La Belle Alliance Part Five

Hello There! I have continued to progress with the Waterloo building. The previous part is here. Now, I can describe adding and weathering the roof on the extension, weathering the window and door frames and applying a rust finish to the bars on the windows and door hinges.

This is a picture of a roof on a building at a previous game at New Buckenham Historical Wargamers. At this point I had not decided what finish I wanted to aim for.

I reached a decision when I drove over to a wargames friends new house, after he had recently moved. I drove through a part of a VERY rural Suffolk. 

On the way I saw a pantile roof on an old building and it was covered in moss. I though that during the Napoleonic period people would not be bothered about removing this and moss would be a lot more prevalent than now considering the less polluted environment

To start off with I used some pantile roof sheets from the Wills Scenics range of plastic materials.

The above is the roof for the main building. The roof was self colour. However it did not take paint well. I wanted to add different shades of tiles to the roof. I glued two sheets together to make the correct size for one side of the building. Above is the original colour on the left, enamel white undercoat in the middle and the repainted, (Vallejo 929 Light Brown), on the right.

The newly painted sheet on the right also had a slightly grainy finish.

I added some slightly different shades to the individual roof tiles. Unfortunately this does not show up well on this photograph.

I then washed the roof in Army Painter Quick Shade Strong tone.

When dry, I added a wash of AK interactive Slimy Grime Dark mixed with Woodland Scenics fine turf. The colour of the turf does not matter as the AK interactive product will colour it.

I then added small portions of the mix to the troughs of the roof to represent moss clumps. After this has dried I washed the roof in a 50:50 mix of PVA and water to hold the moss on the roof.

The clumps were painted 872 Chocolate Brown. When dry the top surface was painted 922 Intermediate green.

Next I painted the woodwork on the windows, doors, window shutters and barge boards.

I copied the system for painting worn old timber from Emmanuel Nouaillier. In the June 2008 edition of Continental Modeller he used a mixture of Humbrol enamel paints. (Matt numbers 27, 28, 98, 119 and 147). Using enamels come with the usual odours, especially from white spirit, when used as a thinner, and in my case the resulting headache.

I thought that it would be possible to use Vallejo acrylics. I found equivalent colours in 859, Basalt Grey, 875, Beige Brown, 841, Burnt Umber and 992, Neutral Grey. Thinning with water worked just as well.

First you clean the plasticard. Add a wood grain to it by rubbing the face of the strips with a suede brush, or for a deeper grain a wire brush. I make the grain deeper by scoring it with a scalpel with a no. 11 blade. The previous fine grain from the brushing guides the scalpel point so it does not meander all over the card. Remove the swarf from the plasticard. Make the frame, or in the case above, the window shutters. Glue them together with 'liquid glue for plastic' by Revell. Allow to dry. If you do get finger prints on the scored plastic, do not worry. Leave it to dry and rescore later.

Paint the whole item in enamel white and allow to dry.

The idea of painting is to wash the colours over the plasticard card and merge the colours together. You can try to get different shade on individual planks. Do not worry about the planks being too light or dark. Try to leave a hint of the various colours from the Vallejo colours listed above.

After the wood effect has dried, I washed in a thin coat of 950 black.

As the doors were treated the same as above, the door hinges were painted in 981 Orange Brown. This is the base of the rust finish.

I masked the rest of the door off. 

Then added a coat of pigment fixer on the bear hinges and added a covering of AK dark rust AK2042.

Before adding a coat of more pigment fixer to the surface of the pigment, I gently brushed away the excess pigment. I then dropped a further layer of pigment fixer and allow to dry before adding more pigment fixer.

After removing the masking tape I ended up with this effect. Any excess pigment that found its way under the masking tape can be removed using white spirit on a paintbrush and washing it away. 

As you may see in the above photographs I have added 'glass' to the windows. I used 'Leaded Windows, Diamond Pattern' from Scale Model Scenery. Another supplier to the model train world which can be very helpful.

Last I have added the 'La Belle Alliance' sign. This is made from foamcore. After cutting to size I  covered it in a layer of AK Terrains Dry Ground, AK8015. I let that set, and painted 820 off white. I used a 3mm high engineering, metal stamp set, to make the impression of the letters, and then filled in the impressions with 0.3mm tip pigment liner.

Next I shall add the timber boards to each end of the building and the main roof.

La Belle Alliance Build Part Three

Hello There! I have now started to emboss the foamcore with bricks. Part two of this build is here. 

I rectified my first mistake today! I fitted the window frames as far forward as I thought was required. Then I peeled off the paper on that side of the foamcore and realised that the frames were too far forward. I have since trimmed them back and and replaced the wood grain with the tip of the scalpel.

For the door and window frames of the other side of the building I remembered what had happened with the other side and removed the paper around them before I fitted everything. I also cut the walls for the end extension and got some blank pieces to act as stiffeners for the buildings.  

I found an easier way to emboss the bricks on the end of the building. Usually I use a steel ruler to act as a guide but as the end was already glued to the end of the main building I found I had 'run out of hands' to hold the building, steel rulers and the brick embosser. 

Instead I used a pencil to mark a guide line so that I could see if I was deviating from a straight course of bricks.

After making the bars which go across the lower part of each window I had to cut the protruding bars which stuck out of the top and bottom of their frame. I had to wait for the plastic liquid glue had set and dried. This picture is purely descriptive and I used the scalpel again. I did hold the piece as I cut it!

The next part will include fitting the building together and starting the painting.

La Belle Alliance Build Part Two

Hello There! I have made some more progress on the build. The start of the build is here.  After starting to cut out the spaces for the doors and windows I found that the width of the gaps for the doorframes and window frames were too small for the front of the building.

Using the grid on the graph paper I was able to widen them both a standard size. I use a sharp scalpel to cut the openings.

During this I made one cut which while it was 'clean' it was not square so the subsequent door and frame would not have sat correctly. In the picture below the left hand cut on the door is misaligned. You can see the mixed Miliputt on the right to correct this.

Here I have put the miliputt in place and fitted the door frame. I waited for this to set and then glued both in place with gel superglue.

I used an engineers square to get both in the right position.

Concerning the timber for the doors and windows, I used a suede brush and then a wire brush to impress a wood grain into the plastistrut. To make this deeper and more pronounced I then ran the tip of a pointed scalpel along as well. This also gave you less chance of running of the side off the plastistrut as the existing small grooves from the wire brushes provided a guide. 

The grooves along the outside edge of the door frame were made using a pointed scalpel again with the plastistrut placed flat on a cutting board and then run along the edge.

The windows are in two parts. The top part is leaded and the lower part is guarded with iron bars which are held in place by horizontal beams against the transom of the frame. I cut the upper and lower parts of the horizontal beams that the bars will fit into. I cut them the same length and held them together while I drilled holes through them so the vertical bars would be vertical. (I had to do this twice so they were parallel!).

With the window bars fitted I started on the doors. These were also made from plasticard and a wood grain finish was added as before. the uprights were added to two parallel beaks, as seen above.

I then peeled off the surface card on the foam.

With all the doors and windows fitted I began to emboss the bricks onto the surface. This was done with the shaped ferrule of an old paint brush . A six inch steel rule was used to maintain a straight line for the bricks.

In the next part I hope to start the priming and painting.

La Belle Alliance Build Part One

Hello there! I have started revamping some buildings associated with The Battle of Waterloo. I have begun with Napoleons headquarters so that I can judge how best to do this work so that I can progress with the other buildings, Hougoumont and La Haie Sainte. 

I started off with this. I started by stripping the doors and windows and removing the roof and end extension.

This gave me the bare bones of the foam board shell. Here I have added some depth to each end as I had completed the next step below.

I searched the internet for reference material. I found that some representations of this building had made a number of mistakes as there was a few differences to what the building looked like during the battle and after a number of changes had been made.

The sepia illustration above was the most accurate I could find which was contemporary with the battle. I was completed a few months after the battle.

The black and white picture is from Adkins 'The Waterloo Companion' That shows some smaller windows under the eaves which were a later addition. Lastly on the front facing the road the left hand doorway was bricked up. In most models it is a door.

There does not appear to be any detailed pictures of the rear of the building. There is a well and a separate building behind but this is not included in this work.

I obtained some graph paper and started a scale drawing with the reference information I had. I also needed to take into account the dimensions of the foam board model I had to work with and the spacing of the doors and windows to make them look right.

Once that was done I then photocopied the plans and glued them to a sheet of Canson Foamboard. This is a much higher quality foam board than what is available from the likes of Hobbycraft. It is denser and is sandwiched with two sheets of cartridge paper. It is much easier to peel of and leaved a clean area which can be impressed with brick much more easily.

The wider dimensions, between the above plan and the foamcore shell was different. The plan being much wider. I added some further width by cutting some cheaper foamcore board a little smaller than what was already there and glued them to each end. The final ends where cut in Canson foamboard so I could impress a brick end to it later.

This also gave me the final width for the front and back and ensured that it would all fit together with no overlapping.

As you can see above I have started to cut out the doors and windows. This gave me the opportunity top enlarge them, to suit 28mm figures more easily and take into account the thickness of the plasticard which will be the door surrounds.

Next I will fit the doors and windows

Hougoumont Gardens

Hello here! I recently saw some previous work, I had done for my local wargames club. I may have posted it on this blog, but it was a very long time ago, so I thought I would post them on here.

The model of Hougoumont is the Hovels, resin, offering. It did not come with a walled garden but does have the walls. It always looked a bit sparse, when used by the club for its regular Waterloo refight, so I decided to build one.

At the same time I made a garden for the gardeners house next to it.

There are plenty of examples of what the garden looked like, on the internet. I had to separate a wargamers 'best guess' from contemporary painting made just after the battle. Source material, for even such a well read and studied battle, can be misleading.

Here is a close up of the garden. The cabbages are white roses from Hobbycraft scrape booking accessories and painted green and dry brushed a lighter green. The taller vegetation is coconut bristles from a broom head.

The raised beds are thin plywood faced with Slaters Scenics blockwork and then filled in with layers of plaster. Doing one thick layer takes a very long time to set so many thinner layers are better. The triangular plants are a mixture of coconut bristles again and sweet chestnut casings, soaked in glycerine, to preserve them, painted and model railway ballast glued to the top and painted different colours. 

The other part of the flower beads are Woodland Scenics clump foliage soaked in PVA mixed with water, so that they go hard.

The gravel path is, again, model railway ballast.

Battle of Quatre Bras 16 June 1815

Hello there! I have forced myself to ne sociable recently and attended a game at the New Buckenham Historical wargames Club. 

They gamed the Battle of Quatre Bras, after recently gaming Waterloo earlier in the year.

I was unable to attend the start of the game on the Friday evening but was at the Saturday part up until 7pm on the evening of the battle. ere is an overall view of the battle field viewing from over the Bossu wood in the foreground and the crossroads in the distance on the left.

Here is a view of the cross roads from the Allied side of the field.

The buildings representing the farm building on the cross roads was a 3d print supplied by a club member.

Here are some of the Nassau troops defending the buildings.

French columns had a hard fought battle against, originally the Highlanders and then the Dutch Belgians, but the French finally took the out lying buildings and the cross roads. 

French chasseurs had some luck taking out an Allied artillery battery during the game.

Here are some wider photos to show the number of figures on display.

And some of the smaller vignettes present as well.

As mentioned earlier the farm building were a 3D print. While it looked impressive from a distance  on closed inspection the engrained lines typical of some printed items were very clear. Although I am no expert on 3D print, I know some are better than others. On saying that I am currently refurbishing some 3D print to try and 'lose' this grainy finish from them. 

After a very to and fro game the French started to overwhelm the Allied forces.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable game and was well worth attending. There was a very inspiring visual spectacle to be seen by all.

With further photos on the New Buckenham Facebook page here.