Sunday 15 December 2019

Wooden block warehouses and industrial buildngs

I have been attempting to make some cheap and simple warehouses and industrial buildings over the last few months for a St. Nazaire Raid game based on D. Featherstone's book "Battle Notes for Wargames". All in all I will need about 20-30 buildings.


I began with trying to make the warehouse style buildings from card (see post here). It takes quite a bit of work and they cannot be easily stacked for storage. So this weekend I tried something different, blocks of wood.

I purchased a couple of differently sized pieces of wood and began sawing. After a couple of failures I found the most effective way to get a reasonable sized building was to cut two pieces of wood at an angle using a mitre tool and saw for the roof then stick them back to back.

The cut wood
The two pieces of wood get stuck back to back to create the building shape 
Once dry they are sanded, then simply painted with grey for the roof and a brick red/brown for the walls. Once the paint is dry I measure and markup the windows and doors with a pencil and paint the windows black and doors as blocks of colours. The windows get a bit of extra work with a light grey to show the frames.
A base coat is used for roof and walls. Then windows and doors get painted.
At this point the buildings are looking ok, but look a bit flat colour-wise. To address this I used oil-based pastels to give the impression of a corrugated roof by quickly drawing lines of black and white. The similar approach is used for the walls with a brown and a burn orange colour.

The lines of the roof and walls are crudely drawn, but give a the impression of corrugated iron and brick texture, sufficient for the wargaming table and my tastes.
These are robust terrain pieces and can get stacked in storage.
About another 15 or so buildings to saw and make (including some houses).

Houses
The next post will be the two ACW actions played this weekend from my mini-campaign.





22 comments:

  1. Nice work, lovely buildings!

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    1. Thank you. Easy and effective always appeals to me.

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  3. Effective simple buildings - should make for an interesting scenario. The Airfix commandos would love this!
    Donald Featherstone did a whole originally unpublished book on Commando scenarios which is an interesting History of Wargames reprint by John Curry
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Featherstones-Wargaming-Commando-Operations

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    1. I have purchased a box of commandos and they will be added into the mix for the game when I get around to it. The book sounds very tempting. Thanks.

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  4. Nice ideas Peter - the painting is very effective.

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    1. Thank you. This quick and simple painting works well as long as you don't look too closely.

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  5. Simple but very effective. I particularly like the corrugated roof.

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    1. Thanks. I have to find a technique for slate and tiled roofs.

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  6. Those are nicely done. They'd work equally well for the Commando actions in and around Port-en-Basin during the D-Day campaign.

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    1. Yes, the D-Day scenario from Wargame Campaigns is on my list of games to recreate. Thanks.

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  7. A great idea, they look really effective - you can develop this even further, e.g. fixing a third lower piece on side to create a lean-to extension - there's no limit!

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    1. Thank you. Your suggestion of a few lean-tos would certainly help create variety.

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    2. Given the industrial; nature of the port you could also create a factory / warehouse structure with several long low 'houses' all joined side-by-side to create a zig-zag roof effect if get what I mean. A bit like this Sarissa building at the link below (I had in mind a more symmetrical and lower structure).
      http://www.warlordgames.com/new-world-war-ii-factories/

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    3. I found a diagrammatic picture of the port in the Wikipedia article on the raid which has several 'zig-zag' roofed buildings which the look I was talking about...
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid

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    4. Many thanks for the links there are a number of ideas there for buildings I can use.

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  8. Very effective and attractive, inexpensive, durable, and easily stored; a win all around!

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    1. Thank you. I am very pleased with how they turned out and I will be sawing away this Christmas holidays.

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  9. Looks cool! The lines on the roof are very effective! 😄

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