Saturday, January 19, 2013

Homebuilding in 15mm, Part 1

As I lack the necessary hardware to print out nice, colorful, terrain, I have to make-do with scratch building some tract homes for the ATZ campaign my sons and I are running.

I was able to pick up two of these
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for a dollar each; 20" x 30".

I then, with the help of my eldest son, took measurements of the house where I rent a room, to get an idea of dimensions and scale. I determined that I would construct a house 18cm long by 9cm wide, with a separate roof, so we could use the interior in our games. The dimensions include an attached single car garage

 photo image_zps7d6e45a9.jpg The height of the walls is 3cm, giving enough space to put 15mm figures in and then replace the roof. The roof piece adds another 2.5cm to the structure, a little too tall for reality, but it's fine for wargame terrain. photo image-14_zps55e23f0d.jpg
I checked the size of the walls against one of our characters.

Using white glue, I glued the walls together and temporarily pinned them. photo image_zpsb8dada5f.jpg

I then added strength to the structure by gluing pieces of cereal box cardboard, cut into triangles, into the underside corners. These helped to keep it square while the glue dried. photo image_zpse1ba2c1c.jpg

Using more cardboard from the empty cereal box, I cut out pieces for the door, windows, sliding glass doors, and garage door. photo image_zps05b5fbcd.jpg
Front  photo image_zps5b183e83.jpgRear

I used this method as I felt cutting tiny holes in the foamcore would be too fiddly, and would likely weaken the structure. We will see if I made more trouble for myself when I go to finish the exterior later. photo image_zps23fe6289.jpg

Again, a check for scale. The truck fits nicely in the driveway, but won't fit in the garage, which is fine. I can use this for a few games and see if I want to do a finished interior. photo image_zps0f02acb3.jpg

Here is the roof piece, it is a simple gable roof, that I have glued, pinned and left to dry.

Part 2 will detail the rest of the roof construction and then Part 3 will show how I finish the exterior and paint the model (I haven't gotten there yet, but most of the roof is done at this time).




2 comments:

  1. That's how I do it too. I also use corrugated cardboard from boxes for corrugated roofing.

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    1. For this one, being my first house, I am using the tried and true method of paper strips cut to resemble shingles. However, many homes here have faux roofing tiles, red adobe, and I was thinking of using corrugated cardboard, painted red, to represent those. Other houses have the thin asphalt tiles, which would also be represented by paper, just with less cuts in the larger strips of paper. In fact, 220 or perhaps 150 grit sandpaper would work better for those, due to he gritty nature of the asphalt tiles.

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