Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 3: Five More Village Houses.

Five more Lorraine houses have joined the three from a week ago.

There are two byre houses. 

Two dwellings are build to allow a bend in the street, not a big bend, but enough to allow a visual change.

The fifth is a smaller dwelling.

All five together...

The remaining five buildings in the series are in progress, with the intention of completing the set by the end of the month..

The Geisha House

Well it has been a cold week in the City of Sails this week, the coldest of the winter so far with 3 consecutive days of heavy frosts - dropping as low as -6 on the thermometer by my back door in Thursday morning (even though the Met Service reported as only -2.5), but days have been the glorious sunny. That is not cold by a long shot for many readers, but in our sub-tropical environment that is cold, and since the cold settles in around 3:00PM, it is a perfect excuse to get down to some painting and scratch building.

The one item completed in the latter half of the week is painting of the Geisha House in the Japanese building set I am painting for a friend. If is a beautiful print, but I embarked on this task with some trepidation because the model is printed in only six parts: the base, the main level of the house (with three rooms), the roof and three internal sliding doors. The limited number of parts had an advantage in that there is minimal assembly, but it was ohhhhh sooooo difficult to get a brush into those narrow interior spaces - especially those shoji panels

An example of that difficulty is shown below. That Buddha statue is part of the main level - a one piece print.   It sits within a boxed area 12mm square by 18mm deep. There are shoji panels on walls on three sides that need to be painted...what an exercise in frustration! But I got through it. 

All up I tallied up 12 hours work on this piece.

There is a minor design flaw with this model. The sliding doors - the front door and the two internal doors -  are over size by about 1.5mm which prevents the roof from sitting properly on the location lugs. Its a simple enough fix, but I wish I had known about it before I painted them.

And here is that Buddha statue again with its surrounding panels painted.

The final (and next) piece in this series is the castle - I will need to draw on all the skills used painting other items in this range to complete it. 

Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 3: The First of the Village Houses.

The plan for the Lorraine village is to make the village church (completed) and eight or ten villages houses. This post shows the first three (well four really) pieces.

The typical Lorraine village, called village-rue, is made up mainly of byre houses all built in a row along the rue principale or "high street" that was generally the only street in the village. The village houses were joined each other so that a solid row of houses is formed along the road. A intersecting road might be similarly lined with row houses.

The Lorraine byre house was a farm house in which the living quarters on one side of the building, in two storeys, and storage farm machines or animals in the other. Walls were of stone and are either rendered or simply whitewashed. The lintels, jambs and sills of the windows and doors were typically local sandstone or limestone. Wooden shutters were fitted to windows.  A fuller description  of Lorraine houses can be found on John Boadle's blog (Link).

The first piece shown here is a byre house with the barn living quarters on the left and the barn on the right. Usually there would be a barn door front and back so that carts and wagons could be run through to a yard behind, but I have chosen not to do that in this case, but other models on the work desk will be built like that.

Front

The second piece is also a byre house.

Front

Back

The third piece is two smaller houses, perhaps workers houses, on a single base. I have to admit I would not like to live in that little house with the steps...it would be OK  on the uppe floor, but downstairs with just those two little windows would make it pretty dark and dingy...

Front

Back

The ends of these two blocks have been left smooth so that they can be positioned side by side. I have painted a few cracks and carved a few areas exposed stonework into the MDF to break up the visual smoothness of the surface.

This will  allow the street rows to be organised into different combinations.

The forms for several more buildings have been assembled ready for detailing to be applied.

The Rice Mill

Well Blogger is being Blogger again and my post of Friday hasn’t appeared on any blog rolls, so here’s hoping that this one does!

Painting of the Japanese buildings continues and with all of the smaller pieces finished I have started working on the three buildings that are on the queue. The first of these is the Rice Mill. 

This is a really nice printed model, with only a few parts to assemble.

The roof is removable and the interior is fully presented.

More Poles

To almost complete my recent addition of some Duchy of Warsaw I have added some mounted officers and a regimental gun set. I say almost complete because I only ordered one model gun when I meant to order two, so one crew is sitting idle waiting for its hardware.

The mounted officers are from the Perry Mounted Commander set that represents Generals Pontiatowski, Sokolnicki and Dabrowski. Of course these three are far too highly ranked for my little brigade, but when has that ever stopped a wargamer...I mean how many times has Napoleon, Wellington or Blücher commanded a brigade on the wargames table?

The artillery is intended to be the regimental guns - repurposed Prussian 3-pounder pieces (a rather nice resin print too).

The second crew will have to remain idle probably until September or October when I place my next order.

More Japanese Pieces

I have a diverse range of projects on the go at the moment: a few odd figures to finish off projects, the FPW buildings, a big rebasing project, some figure cleaning and more Japanese buildings. The latter is presented here.

This time it is the last of the simple pieces.

First is the Todai - lighthouse.

Next is the gatehouse, complete with gates that open.

Finally there are the wall pieces.

Next to attack in this project is the Rice Mill.

I must admit that after the relative tedium of 250 odd Austrians in white having a diverse range of things to work on is rather nice.