Scenery Plus One

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Contruction Materials

Construction Materials

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I promised myself this wouldn’t be long, but the fingers on the keyboard got away from me as you will see. Sorry.

Hi! In the past week or so I have been busy trying to build a Britonian Hovel based on the one featured in the March White Dwarf 291.

Games Workshop Master Builder Dave Andrews decided to use 25mm thick polystyrene sheet for the heart of the building and the building blocks for the outside. The blocks are okay for the walls but for the centre, Mmmm…. (Personal Preference: I like polystyrene but in the right place.). So …… because I was not keen on using it for the centre I decided to utilize my trusty old cereal packets.

These are 3 of my notebooks

Note Books

Buy a small cheap note book and keep it some where you can jot down ideas and research. Ooops scary word there (Research).

If you want your buildings to look authentic you need to know a bit about history, architecture, building materials even geology. If your want stone to look realistic look at the walls of a building or the lichen on a gravestone.

Yea I know it’s a Fantasy “GAME” but I’m a perfectionist it’s a flaw in my personality.

I have altered the pitch of the roof because I found my original was too shallow

The next stage after making and refining the plans is to actually draw them on to the cereal packet. It's a good idea to make the walls continuous, of course this depends on the size of the cereal packet or card. It saves lots of gluing.

As this is a prototype if the end result looks wrong you can still make changes on your next attempt. The first attempt shows you where all the problems are and how you can fix them.

Well that's all for today. There's more to come yet so watch this space. The hovel is still not finished. For Christmas I got a new set of craft knives so hopefully you will see the finished hovel soon.

Construction Tools

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Construction Materials

Hovel

Still in progress

Design and Building

Before starting to build it’s important to draw plans. They don’t have to be pretty because it’s only the beginning of the process and at this stage it is simply a matter of getting ideas down on paper. Write or draw them all down. In the end you’ll probably scrap most of them but who knows you might use some of the ideas for another project.

I used graph paper because the measurements can be a little more accurate. That is the idea anyway. [It’s amazing how much the width of a pencil line can alter your plans (This is from experience).] When you are cutting and folding cardboard excess millimetres can make a building misshapen. Squint to you and me. Very frustrating.

After doing lots of scribbles on my first plans you can see I redrew them a bit more tidily. On the tidy plans I added the tabs for gluing the sides, base and roof to each other. It might look a bit childish but if it works don’t knock it. I have buildings that were built 10 years ago which are still stable, usable and look good.

Details of the hovel

Don’t do what I did. I forgot that there is a chimney on this building and it wasn’t until I had glued the fur fabric on to the roof that I remembered. Luckily because the material takes so long to dry I was able to cut out the space for the chimney. Dave Andrews used fur fabric for the thatched roof so I followed suit. Grant you that‘s because I had some left over after making a teddy bear glove puppet. I would probably tried to find an alternative if I hadn’t had any. I have tried thick wool before but was not very impressed with the result. Think that the fur I used was not long enough; it does not hang over the eaves enough for me.

More to Come

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