Town House WD131

I built these cottages some years ago, also from an article in an old White Dwarf:

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Since then I wanted to add some town houses from the article in White Dwarf 131 - finally I started to do some more nostalgic stuff :)

I recently got a [Proxxon Thermo Cut 230/e](http://www.proxxon.com/de/micromot/27080.php "Proxxon") for my birthday present, this is my first project with the machine. I wasted some styrodur to get the hang of it, and quickly got respectable results. There is still a lot of improvement in handling the Thermo Cut, but for now I was happy.

I cut the shapes of the plan

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from a sheet of styrodur, then sliced off 5mm thick slices - this way I had to cut the actual shape of each part only once, then multiplied the part. Only the chimneys were done in 1cm thick slices.

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I then glued the walls by using Lego blocks for right angles.

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I glued a ground floor and a first floor into the buildings for added stability. The first floor also gives more space to place miniatures inside with this design.

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.

The first of the houses will be the shop of a merchant. The ground floor is build from stone (business is good) with a big arched window (which will be sectioned into smaller panels) to represent his wares. Of course this idea only struck after gluing the walls, it would habe been easier to make the cuts before... I carved the stones with a round tipped biro, depressed some of the stones for a more three dimensional effect, then added structure with a ball of tin foil

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For the ridge on the roof I followed an idea from the article. I drilled holes into a piece of wood, then cut in half, thus creating two ridges at once.

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ardyer

Member
Absolute genius using the Legos to hold the pieces in the correct angle!

The rest is looking great too!
 
Really great work - and clever use of Lego. I am looking forward to seeing the finished results.

It seems like it's town house season on the forum at the moment :grin:
 
Mr Papafakis":16i01kps said:
It's looking great so far. Some very useful tips here too! Thanks :)

You are welcome, I am glad if someone finds my ramblings helpful :)



Viruz":16i01kps said:
Cool Work.
Congratulations. :mrgreen:

Thank you 8-)



ardyer":16i01kps said:
Absolute genius using the Legos to hold the pieces in the correct angle!

Thank you, but I can't take the praise for that :oops: ... It is something that I saw others using and just borrowed the idea :)



LilBroGrendel":16i01kps said:
It seems like it's town house season on the forum at the moment :grin:

Yes, I noticed the other threat after submitting my post :o
 
Today I added the timbering on the merchant's house. I use 8mm square balsa rods, and cut by hand 2mm-3mm beams, thus creating hopefully the look of hand made beams that are not really uniform.

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Gallivantes

Member
KingOfTheLeadPile":p4db55xj said:
The first of the houses will be the shop of a merchant. The ground floor is build from stone (business is good) with a big arched window (which will be sectioned into smaller panels) to represent his wares. Of course this idea only struck after gluing the walls, it would have been easier to make the cuts before...

I have seen people make small handheld wire cutters using cheap household goods. They seem useful for the kind of freehand jobs in tight spots that your merchant store window entails.

The basic idea is to fix a wire (paperclip) to either a battery or a lighter to give you a sort of pen sized device with a hot wire. There are lots of designs on Youtube. Some go towards the more advanced using a battery and a bit of wiring and a switch. The simplest I've seen was just a paperclip wrapped around a lighter and sticking out over the lighter nozzle to be heated and provide a couple of inches of hot wire to operate in a stylus fashion.

Obviously, caution advised regarding handling a flame anywhere near your foam buildings, or your hobby space in general. But even the simplest lighter+paperclip version seems reasonably safe because you can heat it on the fly, then turn off the flame and the wire will retain enough heat to carve out a few inches or so I saw in a video.

Not tried the idea myself but it seemed straightforward enough from the videos I saw that I thought it worth recommending.
 

Gallivantes

Member
Oh and your buildings are looking really good! I especially thought the idea of using 2/3 mil beams for slight variation was ingenious, I never would have thought of that.
 

Subedai

Member
Beautiful buildings!

I am going down the 4Ground route to finally get some settlements onto my table, as I wouldn't be able to achieve this level of loveliness (I tried for 25 years).
 
Gallivantes":2ja0tjou said:
Oh and your buildings are looking really good! I especially thought the idea of using 2/3 mil beams for slight variation was ingenious, I never would have thought of that.

I always try to think of such small details to get in some variation - to me it always seems only the others have the good ideas, so thank you :)




Some years ago, I saw this nice scissors with a wave form in a store. "You will never need that!" I was told by her who must be obeyed - ha! Finally I proved here wrong :)

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The merchant has some nice rounded shingles on his roof. To place them, I drew lines on the roof - which again would have been easier before gluing the card to the walls...

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I added two gables as well and shingled the roof(s).

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symphonicpoet

Moderator
It's good to obey her who must be obeyed, . . . but it's also nice to be right once in a while. ;) Love that last built. It's gonna look nice!
 

Blue in VT

Moderator
Very inspiring! I'm intrigued by the use of foam for the structure...as I typically use foamcore. How were you able to achieve such perfect cuts and thicknesses? and those rounded shingles are superb! I must keep any eye out for those kind of scissors.

Please keep us posted as you progress.

Cheers,

Blue
 
Blue in VT":3jubh8x0 said:
I'm intrigued by the use of foam for the structure...as I typically use foamcore. How were you able to achieve such perfect cuts and thicknesses?

I used this with that and one of those.

I cut the form from 4cm thick styrofoam, then 'multiplied' the form by slicing off 0.5cm thick slices; so one cut form (side wall for example) gave me 8 identical parts.

Hope that explanation makes sense.
 
That new roof looks really great! When you have finished the houses, it would be nice to see some of your human miniatures around the buildings :)
 

Blue in VT

Moderator
KingOfTheLeadPile":q3orm1n7 said:
Blue in VT":q3orm1n7 said:
I'm intrigued by the use of foam for the structure...as I typically use foamcore. How were you able to achieve such perfect cuts and thicknesses?

I used this with that and one of those.

I cut the form from 4cm thick styrofoam, then 'multiplied' the form by slicing off 0.5cm thick slices; so one cut form (side wall for example) gave me 8 identical parts.

Hope that explanation makes sense.

WOW!!Super cool...that set up is like a mini Mill for foam cutting. Wicked cool.

Cheers,

Blue
 
I cut the doors from balsa wood, cut planks into them, then added fixtures cut from card.

The sectioning of the large front window was done with thinly cut strips of balsa.

I added a bit of spackle to some of the stones. On the one hand this covers where the foam pieces obviously meet, on the other hand this gives some more 3d effect to the wall.

I started to give structure to the walls using the same spackle, but this was hard to apply, so only the gables have it. For the rest of the walls I used PVA and sprinkled sand on.

I still want to carve a sign symbolizing the wares sold here, which will dangle from a chain on the outside, but I am not sure yet which it will be.

Apart from that sign, construction is done :)

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symphonicpoet

Moderator
I've enjoyed working with spackle for all kinds of odd projects, including my last aircraft, strangely. The house looks lovely. Love the front window and I look forward to seeing what you do with the sign and paint. :)
 
Second house is finished. This one is a nearly 100% copy of the house from the article. The angle of the roofs I cut is 60°, the plan in the article has 54°, so I first made a template from cardboard and cut down the side walls.

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For this house, I carved the door directly into the foam.

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Besides not having a stone ground floor, this bulding was done like the first - balsa wood framing, bird cage sand for the texturing. The shingles on this one are rectangular and cut from thicker card.

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One problem I encountered, which I don't know how to solve yet, is that the glue on the roof warped it - the roof fit the walls perfectly before gluing the shingles to it... I will probably hide it with moss or a row of smaller shingles glued in one row parallel to the wall...

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