Scratchbuilt 28mm Town

Recently I saw a YouTube video of a western town built by Viv Chandra of the Battle Bunker in Australia. I was inspired to post some photos of my own 28mm town, some of which is scratch-built, and some of which is resin. I furnished many of the interiors with an eclectic mix of pieces and parts from fantasy and historical manufacturers. Here it is, the town that got me started in Wild West gaming:

ADIOS!

OL' KNUCKLEDUSTER

Monetize Your Miniatures; Commercial Clutter on Front Street

I want my Western Town to look like someone lives there. A western town's Front Street (a.k.a. The Row) was no different than Main Street, or "The Strip" is today in a town like Ruidoso, Laramie, or Durango. Advertising is and was rampant, and the thing missing from my town until recently has been the commercial clutter that is the inevitable result of economic activity. In short, I have begun to "monetize" my buildings.

Of course you must have a sign on any commercial buildings. Most lettering in those towns was simple, but examples of fancy brushwork can be found easily enough. Time-Life books and internet image searches should give you plenty of examples to paint your own signs from. If you don't have a steady hand, make your own signs in Photoshop and print them on cardstock. 

Smaller signs were everywhere on commercial buildings in the Old West. It seems that everyone sold cigars or tobacco and advertised the fact. Saloons might have signs proclaiming their Faro (card game), Billiards, Whiskey, or Dancing. 

My latest addition to the mining town of Knuckleduster is poster art. Large posters were "pasted" up by circus or theater promoters in advance of a show. 

Wanted posters certainly deserve a prominent place. It takes a bit of inestinal fortitude to permanently glue a piece of paper to the side of a model you just spent a week building, but the results are worth it and besides, life now or in the Old West is not tidy. 

Adios!

Forrest Harris

Ol' Knuckleduster

Basic Scratchbuilding, Part III; Cedar Shake Roof Construction

A cedar shake roof is a bit tedious, but it well worth doing, and not as hard as it looks.

I cut the shakes en masse to begin with. Each course is about an inch long. To make life easier, I first cut one-inch swaths across the grain of a wide piece of 1/32" balsa. 

I then snap the pieces off to make rectangular shakes.

I lay the shakes down in courses. The shakes should run about a quarter of an inch off all edges--you can trim them back later if one side needs to be flush with a wall. I run a bead of glue in two lines for each course: one line where the bottom of the shake will meet the previous course, and one where the top of the shake meets the roof. When all the courses are complete, you can trim out the ridgeline with shakes running the other direction.

Cut a piece of Masonite hardboard and hot-glue the model to it. I usually do this before building the porch, which makes assembly a bit easier.

Paint your building dark sepia, they dry-brush it up to the desired color. For natural wood, this takes some experimentation with various shades of brown and tan to find the effect you're looking for. I opted for a very weathered look, however you might want a young town with brighter wood.

Good luck and if you have a question, feel free to drop me a line at knuckledusterharris@gmail.com.

Adios,

Ol' Knuckleduster

Basic Scratchbuilding, Part II; Building Construction

Welcome to part two of my scratchbuilding tutorial. Although only trial-and-error will teach you the nuances of how the process works, it is my hope that I can provide you with a foundation that will both help you avoid some of the big mistakes I made while learning, and show you that it's really not that difficult after all.

A note about the photos. They're not all from the same building! They were taken at random during the construction of an entire town for a convention this winter, at which time I had no idea I'd be writing this article. They illustrate the techniques, but not the construction of any one particular building.  

The first step is to design the building on paper. A 40mm scale saloon should be about six inches wide and seven inches deep.  I design the floor to sit inside the walls rather than using the floor as a platform for the walls. I design the side walls to be the same length as the floor and the front and back walls to go on last and cover the ends of the sides (they need to be wider by double the thickness of the walls, 3/16",  in order to cover them; so instead of 6 inches wide, make the front and rear walls 6 3/8" wide). The walls should be about 3" tall, and the roof is made by cutting out a triangular truss and gluing two roof plates to it.

Your basic measurements for aforementioned saloon would be:

Floor: 6 x 7"

2 side walls: 3 x 7"

Front, 7 x 6 3/8

Rear: 6 3/8" wide. 3" tall on each side and 5" tall at the peak.

Roof: One panel 7 1/4 x 4" and another 7 1/4 x 4 3/16 . The wide panel will overlap the narrow panel at the peak, although the angle will not be perfectly 90%. You will need to trim the excess a bit.

Truss: a little triangular piece three inches long on the bottom and the same angle as the peak of the back wall.

Should I every really get ambitious, I will create a file of "blueprints." You can create your own designs by studying photographs of old western buildings or using commercially available cardstock buildings such as Whitewash City as a pattern, making adjustments to account for the 3/16" wall thickness.

Once the basic design is made, mark your foam core, making sure everything is square. Slice the pieces out with a razor knife. Take care not to slice your fingers off during this step, since it slows down the remainder of the process and leaves nasty stains on the finished model.

Last time, I gave you a laundry list of tools and materials.  Not included on that list were ready-made architectural elements. I recommend using pre-assembled plastic or metal windows and doors--they don't cost a lot, and save you a lot of time. I've found that building the windows and doors is the most time-consuming part of scratchbuilding. 

If you are using ready-made architectural elements like these, mark their position carefully on the walls and make the cuts before assembly of the building . Make sure you have thought through what part of the window or door needs to be recessed, so that you don't end up cutting a hole too large. Test fit before you continue assembly in case you need to throw out a wall and start over.

After the cuts are made, do your basic assembly with a hot glue gun, wiping off the excess before it hardens (don't use your fingers!). The photo below is sans its front so you can see how it is constructed, and its roof, which will not be attached to the building permanently. At this stage, it is quite imperfect; don't let this discourage you; the siding and details will cover the imperfections.

It is important to assemble the building completely before gluing on the siding. Assembly helps protect the walls from warping, since they are held straight on three edges.

After the building is assembled, measure and cut siding. I do it in large batches, which saves time in the long run.

When cutting trim, I use the snips a lot. I tend to keep them in one hand and snip about every third piece in half to create butt joints in the middle of the wall for a nice rough look.  I don't worry about cutting each piece of siding to precise length during gluing. Rather, I leave the siding hanging over the top and trim the entire wall at once after the glue dries. This one simple technique saves an immense amount of time and fuss.

Glue the siding in place. To minimize warping, take care not to use more glue than you really need to get the siding to stick.  If a piece of siding wants to curl, super-glue the ends in place while the white glue dries. Trim out the corners with additional balsa.

Using ready-made or homemade architectural elements, trim out the building. Super glue is very useful for securing these delicate parts. I have used Grandtline's porch railings and gingerbread trim to great effect, and I use my own Knuckleduster pre-cast windows and doors. Trim work requires some research. I have found numerous photos of old buildings on the web.

Next time we'll make a cedar shake roof.

Until then, Adios!

Ol' Knuckleduster

Basic Scratchbuilding, Part I; Tools and Materials

Howdy, Pilgrims!

I prefer scratch-built buildings to resin for three reasons. First, they're cheaper and odd bits of scrap can be put to good use, sometimes in very creative ways (turning scrap balsa into a pile of lumber to hide behind, for instance). Second, they're lighter than resin and more resiliant; that is, less prone to paint or resin chipping off. Third, there are no resin buildings available for 40mm Old West at the present, so if you want buildings at all, you have to build them yourself.

First, let's discuss tools. Good tools will save you time and frustration in the long run. 

In the first photograph, I've shown a number of essential tools:

1.  Cutting board: this is simply scrap wood meant to protect your desk or table from the razor knife.

2.  Foam core: the standard thickness is 3/16". It's easily cut, and easily glued together. It sometimes warps when excessive amounts of glue are used for siding, however its benefits more than make up for that particular drawback. Besides, old buildings often warp! Black foam core is pictured, however white is ok.

3.  Cutting tools: all must be perfectly sharp, because dull tools are frustrating to work with and will cause mistakes. Box cutters are good for the really big cuts to carve up your foam core. The Exacto knife is useful for cutting out doorways and windows. The gate cutters (snips) are useful for quickly cutting balsa siding to length.

4.  Measuring tools: make sure the edge isn't made of something that will be sliced up by your knives. I like metal rulers for that reason. A square is essential for marking your foam-core wall sections. A good, cheap square is simply a piece of paper (their corners are perfectly square).

5. Glue: white glue for siding, Super Glue for tacking down the ends of siding that wants to warp. Not pictured, but essential: hot glue gun.

6. Balsa and basswood: 1/32" thickness balsa works well for siding. 1/16" balsa works well for trimwork around doors and windows. Basswood should be used for anything that might break, like porch posts. I don't show cardstock in the photo, but I use strips of cereal boxes for lap-siding (clapboard), because even thin balsa is far too thick.

In the second photo, I've shown a few more specialty tools that are not essential, but make life easier.

1. This chopper holds the blade square and has jigs that allow you to set a particular length and make identical cuts repeatedly.

2. When cutting basswood, this mitre box and jewel saw give you nice square cuts.

3. Use a sanding block and nail file to clean up the end of messy cuts.

In the next post, I'll show you how to use this advanced technology to turn styrofoam, paper, and balsa wood into Tombstone!