Polish village shop

For the second building for my 1939 Polish village I decided on a village shop.

I came across this pic of a building described as "Jewish". Since I was straight out of Jewish coffee stirrers I made mine non-denominational.

Though the final result is IMNSHO satisfactory, there were a few bumps in the road when scratch building this model.

The pic that started it all:

The basic model, out of styrene:

The door- and window frames put in, made out of match sticks.

The front wall clad with coffee stirrers.

When the glue had dried, I found the wall bent considerably. To fix it I added a ceiling

.

All four walls clad, and assembled.

Roof and chimneys added.

Small remark on the lines where the seams between the zinc roofing were to come: Do not use a permanent marker, like I did, but rather a pencil. The marker bled right through glue and primer. No big problem in this case, but something to remember.

Some reinforcement was added to the roof to keep it in shape.

The roofing seams added, the woodwork primed.

I wanted to use a new (for me at least) painting technique: a wash over the absorbent wood primer, and the less so neglected green paint, and spray primer used for the roof.

It worked well for the walls, nut the wash didn't work at all with the primer used for the roof, so I aged that by rubbing it with brown paint.

As I said at the beginning, a few minor hiccups during the construction, but in the end a very usable addition to my Polish village project. 

First Polish village house

Since I only have some paper Russian buildings for my fledgling early WWII FoW in 1/72 plastics, I decided to mark a start with some Polish scenery.

I came across this 1916 pic of a Polish hovel, and figured it would b a good start.

That resulted in this first paper mock-ip, not very good, but gave me a feel of the project.

After making some structural changes, and fiddling the dimensions a bit, that led to this styrene base model.

As usual, a lot of coffee stirrers met with an untimely end.

All the cladding done.

The chimney was donated by the Jacksonville, Florida, Best Western, where they had the odd idea it was a pen.

I noticed that many Eastern European houses have a layered-looking thatch, so I did that with slightly overlapping strips of towel, hoping it would come out well in the color wash. As you can see, I also primed the woodwork.

And the final result. I'm quite pleased with it, good start for a village, I think. Easy project, took less than a week to do, bit of time every evening.

Medieval/fantasy village completed

So this is what has kept me occupied, off and on, for the past five months or so: my fantasy/Medieval hamlet: inn. houses in all price ranges, and of course the sheep cote. The construction of most structures is described elsewhere on this blog.

Fun project, and I hope you liked seeing me muddle along. I also hope you saw how easy this is to do, and that it inspires some of you to do your own project.

Medieval/fantasy inn

As a focal point for my Medieval/fantasy hamlet, I built an inn.

In the rural parts of the Netherlands I've lived in, inns were not what we would understand as an inn now, but more like a working farm with facilities for weary travelers.

An example of such an extended farm can still be seen in the railway station coffee house in nearby Scheemda:

Since having a fire in a thatched building was not very advisable, farms had a separate cooking/baking house, close but not attached to the main house.

First attempt at the front of the building.

I found it a tad too low, so automatically it also got wider.

The barn part was added.

And the whole thing under one roof.

Had to disassemble the front of the building to add structure and details. Several coffee stirrers were sacrificed.

In the meantime, the basic construction of the cook house was done.

If you're wondering about the low top floor side windows, that is a common Northern Dutch 19th - early 20th Century feature, which I think would also go well with my Medievialized version.

Walls daubed (sand in wet paint) and the woodwork primed.

You may have noticed the sudden appearance of two small a-frame houses. Last month we had a heatwave, way too hot to paint, so I decided to add a few A-frames - you can never have too many A-frames.

Brown wash for the walls.

Everything reassembled, cook house done.

Yet another innocent towel slaughtered to make thatch.

And the final result.

The sign was made with the aid of some jewelry findings.

In the Netherlands, perhaps elsewhere as well, a swan sign was a code telling travelers that they didn't need to be cold or lonely during the long dark night.

The roof is darker than the flash makes it look.

This is the largest building I've done in this style It took me about a month, working an hour or so most evenings, and I think it's well worth it.

My first Bolt Action game.

I know one isn't supposed to beat Buddhist monks, but this one was asking for it.

Lars Schieving invited me over for a game of Bolt Action, my first ever, a small scale infantry do.

The first pic shows the start of the game. I played the Americans, Lars the Germans. Behind the farm house bottom left you see my tactical reserve, which didn't see any action besides being used for target practice.

The second pic shows the height of the game, after I eradicated that pesky German section which had been sniping at my left flank. My tactical reserve now found themselves behind a clump of trees.

The final pic shows the end. Lars' SdKfz 251 had surprised my center, and decimated my reserve squad. Luckily, that also exposed the Hanomag's flank to my .30.
I love the smell of burning Hanomags in the morning.

With only three figures left, Lars Schieving decided to throw in the towel.

It was a small game, nice introduction to the system, with enough randomness to keep it interesting.

Thanks for the invitation, and yes, I'll gladly beat you again.