Project Round Up

I thought I’d give a quick round up of some of the projects I’ve been working on. I realised that it’s been a while since I posted anything about the castle ruins. These have been taking a bit of a back seat recently but haven’t been forgotten. So to make up for it, I’ll start with them.

Castle Ruins

The entrance way got a bit damaged a couple of weeks ago when some of the model work got caught out in the rain, we had torrential rain all of a sudden, and I just couldn’t get everything back inside in time. It had been under coated with black paint – some of this has been damaged and it will need to be undercoated again before I start getting the colouring done.

The ruined room piece fared better. 

This has now had the flagstone floor put down, in the same way as I did on the rest of the project, wall filler with stone pattern cut into it before it dries. 

I’ve also worked on the steps leading up to the room.  All I need to do now (I say all, but it’s still quite a bit) are the external walls and the under passage.

Thatched Cottages.

There were two unfinished thatched cottages from older projects that I set out to finish. One is done, and you’ve seen recently. The other where the chimney had to be cutaway and rebuilt has now been under coated, the basic thatch painted – although I experimented with the colouring on this and I’m not too sure I’m happy. I’ll go into that more in my next blog. I’ve also base painted the wood and the chimney. Although the other cottages have wood work which is wood coloured I’m debating with this one whether to go for the black wood finish. Any thoughts?

Town Houses.

In a recent posting I mentioned finding the old White Dwarf magazines, and I included a photo of the town house I had built from their plans.

I started to build some larger wood framed town houses a while ago, based on photos I had taken and again these got shelved. I dug these out and I’ve also been working to complete them.

You can see from this photo one was more advanced than the other.

Both now have their wood frames completed, and have been plastered up. You’ll see from the early photo that I had tiled the roof – this was a mistake, I should not have done this before completing the frame work, the tiles do not lap over the edge properly. 

(There is a reason I had done this, but it is outside the scope of this blog). 

Now I have had to add the chimneys on after, these are pieces of foam board stuck together with a V shape cut out to fit over the roof, then covered in wall plaster. 

The tiles I am having to lift and insert new edge tiles and an additional row at the bottom, a bit tricky but with a sharp knife and some patience I should get there. 

The sides I’m sticking on additional tiles, once the glue is dry and they have set then I will trim the tiles so that there is a straight edge. 

The tiles are all in the same style as taught by the old White Dwarf articles, small squares cut from cereal packets.

Karl – Birth of Mystery

The prologue is available to read by clicking through from the page on the right. Thanks to those that have pre-ordered. 

As soon as the book is back from the printers any copies ordered through the link on this page to the publisher’s website will be signed up and posted as priority. 

I’ll let you know when they have been sent out.