Roofing how to

A question was asked recently over at the Steve Dean forum...how to work out the size of a roof. Normally I would just go for try and error to get the sections the right size, leading to a lot of wasted roofing material  but after ´thinking about it I came up with this;

Make the tower (house or whatever..I´ve tested it and it works for all rectangular buildings) measure from each opposing corner and make a cross shaped insert.

Mark a point at the wished height in the middle of the cross piece. Make a mark at the height of the wall and join the two up. Repeat for all 4 sides.

Lay on a piece of card (or whatever) and mark from the top of the roof to each outside corner. Extend these lines to give a bit of roff overhang. If your building is exactly square, the first piece can be used as a template to make the other 3 sections..if not just repeat for the remaining sections.

Add tabs, either to the inside on the cross piece or on the roof sections and glue on. If the wall sections/cross piece are thick enough to lay the roof sections on and just glue, then the tabs can be ignored. The whole thing only took ten minutes with taking pics but would obviously take longer for a better looking finish.

Welcome to Tyla from Obscure creations Blog. She´s building a dolls house and, I don´t know about you but I find the things fascinating. Not only that but some of the techniques used are very usefull in all forms of modelling.
Welcome to Andy from Cold War Gamer blog . Everything cold war period but in 20mm and a huge amount of resource links.

PS; Due to the screw up with the Bloggroll list thingy, I couldn´t go through the horror of deleting ang re-doing the thing so I´ve just added a second one..much easier :-D

Medieval Town House II

The second medieval house from Fredericus-rex,  town house with shops number 1.
I won´t repeat my  ideas and details as The Town House number 2  only that I´ll add that I´ve come up with a couple of tricks to speed up the building of the house.
1. Pinning the sides together with pins as I glued the wall sections together. This prevents them from falling apart as the next section is attached. The pins I removed after the joins were dry.
2. Using bits of the lasercut sprues to reinforce the internal (unseen) corners. This lends the unfinished construction stages a huge amount of extra stability and helps keep the walls square when duriing later construction.
3. Prepainting the etched wall sheets before adding them to the building. This is not only quicker to do as they are all on a flat surface but the overall colour is then consistant.

The happy family (and dog) with their new house

It´s even got a garage! :-D

The posh end of Styrow on the Foam is growing.

Hello to Michel from Michels Miniaturen Blog. Everything 1/72nd and mostly in my favourite period, the Middle ages. IMHO, Michel is one of the master dio creators...his blog´s well worth a visit

The Gunboat "Diplomacy"

Built in 1880 and named after  General Sir Arthur Diplo-Macy of the Kensington Diplo-Macy´s.

Due to Navy regulation 2189.section A sub section 12, the names of Boats and ships in her majesty´s Service are not to include any Hyphens, so it had to be dropped.
Sporting an 18pdr gun, top deck gatlings and chugging along at the stately speed of 6 mph, this is the absolute power on the rivers of Khandibar. 

The roof is removable and I might add some more deko..levers, some maps,  a picture of Queen Victoria etc.

The main gun. It comes from the Emhar´s  British WWI artillery set. A bit of snipping, the shield bent forward a bit and glued to the top of an old syringe for the mounting with a lenth of plastic rod that fits into the deck allowing it to swivel.

Gatling gun from the HaT gatling gun set. It´s mounted on a pin and can be positioned in each corner of the top deck. Mounts made from thin plastic tubes taken from cotton buds.

Hello to Ender from Ender´s Games Blog. He´s just kicked off with blogging and his first post, Zvezda Vikings is a real good one!

And for all you Fans of 1/72nd Bods, plastic, metal, resin or whatever and all associated  with them, planes, trains and automobiles, ...look HERE  ;-D

El Cid Spanish Infantry (HaT) Crusaders

A good set this one..you get 4 sprues of 24 giving a total of   96 bods !
I´ve already painted the heavy infantry up as Normans but I lost interest in the light infantry until now and the start of an early crusades Army.

One complete sprue without repeats.

With this lot I´m going for a lot more colour

The one pose that is a bit..er?..rubbish..the one on the far right..he just doesn´t look properly balanced.

My favourite pose from the light inf..the crossbow man.

Part 2 of the Medieval Cog..I didn´t get much further than the planking but I did have a coulpe of bods to paint...

Napoleonic Austrian Pioneers (1)

These are destined to become part of the Croeburn 1813 dio. Not my usual period of interest and it´s been a right pain trying to find any reference pics for them  so any tips would be extremely helpfull.

Is the Ochre colour correct? The covers..are they the right colour? Are the reins the right colour?

Many Many  thanks for all the nice comments about the Pirate cutter..you´ve all given me inspiration to have a bash at a couple more.

A bit of a simple build..a colonial gunboat.

Another one with sails and rigging....a medieval Cog. 

Pirate Cutter Scratch build...FINISHED!!!!!

The rigging took a whole day and I know it´s not what  rigging would really be like..there are mistakes and compromises all over the place..but finally it´s done and dusted!  I´ll add a couple of little bits and pieces, rolls of rope, another gun or two, one of those swivel guns but basically all that remains is a name.

The sails are made from paper..cut to size and shape. Along each edge I made a 5mm fold, added a length of thread and glued the fold over it. Then a layer of micromesh net curtain on each side, glued on with wood glue and finally a covering of white Acrylic paint with a bit of sand brown mixed in.

Because the sails are covered with nylon net curtain it was easy to make holes for the rings etc. I heated up a darning needle over a tealight and burnt them in.

Total cost. In real terms..20 cents for the mast and 50 cents for a roll of thread.Paint and glue..about 30 cents worth (industrial batches bought a while ago)
And now all the stages ..(that I took pictures of)  in one go...

I only used three of the blocks..the rest I made using beads

The Yard. The jaws made from a clothes peg.

Wheel made from..a wagon wheeel and some pins

Hold cover made from foamcore with cardboard covering and Anti-Fly mesh for the grate.

It used to look like this!!!!?

Hello to Brovatar from Brovatar´s painting Blog....I love the Isabella Von Carstein!!

Arabic citizens, executioners, Napoleonic french artillery and Female Hoplites.

Loads of new goodies planned and released.
Before you scroll down, warning...mild nudity. 
Arab citizens from Erik Trauner. There´s 4 sets of 5 - 6 bods in each set, Clerics,  musicians,  market  traders and  citizens. They fit well to my plans, firstly they are citizens..and I can never have enough of them, but they are also usefull for medieval of khandibars setting. They will be available from may HERE with more pics of the other sets.

Also availabe are set piece scenery and accesories like these;

This lot are a set of excecutioners and victim being broken with a wheel. They were hard times!!!
The last recorded use of this type of excecution was in 1841!
Available now  from HERE  Apart form the excecution scene, I can see a lot of uses for these bods.

 

Something completely new, .in 1/72nd anyway and a great addition to an Imagination army...Napoleonic french artillery......as you´ve not seen them before.

Also coming from the same source and also available from HERE (around about  may) are some lightly clad female hoplites;

Finally, part 10 (?) of my Pirate cutter scratchbuild..the rigging has started!!!!

The climbing ropes.

Sewing thread stretched over a home made rigging frame

Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem

Two members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. (Ordo Equestris Sancti Sepulcri Hierosolymitani, Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem .. try saying that when your drunk)
One of the 5 oldest  of the Military orders, along with the Templers, ( Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonicthe - Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon  ) Knights of Lazarus    ( Ordo Militaris et Hospitalis Sancti Lazari Hierosolymitani  -Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem )  the Knights Hospitaler  and the Teutonic Knights  ( Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Hierosolymitanorum - Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem )

Enough of the history....
These were painted for a comp at Valdemar forum, Rules,  to have at least one horse, one knight or sergeant from one of the military orders, water and sand. After a lot of research I couldn´t find what symbol a sergeant of the Order would carry so I´ve gone for the basic red cross.
During my searches I found a really good site about the military orders..the Catholic Encyclopedia, tons of info and links.

Not really apparent from the photo, I´ve tried to get two different shades of white..a brown based one and one black based...

Richard´s Plans

Richard, after coming home finds that some Lords, including Sir Hugh Jarse, have been causing a lot of trouble. raising taxes and generally abusing the population. Richard sets up camp near the coast, calls his war council together and makes his plans!

The bods, table and chair  were a suprise pressie from Valdemar :-)

Like in any film, lots of tapping of fingers on the map...winds me up something rotten seeing that in films!!!!!

Hello to Ania´s minis..no blogger link?