New Master For Medieval Half Timbered Building

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Jeff

Active Member
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
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Location
Long Beach California
We were looking for things to grow our line, and we thought some medieval buildings would be a nice thing to do. Most of what is out there are castle parts. I did quite a few of these when I worked for 21st Century Toys, but they were all ruins. I have always thought that the medieval figure world is under served in this area. This style of building was common for hundreds of years. So this is the first floor.
 

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I guess I should add that it is 54mm or 1/32 scale. I also tried something I have never tried before with this model. I cut down twigs from my camphor trees, and made it into scale lumber. I love the way it looks. it looks like tree limbs in this scale. I get the bonus of having curved pieces that do so naturally. They used all parts of tree when making these buildings little was wasted. This is the first floor of a two story building. The plan is to have two different roofs one thatch, and one Slate or tile for city use. This would be an option we would not include both. We are planning an interior kit as well as furniture in scale with the building.
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seems good to my eyes
second floor , remember that usualy the 2nd floor surface was bigger than ground surface
 
Todays progress I raised the windows it seems to be a common feature to have the ground floor windows up high it let in light but was a bit more secure. I may drop the larger window. I need to think about it.
 

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Thats a great idea Jeff and it looks wonderful. Nice to see ideas like this made available to modellers.
If I remember from visits to Medieval houses in the UK (York) the windows were very small as well as being high up in the building.

Don
 
I think the half timbered buildings that seem to have low windows may have been modified during the buildings lifetime. Because I want this building to be able to double as an inn or pub I added the lager window. This seem to have been something they did for large common rooms such as guild halls and Inns. It seems that buildings that doubled as homes, and shops even in medieval times had low windows for the shops that were located on the ground floor. These usually had shutters in medieval times. Later they had windows as times changed.
 
Very cool! The piece could also stand in for a Fachwerkhaus in later periods, too.

I'm tinkering with something like this, though I've been using timbers of basswood.

Prost!
Brad
 
Very cool! The piece could also stand in for a Fachwerkhaus in later periods, too.

I'm tinkering with something like this, though I've been using timbers of basswood.

Prost!
Brad
There is basswood sprinkled in this building as well. ;-) I need to do the infill betweens the timbers now. The use of found wood was an experiment and one that I am actually enjoying. I found a nice sized long thin branch that had fallen off a neighbors camphor tree on my walk to work. This should give me enough wood to finnish it with my own scale lumber. I just need a new blade for my band saw. It is a lot of work, and i find myself thinking about the amount of labor it took to even square up a timber using only hand tools. We so under estimate our forefathers.
 
Ah, yes, that's the thing, I don't have a band saw, whether a Dremel-sized or other hobby model, or a 1:1 sized one for my woodworking shop. I have hand saws, and so, I buy my timber at the "hobby lumber yard" at Michael's :LOL:
 
I have a small 9 inch table top band saw, and miniature table saw. That is why I am only sawing small branches, and it is a lot of work. Like I said there is basswood in this model. It is a huge amount of work to do it this way. I am really liking the knots and flaws that are just nonexistent on commercial miniature lumber. You can make it look hand shaped and that is what I have done with the commercial lumber I am using. That is what I always did the past as well. Take the nice milled lumber and make it look hand made.
 
Here is an old 1/18th scale building I did for 21st Century Toys. This is the actual toy not the master.
 

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Most of the work on the half timbered part is almost finished. I need to install the beams that that jut out under the over hang. then it is on to the infill.
 

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Oh, wow! Are you actually modeling the wattle and daub that fills the spaces between the timbers? I had thought about doing that, but I'm settling for using luan plywood for the walls, and using coffee stirrers and scrap wood sticks (eg, like sticks from spent bottle rockets), where I want to show exposed beams (in the interior, for example).

Prost!
Brad
 
I am going to cast that section of wattle and use it for small areas in need of repair. I am not going to do that for the whole building. I am not that crazy.
 
So todays progress. Got the first piece of wattle cast and cut in to smaller pieces to use in parts of the building. Put fist layer of plaster in between the timbers. I will be smoothing this out more in the morning.
 

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Have the end piece ready to cast. Just need to get diffrent rubber the stuff I have now is way too stiff.
 

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