Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Terrain Tuesday 2 - Finished Barn and build log

Hi All,

Well in the first installment I showed you some river sections and the Wargames Terrain book. I then promptly finished building this barn from a White Dwarf article.




I had started building this back sometime around 1990 and had carried it around with me between 4 states and several house/ apartment moves. I'm not sure where my White Dwarf issues are but I found a copy of the Barn article here. According to DJK's Fantasy World, the barn was in Issue 140. He also lists other projects, but seems to be missing the cottage and Inn and stables issues.

Anyway on to the build.


So here we go. A project started in the early 90's. Why I stopped here and never finished it I can't really be certain.


Printed copy of the original article. I wanted to refresh my memory on the construction of the roof and see what colors were used to paint it. On thing that became immediately obvious was that the print out of the template was smaller than my actual building. I vaguely remember something about enlarging the templates from the Cottage article, but I could find no evidence for that in this article.


So I measured the actual model and brought out my era bag of scrap terrain materials. In addition to carting around the models, I had also carted around a garbage bag filled with foam core, construction paper, mat board and balsa wood.


I briefly equivocated about making the interior playable, but decided this building had been left unbuilt for too long and had not been put together for interior play.


Again from memory I seemed to recall using wood glue to put it together. This was a more recent purchase. The set time was not fast enough and I couldn't figure out a way to weigh down the roof bits so they would stick correctly.


Hot glue gun to the rescue. It was a little tricky, and I did eventually have to carve out some overage with an exacto knife.


I found, before I glued it down, that my lean to roof was a tad too large. So I excised 5mm.


Roof substructure on!


My cellphone decided not to rotate this picture, but I cut out a chunk of card and made 1cm wide lines on it. I then cut the strips with a snap blade box cutter and left a couple of 2cm wide strips for the roof crown. The article gives different widths. I forget what they are, but I didn't like them.


I then started hand cutting shingles with said box cutter. You can use the strips with notches cut in them to represent tiles or you can cut individual tiles. They did the latter in the article and I had done it previously on the cottage.


I quickly used up my first batch of tiles. By the way, gluing them on is a great project for sitting and watching tv with the family. You know, so they don't think you're trying to avoid them.


We're not going to run out of tiles this time.


Breaking out the paper cutter for full production mode. My cuts aren't quite as accurate, but it goes way faster.


Et viola! Remember to leave a couple of double wide strips. I got over zealous and only left myself one.


I also tried my tin snips to cut the individual tiles. Works a treat. Much faster and I didn't have any problem with tearing like I did on occasion with the box cutter.


Always remember the old adage, "measure twice, cut once." My barn door was a hair too small.


Roof on, door still too small.


My collection of aged balsa. I save everything.


Fixed Barn door with planks etched in and cross planks. I just used a sculpting tool I had handy to gouge some lines in the balsa sheet. I should also add that I used Aileen's Tacky glue to put the doors on. It lives up to it's name and just sticks things in place better from the get go. I did have to use a toothpick to clean up some overage though.


The lean to door. I should have used card or thinner balsa for the cross bracing. Oh well. You can also see the ground work I added. On to paint.


Black base coat. I brushed it on and had some trouble working the paint into all the nooks and crannies.


Paints used for the body of the barn. The original article said to dry brush with Bestial Brown, Elf Grey, and Skull White. I don't think I have any of those colors left so I had to improvise. I used Nutmeg for Bestial Brown, Rain Grey for Elf Grey (which was later changed to Codex Grey? I couldn't seem to find an example on the internet.) And Drizzle Grey for Skull White. I tend to use a very light grey in place of white.


For the roof you were supposed to do a dry brush of Moody Blue followed by an Enchanted Blue highlight. I did successive dry brushes of Midnight, Navy Blue and Blue Heaven


For the ground work my normal Earth Brown, Territorial Beige, Desert Sand combo.

I then added flock and static grass after varnishing the whole thing. Done.

I hope this inspires you to pull out an old abandoned project or maybe try your hand at one of these classic designs.

Happy building and painting!

28 comments:

  1. Looks brilliant man! Nicely done.

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  2. Awesome! I love that piece and I need to build me own.

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  3. The barn came out looking really great! Well done. My only objection is that the specific reason I have a hobby desk is so that I can avoid the family. 😀

    I really enjoyed this post. Nice to see that while you save everything, at least it doesn’t go to waste. 😀

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  4. I too used to have a collection of "stuff", but I threw most of it out. Some of the items I regret discarding, but these collections can get a bit out of hand can't they.

    Re the age of the project, that foamcore has matured quite a lot hasn't it. It's yellowed like a MOFO :D

    A great tutorial and a fine project come to a close. What's next?

    Cheers mate :)

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    1. Hi Papafakis. Of all the things I save, my modelling supplies was quite small. So far, although yellowed and bent, most of the stuff is in pretty good shape. Funnily enough one of the things that deteriorated the most in my collection was plastic shields. I had a couple disintegrate when I tried to cut them off a sprue when I was doing my Orcs a few years ago.

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  5. Fine work on this, it's picture-perfect!

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    1. Thank you Ryder. I still see the flaws, but it came out pretty well.

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  6. A realistic and lovely barn, well done Sean!

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    1. Thanks Phil, it was great to get this finished.

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  7. Sean, well done! Question on the vertical wood, did you use the pre-cut strips of balsa that you have a pic of or did you cut them from a sheet?

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    1. Hi Warlord Kcam, it's digging way back into the memory banks. All I have left of my stash is two thicknesses of sheet and some square dowels. I feel like I did do the cladding with 1/4" (5mm ish) strips when I did it.

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  8. Great looking barn, the shape certainly, but also the final paint is just great. Seems like a building that could either be a "hero" as the only piece on the table, or a nice bit of background with mixed with some other things.

    And after several local moves and ever expanding collections, my wife and I agreed that I would have just one box of "junk" for future terrain. It is certainly a struggle sometimes to pare back a collection to fit into a specified storage, but on the plus side it does reduce the discussions about keeping what is objectively mostly garbage!

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    1. Thanks Lasgunpacker. I must admit, my hobby is starting to expand over the house I need to reign it in.

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  9. That finished result is pretty impressive matey. Hope to see it in an upcoming batrep soon?

    I have a tonne of foamcore that I got free from the exhibits vault here at work.

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    1. Hi Dai, thanks. It may not show up in a battle report right away, but I'm on a mission to get a nice set shot of my Bretonnians.

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  10. Sean, yours looks about 4x better than the one in the WD. Seriously -- you really captured that elusive shade of grey that old wood assumes when left to the elements. One of these days when I turn to doing some terrain in a serious way (I hope to do a Motte and Bailey Castle), I will be back to this post studying your technique.

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    1. Thanks Matthew. It could be that Lightroom is doing some of the heavy lifting to make the wood pop more. I'd love to see your Motte and Bailey when you get it built.

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  11. I agree with Matt above...the painting really brings this piece to life and shows what great weathering can be achieved with simple techniques and paints. Well done Sean! It must feel good to have that done.

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    1. Thanks Blue, yes it does feel good to get it done.

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  12. Replies
    1. Hi Blue. It's based on mat board. You can buy it at art stores or framing places.

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