire brush as well.

 

Market Hall WIP 1

Some pimping begins… managed to track down a 4ground market hall at a similar price to when it was in production, so it needs to be brought up to match my other 4ground stuff… interiors textured and a little balsa for the door and window lintels for a bit of depth. Need a lot of balsa to start the timbers externally so just tarted the door to the cell.

Other pics of my older 4ground buildings can be found here, here and here…

Would be nice if some picked them up to continue the line…

Wagon Wheels… and the Wagons

I was casually searching for useful bits for the Silver Bayonet and found that Warbases do a Napoleonic Wagon pack for Sharp Practice, which includes a carriage, an engineers wagon, a water wagon and an ammunition wagon. All MDF with some card as that’s their bag, but with some resin bits for the water wagon and engineers wagon. 

This is the carriage, apparently it’s a Clarence carriage which is from the 1820’s, but looks close enough for my liking. 

It was a little tricky, but I think it would be worth doing another having learnt lessons. I used some corrugated card to fill the windows and save doing the interior, hey presto curtains for added mystery. The kit has holes for carriage lamps, but didn’t come with lamps, so I cobbled together some from plasticard.

Yellow seemed apt and lashings of mud to hide the MDFness of the kit.

I’m happy with it and might do another down the line. I have some horses for it, but want to find some dead ones as well.

The engineers wagon is just MDF, with a resin cargo load. Very straight forward build. Nothing exciting, I kept the load separate to vary stuff up a bit. And more mud.

 

The water wagon is a bit poo unfortunately. The resin barrel isn’t great, the build is meh, the axles broke while building due to the nesting cut being too snug. I built it and didn’t bother after. I’ve not attempted the ammunition wagon, but will. I will get another carriage and engineers wagon at some point.

Warbases also do some carriage horses and draft horses with appropriate tack which I have and will need to get round to when I have some dead ‘uns. They also do a pair of Napoleonic drivers, but the carriage is the only one with a seat and they don’t fit on it, so not sure what they’re for. The horses are good, but skip the drivers if tempted.

Sci-fi City Block WIP 3

Art Deco eagles for a Mega-City One flavour. The eagle heads are from a TTCombat building corner gargoyle set, which I can no longer find on their site now. Pimped them up with various precut MDF pieces from eBay for the body and wings.

Lord Summerisle was weekending on my desk.

 

Finished Churchyard preview pics

Just a couple of quick pictures of the finished churchyard. Planning a proper photo session but this is not going to fit in the light box.

Had a bit of a problem with the grass. Initially I had the usual dirt tracks and bare patches but it didn’t look right, especially as the tracks were around the edge of the inset footprint as opposed to the edge of the church itself. I also discovered after I’d flocked it that I had the dirt recipe wrong and the soil in the yard didn’t match the soil around the church. Some sepia wash on the exposed dirt on the church levelled out the contrast a bit better, but I reflocked anyway and covered some of the exposed dirt so it matched the yard better. The grass is not brilliant, but if I don’t leave it alone I will fuck it up even more... sigh...

Church finished...

Well, I’ve noticed a couple of irksome things now it’s done, but I’m probably being over perfect and will just mess it up trying to correct a couple of things. So, done...

Trying the camera on my phone and it seems to be an improvement, as with most buildings it’s too big for the light box and I probably need a flat paper background again at some point...

The wallpaper has worked really well for the flint effect. Very grateful for the donation from Paul at the Wargames Terrain Tips & Talk Facebook group.

Doors made from scratch, following my usual design of pop in and pop out as open or closed. 

 

The altar is removable, the grave isn’t... might do a font, but for now that’s the interior. The altar was redone completely from my original one, just foampvc and plasticard on a blue insulation foam block. Quite pleased with that.

Church WIP Part 4

Quick pics with the majority of the painting done. Just the doors/hatch and the dirt to paint. The altar  is about as good it will get for some off cuts of pvcfoam, XPS foam and some tissue paper. The cross is from the Renedra graveyard sprue. It’s not permanent so can be removed/replaced as needed, but does for now.

Phone pics again, which really don’t capture the colours well at all.

Church WIP Adjunct

As the main build nears completion, I thought I’d look at the lich gate I got from Petite Properties (a dolls house manufacturer that is highly recommended - the 1/4 furniture and trappings work well with 28mm), which as you can see is a little too tall compared to the porch so that will need some alterations (1/4 scale dolls house buildings tend to be a little tall compared to the chubbier 28mm stuff which is of course not a true ‘scale’).

Church WIP Part 3

OK, pimping almost finished... 

So, onto the basic mdf walls I added 1mm foampvc to the outer walls and added the aforementioned wallpaper. The window frames sit just above the wallpaper layer which I like, plasticard window sills and Slaters quoin for the corners. Some cutting of the corners we needed to allow the quoins to sit flush, which was miscalculated at some points, so quite a bit of green stuff needed there. 

For the inside, I ordered a spare window set from the same company and used those to give extra detail inside. I also used 2mm foampvc to thicken the walls again. These are slightly above the window frames, which works better for the inside (for me anyway).

Stone pattern plasticard for the floor, plastic trim in the tower. Scratch built double doors. Quite pleased with it all so far. Just need to finish the top of the tower and then texture the interior walls. And then the roof...

Church WIP Part 2

Ok, so after a lot of pondering work has commenced. A fellow on a Facebook group (that escapes me right now) offered some wallpaper he has that gives a flint finish, that is in hand and does look rather good. However preliminary pimping needs to be done before all of that. 

A common complaint of MDF kits is that everything is the same thickness and this is true here, the window details that go on over the ones in the wall are 2mm thick and look a tad heavy, the easiest option was to clad the walls in 1mm material, reducing the overhang - this will be even less once the wallpaper is applied. I also decided to flip the far long wall, so it’s windows were symmetrical ( a common design feature) - I don’t know why they aren’t but hey... a tenner... there won’t be room for a pulpit, it’s too small a church and the one in my village growing up never had one, but there will be room for the altar and a font at the tower end. 

I need to do stone paving for the floor, may chuck in some interior gravestones... I used to invigilate exams in Blackfriars Hall in Norwich and would read the floor gravestones as I wandered the aisles of desks. They probably have a proper name, but I don’t know it...

Church WIP Part 1

Ok, so about time I did a church...

An unusually appropriately targeted Facebook ad told of a sale on mdf scenery at Wargames Tournaments and a casual browse gave this little church for a tenner (and I think it was free postage as well), so as I pimp up mdf anyway, bare bones for a tenner worked for me...

It’s not bad for the money, the door will need cutting out, but that’s fine, and and laser cut brick texture would be covered anyway so the lack of that in this kit is fine as well. It’s just put together here, no glue as the pimping will be easier on flat pieces. There are decorative window trims as well.

The only two downsides I can see is that one tower wall is too short (above), but that’s fixable and I’m not sure how the roof goes together, no instructions came with it but the rest is obvious and I’ll probably have to tinker anyway as any wall pimping will need to be taken into account. All in all not too bad...

Just need to see the best way to get some big brick work on there.