Wednesday 25 June 2014

A Quick Build!

My gaming group have been planning to run a series of games using the steampunk rules In Her Majesty’s Name.

IHMN is a small scale skirmish game using companies of around 5 – 15 miniatures in each opposing force. Shooting in the game appears to be pretty deadly and it is fairly apparent that a good amount of cover is going to be essential. As such I have been reviewing the scenery I have, and also preparing a few bits of specifically “Steampunk” styled pieces. I soon decided that I didn’t have enough buildings for the game (after all a lot of the feel of the game is set around urban Victorian scenarios).

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Some time ago I picked up an Airfix Beam Engine model kit (actually, it was in a sale and I bought three of them…). I have built it and it makes perfect scenery for a steampunk game. It occurred to me that I really needed a building to go around the Beam Engine, giving the flavour of a Victorian Pump room or some other strange factory facility.

I wanted the building to be multipurpose, so I decided not the fix the Beam Engine into the model (it might be handy to leave it lying around the steampunk tables anyway.

I did a quick sketch last Wednesday. I am not great at doing extensive plans, I generally prefer to dive straight into the actual model making, and then finalise the design as I go along.The sketch was a very simple plan view of the building an then an isometric view. At this point I hadn’t even considered any stairs…

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This was a very fast build. I cut all of the foamcore by hand, just using a scalpel and a steel straight edge. Due to this I don’t have any step by step photos. Basically I cut the floor of the upper storey and then cut the rest of the pieces to fit it!

Joining Foamcore

I cut the foamcore back from the edges of one side of each joint so that it would hide the edge of the other piece in the joint.

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Once I had all of the pieces cut I stuck everything together using PVA wood glue.

At this point I started to look at the stairs. I was considering having a curved stair at each of the back corners. However, as this was supposed to be a quick build I went for a simple central structure, which has the added benefit of giving a nice deep tunnel underneath, that a figure can lurk in!

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I kept the upper floor separate so that we could have access to move figures around on the ground floor.

Next up, I started to consider some of the finishing details. Obviously I needed a balustrade of some sort, to go around the upper floor, both inside the building and out. I decided to use 1.5mm ply and cut all the details on the laser cutter.

First up I cut back the top of the foamcore, by 1.5mm all around, so that the balustrade wouldn’t overhang.

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Then I measured up what I was going to need. I designed the balustrade in Corel Draw, it only took around a half hour to do, as it was all more or less repetition… It took about the same time for them to cut in the laser.

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The roof of the building was also laser cut. I found a roof tile texture on the web, and with quite a bit of tweaking I made it suitable for laser cutting, and giving a (shallow) 3D surface.

Finally I laser cut the window frames, door frames and the balustrade on the stairs.

Once these were all stuck in place The model was finished.

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These two photos show the model with roof on.

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Taking the roof off, you can see there is plenty of room for figures to run around both in and outside.

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Finally with the upper storey removed, there is full access to the ground floor.

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3 comments:

  1. Sorry if this is a double post, not sure if 1st try worked.

    Just wanted to say that I would buy this building if you sold it as a kit. It looks great.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unfortunately, as the main structure of the building is hand cut foamcore, it wouldn't be practical to sell it.

      I could produce the laser cut bits, and a plan for the foamcore bits to cut yourself, I suppose. I'll give it some thought...

      Delete
    2. Yeah, that sounds interesting. Thanks for considering it.

      Delete

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