Church: Day 7 & 8

Yesterday I spent time finishing off the floor of the church, doing the stone tiling in sections. Today, after deciding that trying to get the church body flush with the base as it stands with all the lumps and bumps of the tiles was going to be a difficult task. So I decided to create a stone plinth on which to place the church, the benefits of this being that I have a pretty flat surface to put the church on, as well as it giving more depth to the interior/exterior with the ledge around all the walls.

I wanted to ensure I got a uniform height throughout, and having worked with the clay for a few days now I knew I couldn’t do this easily without assistance. To solve this, i stuck sticks of 3mm balsa down to make a frame around which I can create the plinth. The end result I’m extremely pleased with as even though the edging isnt straight, these are stones after all, so its never going to be. Rather than carving the stone gaps in while the clay is wet, I’ve decided to do it after the fact, I imagine I may get a cleaner line from doing it that way.

I tend to do work in progress shots as black and white, but I’ve left these coloured so you can see the differences more easily.

Balsa frame in place

Stone flooring

Plinth in place

Church: Day 6

The wife is away in London tonight, it’s a work trip but she’s managed to blag tickets for Spamalot too, so I’m extremely jealous. It does mean however that I spent all night in the basement working on the church. I started off with finishing the end of the roof – at least for the interior, I need to decide on how I want to cover it, probably individually cut slates, I’m just putting off the tedium of it by procrastinating.

The aisle was next, originally I was going to attempt to mould this out of the putty like I did on the raised area, but I wanted to have it clear enough to paint a pattern on, so decided in the end to score some plasticard with the hatchings. This was then roughed up slightly with a stone, and I will probably apply some goop to it to fill in some of the gaps. The areas either side will likely be putty as these will just be large stone tiles with benches on.

Finally I started on putting putty on the walls of the church, this is the first time I’ve done something like this so I was a little nervous about doing it, but the putty is extremely forgiving so I just kept building it up with little discs, then smoothed it down. Theres a lot of church to go though, the bit you see took approx 40-60mins, so I estimate theres some 4-5hours worth of putty work to finish off the church, especially as I want to add in some frames around the windows.

Cardboard templates for roof end.

Balsa wood in place.

The church aisle, with spacings marked out for tiles.

Tile scoring.

And the other direction, tiles finished.

Glued in place.

Putty on the tower

More putty

Roof in place

Tower view, with roof in place

Church: Day 5, Part 2

Just a quick update with pictures of the roof now my camera is charged.

Church back

Church Front

Roof off.

Church: Day 5

A quick post tonight to show some progress from last evenings work. I spent most of yesterday morning putting up new shelves in my office/hobby room, and with various other activities throughout the day ended up rather exhausted by the evening. None the less, I put some time into the church and cut out the balsa panels for the roof and glued them down. I also produced another truss for the roof as three didn’t balance very well. The glued together roof now looks great and is completely detachable, however my camera batteries are flat so I can’t take a picture this evening. I also just had the realization as I typed this up that once I apply the layer of modelling clay to the tower, its going to need some minor resizing of the roof as it’s pretty snug. I’m sure it’ll cope though.I also built up the base with modelling clay, but that’s ugly right now and not worth showing.

Anyway, progress shots:

Roof on

A shot of the roof inside.

Church: Day 4

Earlier this week I received delivery of my copy of dampf’s new wargaming terrain guide (signed edition #19!), and having flicked through a few of the tutorials I’ve been heavily inspired to get on with my church. Within hours of having the book I had ordered myself some DAS modelling clay, which arrived today. Opening it up, this smells *very* familiar, so I can only surmise that I’ve used it before at school perhaps. I really like the texture of it though and I can see why dampf recommends it as it’s extremely easy to work and move into shape.

The evening began with some time in the sun after work, cutting out a platform for the church from a rather large sheet of 6mm MDF that I use for all my terrain bases. It’s a bit thicker than I want, but I’ll keep at it until it’s gone.  Once this was done I cut out some corrugated cardboard templates roughly 5mm larger than the base of the church. These were glued together with a hot glue gun and are intended to help build up the floor for the church a little. My intention with this build, at least while creating it, is to build the entire interior of the church with the walls off, so I needed a good solid base to work within.

The next stage was to cut a piece of foam board for the raised platform for the altar, on this I spread a thinish layer of DAS modelling clay and careful smoothed it out, before marking in some stone tiles. It still looks a little rough, but my intention is to give it a light sanding/clean-up once its dry to remove all the bits that have lifted as I scraped the clay.  The bit’s where the gaps have closed in are fine, as that can just be general wear and tear.

While that was drying, I moved on to make the roof trusses. I want to make the roof removable, so I want to create some detail under it, I know it won’t be seen much, but it’ll be fun to build. My plan is to glue some sheet balsa onto the trusses (mainly because I have it going spare), which I can mark wood panelling in to. This can then be reinforced by the tiles being glues to the back of it.

So the final photo show where we are now, with a blue-tacked together roof template and trusses, time to do a bit of painting before bedtime! I’ve just realised I was so absorbed tonight that I let my cup of tea go cold and I didn’t finish all my munchies, inconceivable!

Altar floor in situ

New MDF base and carboard platform

Church floor for altar

Bluetacked truses and roof template in place.

Another close up of altar floor.

New roof truses

Church: Day 3

I didn’t get to work on the church on Tuesday, so last night I spent some time cutting out windows and shaping it up for the full structure. Additionally I built a floor for the tower out of balsa wood. Once all that was done, I spent a bit of time finishing off my vargheists. I’m not really happy with the paint job on these, I should have started with a lighter colour to build highlights – the contrast from the base colour to the highlight is way too strong and looks messy in places.

I’m calling it on this for the moment though as I have such a backlog of units to paint that I wanted to get these off the workbench, I may re-visit them later if inspiration hits.

Church held together with bluetack

Tower floor

Finished vargheists.

Church: Day 1

Having had a week away from any painting or building, I was eager to get on with some, so I spent most of monday night working on the church building I sketched out while on holiday. I know it’s probably not the most ideal piece of terrain for Warhammer, but I didn’t want to do another half-timbered house *just* yet. I also embarked on a water trough, inspired by dampf’s tutorial. This was mainly something to do while I waited for the glue to dry on the church tower.

I also glued on the wings to the side of the main church before doing the windows, so that’s going to be annoying to rectify without breaking them off! Anyway, here’s a few pictures of progress.

Cut outs

Glue Contraption

Perspective

Looking good

Inside.

A rather bulky water trough.

The rough outline for the church was sketched on my holidays, you can see it here on the top of the page: