Building a Wild West town

All sorts of real-life events blocked my time and energy to wrote blogs since last October. But I haven't been idle in other respects, so here is my first blog in a few months about a styrofoam Western town made for What A Cowboy! 

Techniques are pretty straightforward as the buildings are mostly foam boxes. I used the jigsaw method to separate the different floors and ShiftingLands templates for the columns. 

Part of it is still under contstruction but it is table worthy! 

 

Building a Pele Tower part 2

The finished product. There will be some interior trappings like gobelins and furniture depending on he period I use it in but the main project is finished. 

Rear view

Ground floor

First floor

Second floor

Top floor

Stairwell detail

The door hinges on a magnetic fitting. Meet Claire btw. 

And closes again of course

Room detail. Meet Jaime. 

Building a Pele tower part 1

Years ago I built my version of a Pele tower, that iconic fortress type of Border region northern England and Scotland. However, when I visited real ones in the UK it was clear it didn't look a bit like it. So I knew it had to be done again and better this time. 

The tower so far. 

And what do you know? The coming of The Baron's War ruleset provided the right incentive. 

Having learned a lot about working with styropor in the past years I chose that material. The first box-like shape looked like this based on pictures and drawings I found on the web. 

The first shape, here still with the thick base I later discarded. 

The outer window shapes, cornerstones and ramparts

I

I undercut the steps of the stairs si the base edges would fit underneath them, enabling the figures to be positioned on the stairs. 

Engraving the masonry with a pencil

I cut out the floors with a little hotwire jacksaw. The jigsaw pattern will make them fit snugly into each other. 

Adding a top roof

The four main parts

Window and door details

The door hinges on a little but strong magnet

The internal winding stairs. They are not really accessible for the miniatures but too nice a detail to leave out!

And then the painting can begin. First layers and highlights. 

The tower so far. 

I still have a ways to go painting-wise. And of course adding details like door hinges, colored windows and flock. Stay tuned for part 2!

Finishing the Tango boats

The Tango boat was a project I didn't need, wasn't planning on but started just because I wanted to see if I could. Wherever will I store it? 

For convenience I decided to line up the entire development and build of the three Tango boats. This was a quickly escalating project....

I started with some research. There are ample pictures available of the boats and their several configurations of which I built three: the landing craft, the monitor and the medivac version with the helicopter deck. 

Rare colour picture of a Tango

The next step was to find a good scale drawing and measure everything up to 1/50 scale to go with my mainly Empress Vietnam figures. 

I then proceeded to divide the boat into parts I could cut from XPS styrofoam. This process is a skill in itself but let's suffice in this spot that I learned a lot from the first build. 

After that, I decided to build two more with re-engineered hulls (6 in stead of 24 parts) and thought up a way to alter their function between landing craft, helicopter/medivac vessel and monitor. 

I also took some liberties with the modelling. I dropped the hand railing along the sides for being to vulnerable and because it would get in the way with the figures. To facilitate easy replacement of the armoured landing craft roof and the helicopter deck I installed two ridges along the front cargo hold that weren't there in reality. But is was a sturdy and easy way to create a base for roof and heli deck, would be partly invisible in those configurations and not disturbingly present in the monitor configuration. 

The wheelhouse in reality was actually a rather frail looking skeleton with armoured hatches. The roof was apparently sometimes canvas, sometimes plate.  For sturdiness I decided to feature it in closed condition with a plate roof and closed hatches. 

The first build, fitting a 1/50 M113 in the hold. 

Guns and antennae added as well as the minesweep rig on the aft deck. 

I forewent any hinges on the bay door. It closes on magnets and is simply laid in front of the ship when opened. 

First paints on the roofless hull. 

First builds of armoured roof and heli deck. 

Fittings of roof and heli deck, both too wide

Testing the heli deck, narrowed down like it was in reality. Any landing must have been a fraught affair! 

Some bits of sanitary rings as old tyres. Later I found rubber ones. Profile still needs to be added here

Builds of the 2nd and 3rd hull. Same sizes but simpler designs. Looks the same, but quicker to build. 

First fitting of the monitor bows, more details below. 

Several parts during painting. 

The three hulls configured as landing craft. Details like rope, lifebuoys and stowage added. 

The magnetic fittings of the gun turrets. This is the port .50 cal turret

The magnetic fittings in the bay door. The hull holds a small strip of metal. 

The separate monitor bow next to the fitted bay door. 

Monitor bow before fitting. It has magnets in the left and right inside corners

And here it slides and clicks into position. 

The heli deck. 

Here are the hulls as medivac and monitor vessels. Note the mortar pit aft of the large gun turret on the monitor version. This could also hold an AAA gun or a grenade launcher. 

They seem ready to hit the Mekong river.