Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Paper 28mm buildings

With everyone otherwise engaged this Tuesday I used the time to make some new paper 28mm buildings.  We have been using our old 15mm buildings with our new 28mm figures & that does work - the buildings are out of scale with the figures, but closer in scale to the unit footprints.  But in Bolt Action, having houses too small to hide a tank behind doesn't seem right. 

The buildings I've made are from Dave Griffam Models  http://www.davesgames.net/  (bought through http://www.wargamevault.com/ ).  They are pdf downloads which cost about $3 each.   Once you have the pdf you can make as many buildings as you want at the cost of only paper, glue, ink & a bit of time.  The pdfs have selectable layers that allow you to choose different finishes (stone, brick, stucco, half timbered), different numbers of windows & doors, different roof types (tile, slate, thatch) for each model. Some models are easily modified for even more variety.
The range of buildings is a mix of mostly fantasy & sci-fi buildings, but there are some good Western European style buildings amongst the weird ones.  I have the "Church", "Cottage", "Longhouse" & "Coach House".  There are 3 Coach houses in the pic with 3 different finishes.  I modified the stone one on the left of the tank to make it a single storey building.  They print naturally at 28mm scale, but you could print them at smaller scales.  The houses are each made from 4 A4 sheets.

It takes about 1/2 an hour to make a model house & it's quite easy once you get the technique right. 220gm matt photo paper is as heavy as will go thought my printer, but is strong enough.  A good pair of scissors makes cutting out easy.  I score the bend lines with the back of a Stanley knife run along a steel ruler - the stiff paper is then easily bent straight on the lines.  UHU in a tube is the best glue I've found - it doesn't wet & warp the paper & really sticks.

They don't come with an insert ruin you can lift the model off like PaperTerrain.com models, but I cut out the inside of the base so the building can be lifted, the troops placed & the building put back over them.  After doing the church, I improved on this by bending the base tabs outwards under the base ring so the full internal area is useable.   The base skirts on the Coach Houses are wider than they need to be for strength - I think I'll cut them back to about 6mm wide.

2 comments:

Truscott Trotter said...

They look great Jim

RUSSEL said...

Look great Jim nice work