Thursday 28 April 2011

How to build No1 - FIW Indian Longhouses


After a lot of soul searching I finally worked out how I was going to make the first two of my Indian Longhouses, you'll not believe how easy they were to make. After seeing the final effect it's inspired me to make some more terrain pieces.
So now for the "How too"


1. A quick trip down my local timber merchant, £3 bought me an odd length of 3"x2" soft wood. I then cut one end at a slight angle, to represent the face of one of the longhouses.


2. I marked the same outline shape to both sides of the wood and at the apex of the roof.


3. This was the most time consuming part of the job, using a saw, a chisel, plane and a stanley knife, I cut out the shape, I kept the wood at this length because it was easier to use the plane, long smooth strokes (cough!), rather than short jerky strokes.


 4. I then cut the Longhouses to the length I wanted, I had hoped to get three houses out of the length of wood, but it would have made them too short, so I settled for two.


 5. For the massive sum of 49p I bought a years supply of brown crepe paper to use for the bark effect. I then cut out tons of different sized squares and stuck them onto the wooden blocks using PVA  wood glue, starting at the bottom and overlapping slightly with the next row.


 6. This only took around an hour to do, and looked quite effective.


 7. Over the last couple of months during walks in my local country park, (and at work, Fran!), I'd been collecting fallen twigs, I don't know the trees they came from, most must have been lying around for a while because they were very dry and brittle, but that's exactly how I wanted them. So after finding several lengths that looked to be around the same thickness, I cut them to size and glued them on with superglue, this turned out to be a little tricky as some of the twigs were not straight, (obviously!) so I glued them on there flattest side, which added to the effect, as they were then random looking.



 8. Then with the same sized twigs I cut the uprights, these again were a little tricky, after glueing my fingers together and to the model I decided to hold them in place with the tip of my knife until they dried.



 9. With a smaller sized length of wood I cut and glued in the cross struts.



10. I just repeated the procedure to complete the second longhouse. Then using a thin piece of MDF I cut out the two bases and glued them in place with PVA glue.


11. I then pinched some of Fran's Green stuff and made the two curtains, for the doors.


12. After seeing pictures of a porch like structure on some of the longhouses online, I made one for one of mine just to make it look different, I just used the same kind of procedure as before. In this picture the porch looks to be a different colour, but it's not the case, just a little camera trick!


13. The scalp post was just as easy, the only difference was that I added some cotton, to look like binding. The scalps were once again Fran's pinched Greenstuff.


14. The building were painted in an undercoat of GW black, then painted all over with Miniature Paint No82 Earth Brown, followed by a heavy drybrush of Vallejo 821 German Camo Beige, lastly another light drybrush of Vallejo 819 Iraqi Sand to highlight. The base was covered with PVA glue with sieved sharpe sand sprinkled on, with a few of the bigger stones left in. Then the base was dry brushed with Vallejo 976 Buff to highlight, lastly static grass was added for effect.
So there you go........
Ray

46 comments:

  1. Nicely done Ray, good tutorial even I could follow it.

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  2. Excellent. I'll have to remember that. I recently had one of my Conquest Longhouses stolen, so maybe I'll replace it with a hom-made one.

    I hate using Twigs. i never seem to be able to find the right kind(or maybe I'm too anal). Instead of using twigs, you could also try using doweling and roughing it up a bit with a palm or belt sander to make it look irregular-enough. that would give you relatively straight straight "beams" that are still irregular looking.

    I did this with my Indian village on my blog.

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    1. I ripped a 21" 2×4 into as many 3/8" by 3/8" posts on a bandsaw and rounded them by hand with a few sheets of 60 grit 3 M paper.

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    2. Rocket sticks left over from Bonfire Night come in handy, and are less effort.

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  3. Good stuff mate - the simplest methods are often the most effective, but still time consuming.

    By saying "The scalps were once again Fran's pinched Greenstuff" did you really mean "The scalps were once again Fran's filled with Greenstuff"?

    :-)

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  4. Excellent post with great looking models.

    Regards,
    Matt

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  5. Yeah, great work Ray, and easy once you know how although I'm sure I still couldn't get them to look as good as yours!

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  6. Great tutorial and thank you!:-)

    Christopher

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  7. I agree with kingsleypark, I don't think mine would look half as good if I tried. But I think we will find out, as I have to try.

    Thanks so much for the tutorial, great work.

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  8. Cheers lads!
    @ Fran - Do you really think you could???
    @ Stephen - I read about your stuff going missing, such a shame. You could use dowling, like you said, just roughed up a bit. I bought some bamboo BBQ skewers, very cheap at the supermarket, they'd do as well.
    @ Mancave - I'd pinch anything off of Fran, but not the Zombies, and I know he'd nick anything of mine too, infact a couple of months ago he sold a Flames of War book (German Parartroops one) on ebay and was very happy with the £29 he got for it, until I told him I'd lent him the book a couple of months before!!!!! And he still hasn't give me the money back, tight git!!
    @ Ubique - Cheers!
    @ Kingsley - I'm sure you could!!

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  9. @ Axe - No probs!
    @ Haggis - Go for it, send me some pics!

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  10. alot of work was put into that!! im impressed!

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  11. great tutorial - and the final result looks well worth the effort

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  12. Very good tutorial and great results with the models.

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  13. Thanks for the turorial. I've also been reluctant to use twigs in the past and used thick string instead, but I may just give the twig idea a go on my next set.

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  14. @ Barry S - I've just realised who you are! I love the buildings you've made, it was your buildings that inspired me to make my own. I love the stockade/blockhouse you made. I plan to make one myself, copying some of your layouts!

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  15. Dang! You got some talent!

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  16. Beautifully done, sir! :D

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  17. @ Ray - Thanks for the kind words. Please make sure to do a how too with the stockade/blockhouse. I plan to build another one myself, but with a bit of an overlap for the top section.

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  18. Wow, Blown away with your creative talent! Wonderful tutorial on making the longhouse which has help give me ideas on how to make my own Irish dun-raith/dwelling. The palisade and earth work should be easy. But still figuring how to do the thatch roof.

    If you go to my blog you can see what I use to do. But a back injury just keeps getting worse and I can no longer carry camera gear around....so I just sent off for my first miniature to paint! Wow 28mm is really small. The figure I sent off for is Brian Boru. I'm very into family history, and the bulk of my ancestry is Gaelic (Irish & Scot) so that is the genre I'm attempting to do.

    I'm also interested in the Wild Geese in the Service of France, particularly Clare/O'Brien's regiment. If I may ask, what French regiment do you use? I think the banner would be the hardest to paint or create.

    I'm not a gamer, but hope to became a decent painter. I've got a lot of spare time, and figure it takes a while to paint the figures right. Any suggestions are most welcomed!

    Slan,
    Garry

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  19. It does look quite effective. Looking at this, I can almost hear the steel on scalp-bone swish of the first tomahawking in Last of the Mohicans, in the first two minutes.

    Did you spend two months on collecting the twigs so as to effectively weather them before use?

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  20. nice tut but i am not good with such things ;_;

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  21. Aha!! Crepe paper!!!!! Thanks for the article...I think the outcry of "How the F**K did you do that !!?" was all over the place. :-D
    Cheers
    paul

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  22. 3 lbs thats like 9 dollars. damn yo. looks good though. and that did make it looks easy. i thought it would be hollow at first.

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  23. Pff, that's beautiful, that's art.

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  24. Vey smart and very effective with stunning results. Great post, thanks!

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  25. very great work !! Excellent tutorial !! Thanks for share

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  26. Thanks for sharing this with us Ray! It looks not only natural, but it is with the wood and twigs.
    I don't I would be able to make as good as you ;-)

    Greetings
    Peter

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  27. Nice work, and a very original way of making them!
    Also thanks for visiting my blog regularly... :)
    Cheers...

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  28. That's a pretty complicated build, but the result is awesome.

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  29. Great tutorial and build - thanks for taking the time.

    Frank
    http://adventuresinlead.blogspot.com/

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  30. It seems so simple to do...very good work man!

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  31. Hi Ray,
    Looks very good. Thanks for the tutorial. I'll surely try to do this.
    Cheers
    Mike

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  32. OMG this is so good thanks!

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  33. Nice idea, thanks for sharing!

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  34. I wonder could you have made a mold out of one of the block houses for a resin cast? Either way fantastic outcome for a lot of time consuming modeling. And very nice step by step instructions

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  35. Beautiful, brilliant, easy enough for even me to do! I look at a block of wood and I only see a block. Where did my creativity go? ;-)

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  36. Loved this!! Helped so much The only thing I had to change was add the vents in the roof for smoke vents

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  37. I love this one Ray, fantastic tuto and great result!

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  38. They look like the real thing, Ray. Terrific stuff.

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  39. Very nice. I'm using halves from an oatmeal tube for a similar project. You could also remove the scalps from the post and have a Jesuit-erected cross for a praying town if they're supposed to be Huron warriors.

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