Building Bridges and River redux…

So life has been pretty shitty, so I’ve not been very motivated recently, doing little bits as the mojo allowed. Should have finished these much earlier, but hey… done now.

So, I wanted to add some bridges to the river I’d previously made, which of course would mean failing to match the colour of the water and I’d end up doing them all again, again. That also allowed me to try something inspired by a couple of excellent examples on the Lead Adventure Forum.

First off, a stone bridge, the intention being with this to suggest that the river is wide, wide enough to allow river barges/long boats to use the dock section. A planned boat will open up that corner of the board as necessary.

Without the dock section, there’s room for the mill section. It took a while to match the colour of the dirt road to the dirt going over the bridge, but it got there.

I also did a smaller wooden foot bridge, a bit rickety and meant to imply a narrower river. The section is the same width as the stone bridge so it all fits in the same space.

As it joins the same spot as the mill section, so again can go either side or without the mill completely.

And the original sections got a repaint to a more natural looking murk, and I added some new bull rushes I’d had for a while for this intention. The original “grass” rushes are still there, they are reasonably rigid and I’m hoping they will deflect any damage to the lovely detailed bull rushes.

 

Miller Time (new pics)...

[OK, since I moved house, I've not done any photos of stuff and discovered last week that my new place isn't blessed for lighting like my old place was (skylight and sloped white roof to reflect an anglepoise), so treated myself to a new lightbox, with a built in LED strip, nice and bright, but I need to keep tinkering with my camera I think - anyhoo newer better pics below...]

Finally, here is the watermill...

I added a dovecote to the front wall to cover the expanse of wall without any real feature. Quite happy with it, although it's not that clear. I'll have to redo these pics at some point.

The millstones, cogs and bits are all scratchbuilt, the stairs are from Fenris Games.

The grain sacks are from Ainsty Castings Trade Goods range.

And it connects nicely within the existing river sections. The angled corner eliminates an awkward angle that was created by the adjoining river bank section. In fact I managed to match up the new bit to stuff done 4-5 years ago quite nicely even if I say so myself, but then managed to kill everything when I added gloss to all the pieces... so I had to do some remedial work to rescue them. You can see if you really examine it, but for now, it works for me.

Planning the base...

Okeydoke... thatch is done and in various states of touch up, base coat shenanigans. Base is sand done with patches where I want to blend in the Vallejo texture for hard worn paths. A test fit to check everything looks ok and that is s hell of a wall of nothing on the front. Considering a tree...

Mill interior

 OK, so the interior is kind of done, a couple of small bits will be added but I needed the first floor done so I could attach the roof and needed to do the ground floor at the same time so they would match. Crappy phone pictures still I’m afraid. The exterior is base colour only, I’m thinking thatch for the roof.

cogs and workings

Just a quick pic (phone still) of the millstones and workings. Quite chuffed with the cogs considering it’s fiddly and little... if you’ve ever stumbled across my Pinterest board you’ll see all the mill diagrams and such, and no way was I going to replicate all that...

Water Mill WIP

OK, so the base to join in with the other river tiles is done. Went through several stages/designs but the main consideration was to avoid making the building look like it cut into the inevitable slope of the river - the slope is a result of placeable river sections and not a incline as far as models are concerned. That resulted in a larger base than originally envisioned, but hey...

I’ve added some texture to the wheel, the plain mdf is serviceable but I’m anal about that kind of thing. This is actually the inner side rather than a before shot as I’m not that organised. Ignore the hole in the middle, that was to allow a plastic tube in for the axel, which is an absent detail from the kit. Also, I was an idiot and built the wheel before thinking about any of this and my efforts then resulted in a broken spoke (hence the white plastic reinforcement).

And the visible side with liquid green stuff added and then scored to give some texture. I made a little irregularly toothed tool to do this and made sure to pick out the existing details of the retaining blocks and so on. Hopefully it will paint up ok. The hub is thin balsa which was hit with a steel brush.

The interior starting mock up. Think this should give the right impression, but I need to make some cogs to transfer the horizontal rotation to the vertical. It’s a basic idea of a mill and not a working model or anything, so gives the right impression I think.

And finally another consideration that I’d not thought of is that a different kit from a different manufacturer means different sized doors. I don’t mind the windows being different, but I do want my doors to be mix and match as needed which means consistency...

diving back in...

So, I’ve been slowly getting a groove on, greenstuffed a load of zombies into the 17th century. I had them kind of half done from a few years back, but finished them off and slapped some paint on them. Not my best, but a) not bad for two plus years absence and 2) I hate doing rank and file and wanted to get them out of the way. Now, my laptop is dead so no fancy pics at the moment as I’m using my phone and no light tent, so a quick “painted something honest” shot below. Basing still to be sorted and will see to doing a photo session later...

Next up then is back to building... saw these online (Blotz.co.uk) and figured a change to the 4ground buildings would be good. The mill is interesting as with my fetish for interiors I’m looking forward to doing some workings in there. 

What is interesting is that the timbers are cut separately and stand proud... normally I’d do that myself with balsa, but may have to see if I can get a rough timber texture on them. The barn is simple enough, an extension floor is available, but I reckon I can do that myself. So far, so good, reckon I won’t go wrong to get a couple more if needed.