It looks like April is going to be a slow month again. Maybe it's the bad weather putting a damper on my motivation? Maybe the new year enthusiasm takes three months to wear off? Either way, things are on a go-slow, so there's not much getting done on the hobby front. I do have one thing to show though, a project that's been in the background for a month or so (started during the build-up to Alumwell/WMMS)
A week or two before the WMMS, March's edition of Wargames Illustrated came out. In it was the return of Paul Davies' "How to" articles, and this one happened to be 'How to make a Watermill'. I read it, and instantly thought what a great addition a watermill might make to our Thirty Years' War display game. All other projects were dropped as I began carving out foamboard, balsa wood, lollipop sticks and coffee stirrers in a frantic effort to build a watermill before the WMMS.
As you can guess by the complete lack of a watermill, I didn't get it finished it time for the show but I've not given up on it. I've been quietly plugging away at it in the background. It's still not complete, but I thought it was about time I showed off my efforts (and it's a convenient way to fill out the blog in what is otherwise an unproductive month...)
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Various views of the mill building; foam board walls constructed
following Mr. Davies' templates, with balsa and coffee stirrer timbers |
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Another few shots with the roof included. The roof is just thick (2mm) card,
with individual tiles cut from cereal boxes and glued in overlapping rows. |
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| The roof as it currently stands, just over halfway to constructed. |
So there you go. Cutting and glueing all those individual tiles for the roof is pretty time consuming, and I'd certainly have gone for a quicker method if I hadn't already passed the 'deadline' for the WMMS, but I actually prefer not having to rush this stage because I think the individual tiles give a much better look overall. It's also oddly therapeutic gluing little tiles in little rows!
Of course, the astute amongst you (assuming you're not all just bots, and there actually are real people reading this...) will have noticed the lack of an actual waterwheel. Well, that's the "difficult" bit to be honest, because I need to measure it up so that the mill as a whole sits seamlessly on the terrain boards and so far I've not got round to it. I will eventually need to make the wheel if we intend to use this for future games, but in the meantime I can carry on with the tiling...
