Continuing on with the modification of the Bandua small building, I first laid out where the Adobe blocks would show through the stucco. My blocks were 10mm by 5mm. I found this ruler that makes the layout quite quick!

Once laid out, it was off to the dremel. The dremel chews up mdf pretty quickly (and aggressively if you’re not a little careful!).
Always wear safety glasses and slide the work toward the rotation of the bit you’re using. If you try to slide the piece in the same direction as the rotation, it bit will bite and skip and possibly launch the piece. Whatever happens will not be the result you are looking for.

Shutters and doors on my buildings are not functional. The are simply cut strips of wood (and sometimes card) glued in place to look like doors and shutters. They’re both pretty simple to do…

After the surface details are carved in and glued on, it’s time to assemble the structure. White or PVA glue works great for this. Clamps of various sorts are a great time saver but they’re kind of fiddly at times.

Once the glue has dried I stucco over the remaining surfaces. I use Liquitex Ceramic Stucco. It’s gritty and sticky and it gives a nice finish to the mdf. I apply this with a small sculpting palette knife of some sort that I have from who knows where. I apply the stucco up to the carved block areas going slightly over the carved area but being careful not to go to far as to cover the blocks I had carved earlier. The end result hopefully looks like a stucco building that has patches where the stucco has broken away and the underlying block construction is showing through.

Now all that is required is some paint. And some roofing… And a forge… Possibly some landscaping… Further details…
Darn! This project will never end.
Until next time…

For a change of pace, I purchased a paper model by Mystic Mountain Production. The Cartographer model was a PDF download from RPGnow.
The assembly was fairly straight forward but the prep work was more extensive than I had thought. There was a lot of tab cutting involved with the round tower section. About 80 tabs per level and there were four levels.
After a few hours with razor and straight edge, the building was ready to assemble. Assembly went well and the results were quite good.

Overall, the model was good. The graphics were well done with a variety of layer options that can be selected to change the look of the model. I spent a total of about 5 hours to build this as shown.
At less than $5, the model was well worth the price. I may even use the model as a pattern for building something similar in mdf. But that will be another project.

Working on my resolutions, I was able to paint two pirate miniatures. These two are from Northstar and they come from Blackbeard’s crew box set.

The miniatures are well sculpted and cast. They had very little flash and needed little cleanup.
I painted them fairly quickly but I think they turned out okay.
And that’s two miniatures painted this month.

It’s a new year and with that comes all the resolutions and promises of a fresh start. With that in mind, here are my resolutions and goals for the new year.
1. I will post at least once per week here. That shouldn’t be terribly difficult as I’m nearly always up to something hobby related. I just need to follow through. Resolved!
2. I will paint at least two miniatures a month. I’m a horribly slow painter. I’ve tried many methods of painting faster, but I’m never satisfied with my results. I’m just destined to paint slowly. I was considering resolving to paint three, but with the time constraints and my other resolutions, I better stick to two. So, two! Resolved!
3. Here’s the time consuming one. I will sculpt, cast, and put up for sale at least two miniatures per month. This is going to be a truly hard one to keep but I’m going to do it. Resolved!
Phew! Done! The World Wide Web shall witness my success!