Not a Moment to Lose… Battle of the Bulge, Ardennes, December 1944

[TIM FORSTER]

Building the Building

So once I had the basic shape worked out in rough card I began to build the farm house again using thinner card. This meant that I could draw the precise dimensions on to the surface in pencil and cut out the apertures using a sharp scalpel.



This does not have to be a precise architectural process but it needs to follow a certain amount of science and common sense (have I mentioned the fact that I am married to an architect?). Because the building has two stories, even though the higher level is only at the rear I tried to ensure that the floors and windows lined up at front and back.

When it came to the general dimensions I used photos and a decent 1/35 scale figure to give me the best guide to the appropriate height of doorways, windows, etc. Rural buildings come in many shapes and sizes, but they tend to be smaller than traditional town structures and - as a tall person - I am often painfully aware of this fact. I don't plan to use many commercially available parts. This is my building anyway. Besides, I feel that the options such as Miniart are often too large.

The advantage of using card stiff card to cut out the shapes was that I could use it as a template for cutting out the foam sheet which I would use to make the walls (more of this in the next post). Also I could adapt the form as I went along.





So you can see here that I made a number of changes...

First, I reduced the size of the barn door after my initial cut because I felt that it was too large. This was simply done by putting the putting the missing piece of card back in place, fixing it with masking tape to the rear and drawing and cutting the outline again.

Next, I decided to add the distinctive dropped gable to the roof and end wall.



Finally, I reduced the size of the window next to the barn doors and, along with the doorway, gave it a slightly arched profile to the top edge.

Overall, I feel that this gives the building a more 'rustic' appearance - whilst also ensuring that it looks like no one else's 'Ardennes farmhouse...'

 

[scottie3158]

Hi Tim,
Great idea and research. That will be a great looking building when it's done.

 

[Jakko]

I don't plan to use many commercially available parts. This is my building anyway. Besides, I feel that the options such as Miniart are often too large.

Not to mention that your diorama won’t look like everybody else’s who bought the same house kit.

What you’ve got there certainly looks convincing to me, though I admit I’m not really up to speed on the architecture of the Ardennes

 

[rtfoe]

Hi Tim,
Looks like you're not the only one noticing that the MiniArt buildings are kind of large. I could though use their windows for city buildings.
Your preparation is very good especially the usage of templates for the cutting of the foam as the basic structure for the building. A spare figure is always a great tool guide for scale. I really like the slope of the landscape you're doing.

Cheers,
Wabble

 

[TIM FORSTER]

Hi Tim,
Great idea and research. That will be a great looking building when it's done.

Thanks Scottie. Let's hope so...

 

[TIM FORSTER]

Not to mention that your diorama won’t look like everybody else’s who bought the same house kit.

What you’ve got there certainly looks convincing to me, though I admit I’m not really up to speed on the architecture of the Ardennes

Hey Jacko, you think I was 'up to speed' until a few weeks ago?

That's just part of the fun of this hobby - there's so much more to learn!

 

[TIM FORSTER]

Hi Tim,
Looks like you're not the only one noticing that the MiniArt buildings are kind of large. I could though use their windows for city buildings.
Your preparation is very good especially the usage of templates for the cutting of the foam as the basic structure for the building. A spare figure is always a great tool guide for scale. I really like the slope of the landscape you're doing.

Cheers,
Wabble

Thanks Richard / Wabble.

Yes, it's funny how Miniart seem to have gone for such a large format. Like trees, buildings never really have to be true to scale to look right in model form - after all, we tend to look up at them anyway. I reckon there's a gap in the market for an assortment of smaller doors and windows that would be really useful for diorama builders.

You will see how useful the card templates have become in my next few posts...

And yes, I love a slope!

 

[TIM FORSTER]

Materials…

The last time I made buildings (on my ‘Liberation, Italy 1944’ dio) was also my first attempt since my teens - way, wayback in the 1980s. My older self had used thin plywood, laboriously cut to shape with a fret saw, then covered in thin plaster.

When I made my Italian church (a few less years ago) I was glad to have discovered foam board - sheets of foam covered in layers of thin card. This was easy to cut and, once built into a structure, fairly rigid. It could then be covered in Das clay for that traditional weathered plaster look. One of the drawbacks, however, was the fact that any relief stone work then had to be carved back into the surface.

Here are a few reminders:





This was also pretty labour intensive!

Of course, things have changed… even in the last few years. We now have high density foam… otherwise known as styrofoam… or XPS foam.



These came off ebay from a seller called MTG Terrain for £24.95.

Mixed Box of 8 pieces , all 300mm x 200mm (Grey/Charcoal XPS) in the following quantities:

• 3 x 6mm
• 2 x 10mm
• 1 x 20mm
• 1 x 30mm
• 1 x 50mm

I reckon there's enough here to last me for several buildings on several dioramas...

As I see it, the main advantages are these:

(a) It’s light
(b) It’s rigid (i.e it does not seem to warp)
(c) You can cut it and carve into the surface very easily…
(d) … yet it has a 'memory' that means you can also indent shapes - they won't spring back.

However, there are also some drawbacks:

(e) It is also quite fragile - so if you mishandle the sheets it will dent - or, even worse, snap
(f) It's primary 'strength' is also its weakness: once you carve, there is no going back. So make mistakes at you peril!
(g) If you are joining sheets or blocks, then there is no way to cover over the join - unless it makes sense within the structure
(h) It is very vulnerable to any glue or paint containing acetone - so no superglue or lacquer based paints should get anywhere near it, or it will dissolve...

This is not exactly a ‘new’ material. In fact, I suspect it has been around for a lot longer than its use in scale modelling. But it seems to have become the ‘go to’ for making scale buildings quite recently. My inspiration to try this new material came from a well-known Youtuber. I am sure that most people here will be familiar with the videos posted by Martin Kovac (a.k.a. 'Nightshift'). He is a fantastic modeller (and one who is quite happy to talk through his mistakes as much as his triumphs) and he has been using high density foam in many of his dioramas. Here is a great example:

Well, I decided to take the plunge and dive into world of XPS!

 

[Andy T]

I do like that foam from MTG. I bought a selection some time back after a recommendation by John Race.

Whilst I don't have either of yours skills, having a great product makes my fumblings a bit easier.

 

[Jakko]

you think I was 'up to speed' until a few weeks ago?

TBH, I hadn’t expected you yo be, but you never know

That's just part of the fun of this hobby - there's so much more to learn!

Agreed, as soon as you start doing more than building straight from the box, the research will teach you things you never thought you’d find interesting

 

[TIM FORSTER]

I do like that foam from MTG. I bought a selection some time back after a recommendation by John Race.

Whilst I don't have either of yours skills, having a great product makes my fumblings a bit easier.

Andy, I am sure you are being too modest.

Actually I have to thank John for first bringing high density foam to my attention some time ago... if I hadn't been building the Malayan jungle for my last dio I might have got round to using it sooner!

 

[TIM FORSTER]

Let the cutting and scribing commence!

Although Nightshift / Martin Kovac gave me some of the inspiration for this build, I didn’t exactly copy his method. He tends to make structures that sit at the back of his dioramas and which are only partial in depth, so his use of foam blocks makes sense. But since I am building a virtually complete farm house, this would be excessive. There is also the problem of hiding joins between blocks. So I decided to go with the thinnest sheet (6mm).

The thickness looked about right for the walls of my farmhouse - or at least the bits that were going to show. I say this, because I am not planning on having any of this building ‘opened up’ - i.e. there will be no open windows or doors (with one exception, but this will be at the back) and no ruined walls. This means that the only depth required will be what can be seen externally in the door and window apertures. Any extra depth will be suggested by the frames.

The other advantage of using the thinner sheet is that it is easier to cut with greater accuracy.

So, taking my card templates - and my heart in my mouth - I began to cut using a metal rule and a sharp knife. The results were not perfect (and they look pretty terrible at the back) but they were good enough. The arched tops to some of the windows and doorways were the most challenging, but here I could use the card template to guide my knife. Also, another advantage of this foam is that it can be (lightly) sanded using sanding sticks or sandpaper to bring it into line.

The next bit is definitely the most nerve-wracking part of the whole process: scribing the bricks and stones. It’s not that it’s difficult exactly - it’s just that, if you make a mistake, there is probably no going back.

Why bricks? Well, as you will see from some of the images above, although most of the old farm buildings in the Ardennes appear to have been built from stone, there also seems to be a common feature of using bricks to surround the window and door apertures. This not only creates visual interest - because of the contrasting shapes and textures - but will also allow for a more varied colour palette.

By the way, here I did use Mr Kovac’s suggested dimensions for bricks. He advises that in 1/35 scale they should be: 2.5 mm tall / 4 mm deep / 8 mm wide. I also copied his method of using a paper template to measure out the courses of bricks.





The trick (as always) it to ‘measure twice, cut once’. I also used Tamiya masking tape to mark the outline of the brick courses - so that I did not stray into the area which would be occupied by the stones.



Undoubtedly the most challenging parts of this exercise were the arches of bricks over the top of some of the doors and windows. I thought long and hard about how achieve this, but in the end chose a rather ‘old school’ approach: I cut out brick shapes using the masking tape and then laid it over the foam until I had the right look. Then I simply scribed the bricks around them. It worked well enough…

Finally, once all the measuring and scribing is done, the next part is actually very easy and satisfying - you simply take a sharp toothpick and run it along all the lines and around the corners. This opens up the scored lines and starts to make the shapes that are left more like they are intended to be: i.e. bricks!

Then I moved on to the stone work… of which more next time!

 

[Neil Merryweather]

that's looking great , Tim!

 

[langy71]

Excellent so far Tim, I've always fancied having a bash at this method, but been to 'scared' of screwing it up, you make it look so easy..

 

[scottie3158]

Looking good Tim,

The way I hide the Joints of the boards is to cut the opposite bricks/stones out on the edges so they join together giving a natural joint. In the same way as the old Tamyia brick wall set. It is time consuming especially with uneven stone with brick it easier. Hope this is clear.

Cheers Scottie

 

[Jakko]

I did use Mr Kovac’s suggested dimensions for bricks. He advises that in 1/35 scale they should be: 2.5 mm tall / 4 mm deep / 8 mm wide.

Brick size depends on time and place. Here’s a list of common sizes in Belgium, from the Dutch-language Wikipedia:

Type	Length (mm)	Width (mm)	Height (mm)
Boerkens	180	85	65
Superboerkens	180	85	90
Booms	175	82	50
Brussels	195	95	65
Brabant	200	95	60
Charleroi	210	100	65
Kustformaat	200	90	65
Moduul 50	190	90	50
Moduul	190	90	57
Moduul 65	190	90	65
Moduul 90	190	90	90
M (koffertje)	190	140	90

I know next to nothing about what the names actually refer to or in which parts of the country each of these is common, but for your Ardennes diorama, I suppose Charleroi would be a good size to use as baseline? 210 mm × 100 mm × 65 mm IRL equals about 6 mm × 3 mm × 2 mm in scale. That would make yours a bit oversize, but not overly much. And who says this particular builder didn’t use slightly bigger bricks?

 

[Andy the Sheep]

The bricks look spot on and the stones even better, Tim.

 

[TIM FORSTER]

Looking good Tim,

The way I hide the Joints of the boards is to cut the opposite bricks/stones out on the edges so they join together giving a natural joint. In the same way as the old Tamyia brick wall set. It is time consuming especially with uneven stone with brick it easier. Hope this is clear.

Cheers Scottie

Thanks Scottie.

Yes I see what you are saying and it would work - but it does rather increase the effort (not to mention all that measuring and lining up!)

I ahve found that putty (such as Magic sculp) also works well to hide any gaps. In any case, I am going to use a drainpipe to hide most of my join.

 

[TIM FORSTER]

Than

Brick size depends on time and place. Here’s a list of common sizes in Belgium, from the Dutch-language Wikipedia:

Type	Length (mm)	Width (mm)	Height (mm)
Boerkens	180	85	65
Superboerkens	180	85	90
Booms	175	82	50
Brussels	195	95	65
Brabant	200	95	60
Charleroi	210	100	65
Kustformaat	200	90	65
Moduul 50	190	90	50
Moduul	190	90	57
Moduul 65	190	90	65
Moduul 90	190	90	90
M (koffertje)	190	140	90

I know next to nothing about what the names actually refer to or in which parts of the country each of these is common, but for your Ardennes diorama, I suppose Charleroi would be a good size to use as baseline? 210 mm × 100 mm × 65 mm IRL equals about 6 mm × 3 mm × 2 mm in scale. That would make yours a bit oversize, but not overly much. And who says this particular builder didn’t use slightly bigger bricks?

Wow, that's more detail than I could ever have hoped for!

I agree that the bricks do look a little large - but at least I'm not building a Flemish town house (I may try an Arnhem dio one of these days).

Anyway thanks for the support and sorry for the slow posts. There is more progress on the way I promise...

 

[TIM FORSTER]

So I have actually made quite a lot of progress since my last post, although not everything will be obvious here.



The advantage of building everything from flat sides is that you can not only lay them flat on the workbench whilst scribing and shaping the stones and bricks, but also detail the window and doors more easily.

I will focus on the woodwork in another post (it's actually all made from plastic sheet), but I have now reached the stage where the building can start to go together. The roof you see here is still the temporary one made from thin card.

The glue I have used so far is an old favourite (and for those of us who grew up in the 70s a real blast from the past): UHU. This 'Extra' version is perfect for the high density foam because it doesn't contain any chemicals that eat into it. It's also pretty fast acting, whilst allowing a little time for re-positioning. The only downside is that it can be rather 'stringy'.



Here are some more images of the structure temporarily positioned on the base...