Victorian terrace - WIP4 - Brickwork finished and warp repairs, Scotty!

Well ANZAC day saw me raise a beer in the memory of out Gallant Servicemen, past and present, and I was happy to enjoy a day off in their honour...

A fairly dismal day on the weather front got me out of any garden duties, and with wife and kids all nursing the sniffles, no-one was particularly in a mood to do much, so I got back to the brickwork scoring.

I found my old etching tool I made a while back when I built the Weathertop model, which worked much better than the long steel pin I was using the other night.

The tool I had previously made with the handle from a kids old large craft paintbrush, into the end of which I drilled a hole and glued into place a short length of wire from an old wire clothes hanger  that I hand cut a piece from. I made a point at the end with an angle grinder.

So I had the Sherlock Holmes movies on back to back as I sat and scored and etched away... By the last gable end I was getting a bit tired of it all in one day and made an error on a set of score lines,...Greenstuff came to the rescue, and I pressed on to finish...

Having finished that, I made a start sorting the warped pieces, clamping them to a workbench and gluing a wide strip of MDF across the back. I'll leave this a good 24hrs to fully dry before taking the clamp off.

The rear frontage is also getting done at the same time, then I'll do the gable ends. While the front and back pieces are gluing, I have also taken the chance to glue into place the plastic for the glass window panes... more pics to follow...

The rest of the day, was back to painting my FoW German pioneers. They did quite well in their first outing, but sadly the rest of my force was not best positioned to exploit the hole they made... ah well, maybe next time... 

Victorian Terrace - WIP3 - Brickwork

A couple more update pictures. Last night I set to, etching in the brick pattern into the building sides.

I had hoped to get them all done last night... Ha ha ha , who was I kidding... it took me all night to do one piece.

So this is going to take a little longer than I hoped... But I think the effect has been worth it.

Ideally I would have liked smaller bricks, but I quickly realized it was going to take a while, so I widened my initial score lines. I had thought one swipe of the etching point would be sufficient, but the clay has dried surprisingly hard and each score line took multiples passes back and forth.

[With the next building, I may try scoring the clay before fully dry.]

Plus I guess most wargaming modelling is a little abstracted in scale so I am not too concerned, I think it gives the right impression of regular brickwork... I hope you agree !

The other issue with the clay drying, is that it has warped the MDF slightly as it has dried. I hope I can get it to go back straight, gluing more internal MDF panels edge on and clamp it while the glue dries, pulling it back into shape. I have already flexed the boards back flat and clay didn't crack so no problems there.
Same with putting the building on a base - as you can see the yard walls have warped quite noticeably too.

Oh well, progress and problems, we'll get there eventually. If it doesn't work out, then it's at least been an interesting exercise and hopefully I have alerted others to some of the difficulties you may encounter.

Ideally I would have liked to have used some kind of dense foam sheet, for the brick scoring, but I have not found a 100% suitable one yet. I thought I had with the depron foam, but making the cemetery walls I noticed even this didn't score in well, but snagged and tore a fair bit...

No work tonight as I have a game on with Paul (Flames of War), but I have a day off tomorrow for ANZAC day here in NZ, so I may get a little more done then.

Till next time...