Polish barn

 I'm a bit behind in posting modeling updates, but here's one again.

Another building added to my 1939 1/72 Polish village: a barn. It's not based on any historical example, I just went for the right atmosphere. 

As with the previous ones, first a styrene rough build.The lean-to on the left is just to provide some variation in shape.

Since I had some warping issues with previous buildings, I braced the reverses first.

The walls clad with coffee stirrers.

And the completed walls assembled.

A cheap towel volunteered to be the thatched roof.

The walls primed. I find that a grey chalk primer with a brown wash give a nice aged wood look.

First wash came out a bit too cocolate-like.

Gave it a second coat to tone it down, and called it done.

German WWII Pionierbrücke

I noticed that I do have some river boards, but no suitable WWII bridges yet. Since for now I'm concentrating on early WWII Eastern Front, a German Pionierbrücke was the obvious choice. In spite of that, I did build one.

My rivers are 10cm wide, but I plan to have some twice a wide in future, so the design had to be flexible enough to reflect that.

The width was determined by that of the average German army truck, and that of horse drawn artillery.

This a considerably longer example, across the Dnjepr, in 1941.

The bridge deck.

Sturdy supports.

The underside of the bridge deck, below it the two ramps.

Basic construction done. There were still a few emergency bridges in use when I was a kid, and I remember the ramps having cross bars to give horse hooves traction - so I added those to my model.

A start on the hand rails.

The finished bridge.

The examples I've see were all unpainted, so I only "dirtied" the deck, stained the supports at water level, and called it a day.

Polish wind mill model

I was about to scratch build a wind mill to go with my 1/72 1939 Polish village, when I remembered I bought a vacuum formed model decades ago. A search of the attic brought it back to light.

Construction of the base.

The top added.

Here the problems started: I found it impossible to use the axle provided, and made my own.

Basic build done.

The tail again was way too flimsy to use, the wheel impossible (for me at last) to carve out, so I constructed a new wooden tail. For the wheel I used an old Airfix Napoleonic artillery wheel.

Since the for part vacuum formed base left some unsightly seams, I spackled it, and sanded it smooth.

I was afraid the whole structure might be too fiddly for a wargames table, so I decided to add a (former CD) base.

The base nearly finished, the base of the mill primed and covered in fine grained sand to give it an even structure.

Bit more priming and painting done, ran out of paint for the sail louvres.

The third store I visited finally reacted to my quest for Polish wind mill sail louvre paint with the only proper reply: "Would that be 1939 or 1944, sir?"

Finished the base with some flowers.

Stained the mill itself and the tail.

Tail added, more painting done.

The final result.

If there's anything I learned from building this, it is that vacuum formed models are not my cup of tea. Considering the extra work I had to do it, I might as well have scratch built the whole thing.

Anyhow, a nice addition to my village.

Second Polish village house

Quite unsurprisingly, my second 1/72 1939 Polish village house is quite similar in construction to my first one, all I did was change some of the dimensions.

The basic styrene construction:

Disassembled for further work, window and door frames added - match sticks.

Half of the walls clad with coffee stirrers.

Walls reassembled, chimney (ex ballpoint pen) added.

Wall thatched with towel strips, walls primed.

The final result, front and back.