Updating old buildings

I am still getting back into the swing of blogging so there are no before shots but theses never had trim and needed to be sanded down I am not sure If i posted about this back when I did the single two story building that was made around the same time this was. But ether way it got trim and sanded down mostly smooth then very recently started to paint them I need to get my printer back up and running soon so I am print out some of the imperial propaganda posters and other goodies to detail the buildings that you can find around the net. I also might still have some lamps from the GW buildings in my bits bins to help make them a little better.    

Back in action! building up a tower for Warhammer fantasy

I wish I had pictures of building this but it is just layers of 1" insulation foam cut in to circles and stacked up then glued together with wood glue(white glue would do as well I think). Then sanded smooth to make a nice cylinder after that I carved lines in to it to look like bricks with my hobby knife.

It was passable at this point to paint up (never spray paint foam it melts) but a little extra effort makes all the difference at this stage so I got some balsa wood and knocked in some frames on the windows and doors. Then put in a panel for the door and some bracing, the door handle / knocker is wire bent around my very small pliers tips to make a small circle and a u shape to attach that to the door.

After i finish painting up this My group will finally have a tower for the watchtower scenario in warhammer fantasy        

step by step on building a basic tabletop

 I should have gotten this in a few week ago when I built it and it has even shown up in a few battle reports but I thought it might still be of some benefit to see the step by step on how I built this table  

 step one was getting a fresh sheet of 1/4" plywood and marking a nice straight line at 6 feet from the end leaving you with and extra 2 foot section that would be good to make an armies on parade board from

I took it out side at this point to help it dry faster and also not stink out the house with fumes. but to finish this you will need a a lot of glue I started with half a gallon and ran my self totally out by the end of this board also two paint brushes cheep ones will do just fine and a good amount of sand to texture the surface properly   

to get the sand on the the board I would suggest pouring glue in a small patch and brush it out then pour sand on the glue patch but don't take the sand to the edge so that you can make it all bled nicely just keep poring  glue and repeating this until you have the whole surface covered nicely  

 when the glue drys lift the board on edge and bang on the back of it to knock off the loose sand after that I brushed the whole thing down with the second brush to remove any more sand that is even a little loose

 next you will need two cans of your preferred shade of brown I used rust-oleum flat brown make sure you get the edges down the sides or the color of the plywood really stands out 

 now you need something to brighten the high points of the sand I used a can of bone color spray and just dusted the surface. you could also use a much brighter color of brown.

last of all pour on some more glue in patches and use the second brush again to spread it out this time pour on some static grass I would highly recommend using at least three different shades to make it interesting I used two different greens and one light brown. when it has had a chance to dry lift the board on edge again and bang on the back to knock the loose static grass off then just brush the patches again with your hand to get rid of the loose grass

I hope this helps some one it is certainly better then the card table we were playing on until recently with my buddy's.  

Terrain day! update two!

Sorry for the late start. I was invited out to breakfast and could not resist. But I am starting up my terrain building now so far I have gotten nothing done but I did find a few more useful tools and some smaller doweling that should be handy.

  Update one: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I did 6 pieces of ruined walls / junk for smaller pieces I need to let them dry in place before I can start to add details to them like trim on the walls that make these things pop a bit more.

There is also this storage tank with gantry that was inspired by inspiration-in-odd-places when I am done it will look more like the tank farm in the 2ed picture I hope.

last but not least is the base of my sky shield landing pad. It should be interesting making the moving parts of this one but I have ideas.

hopefully this all drys in the next few hours wile I build up the bases of a few more pieces I wanted to start so I can finish them and prime them for paint!

Update:two------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Minor updates for the above pieces ...................................... but I personally like the walls much better

The start of a large Ork fort! not much to see from the one side with the entrance but the gob looking side is already looking a lot more orky.

Also this fenced in supply depo. I think it is about read for sand and primer on this one not much to fiddle with 

Gothic Church part: III

The sides had to get the windows filled in. I have a lot of large terrain in my collection and I have found that most all of it you can see thru one side and out the other. So this will be my huge line of sight blocker and with any luck the windows will look better this way but that will have to be decided after it is all finished.
The front is also about 90% done I think it needs door knockers or something like that. So i need to do that plus the back and the roof and we will be done the base at least.  

Gothic Church part: II

This is why you check your measurements several times  before putting in to much time on a project. On the plus side I think i can work with this to get what I want. I just need to freehand the trim for the top ledges  but I may have to re start my eagle if it looks to wrong with the wings not matching the slope of the roof. 

Gothic Church part: I

Well its time I get back to building terrain. It seemed  time to take my free form scratch builds up a notch so I got to playing around in paint.net and wiped up a side for this Gothic Church. I still have no idea where I am going from hear so don't except this done any time soon but I will post about it when ever I make progress

update:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

not much of an update so I added it on to this post I just replicated the first side on to the back.

Terrain refurbishment part Four

Some trim has helped add a bit to these very old buildings I think I will punch out some rivets to add on to the trim. Also I believe it needs some cracks in the walls and perhaps some built holes before paint. But the pile of junk in the center is still me favorite part of this piece it is just not 100% game friendly as guys don't all wise stand easily on it. You can't win em all tho.

Zone mortis board part: I

This is my take on the Forge World Zone mortis game board. It is still very "work in progress"
but after discovering a new tool that will speed things up (humm I might have to paint it red...) I am back on tract to finish this project.

This paper cutter is what will finally give me the speed i need to actually see some progress .

first off I needed to set a size for the trim on all the walls I went with 3/8" if  you were wondering how many strips it will take to do this whole project the answer I am currently dealing with is simply "more" if you think you cut enough multiply that by two perhaps three and then you might be close.

 this is the first stack.....

Then I needed this stack..... and it looks like I will still need at least one more stack to do the sections I have

The floor needed something interesting on it i went with 1" squares again if you think you have enough just keep cutting this pile did 7 tiles but just barely and only after I decided that the really large open spaces would go uncovered and I would simply paint something interesting in them.

The squares where not enough for the floors seance you are looking at them all the time so I decided they all need drains so I sliced down some granny grateing and started glueing. 

 This is what I ended up with after all my work today it may not look like much but I can start painting them as soon as they dry and that is a huge step forward so I am pleased.