Anglo-Saxon Chieftain's Hut

365 Challenge Day 70 Hours 42

Today I decided to do something a little different. Rather than continue with my wattle fencing, or continue with the church (which I probably should have been doing), I decided to start on my Chieftain's Hall. 

 Things have been rather hechic of late. Making the Hall was essentially a return to a tried and proven format which made the process most appealing. I'm following the same construction method as that used for my houses which you can read all about here. 

The first thing to do was to draw out the pieces on my foam core.  As you can see in the above photo, this build was utilising some of my leftover foam core from previous builds. This meant the pieces were laid out in a more haphazard way than I usually like, but as it's a simple build this wasn't a problem.

My Chieftain's Hall will measure 14cm by 8cm. At 28mm scale I assume a floor will be 5mm high. However, as this is meant to be a more imposing building, I'm increasing the height to 7cm.  This in part allows me to raise the door 5mm above ground level and put a step between it and the ground. It's not much of a height, but it fits the accounts of steps leading into the Chieftain's Halls. The sides of the buildings put the roof apex at 11cm. I'm following the example of West Stow and putting two doors in the Hall.

As I want the building to withstand years of gaming, I'm making my buildings with interlocking joints.  This means adding in a floor as well as the walls.  Now I'm sure you could opt for the much simpler option of joining the pieces together using buttress joints and hold them in pace with some pins while you wait for the glue to dry.   But if you do so, remember to measure the thickness of your foam core and adjust your measurements accordingly.  For example, I'm using 5mm thick foamcore.  If I'm going to make the sides the full 8cm, I'm going to have to measure 1cm less for the front and back to compensate for the depth.  Conversely, if I'm making the front and back the full 14cm length, then I have to reduce the width of the sides by 1cm for the height of the walls, but not for the angle of the roof.  As this is more complicated than reducing the width of the long sections, I wouldn't do it.  In fact I rather enjoy figuring out the joints.  It makes things a lot simpler.  You only need to measure the sides and fronts to the widths you want.  The joints themselves take care of the width of the foam core.  And if you're working with a decent piece of foam core, it's easy to measure and check the one piece off an other.

Anyhow,  here's what the pieces look like when they have been cut out. The interlocking joins are easy to see.

With this done, I always have a dry fit, just to make sure everything goes together properly. Much easier to pull sections apart if they need adjustment without having to contend with glue. Talking of glue, I always use UHU. I get mine from Pound land.  Nonpoint paying more than is absolutely necessary! The last rime I went to stock up they only had UHU Power. Now i'my sure this is great for many tasks. But personally, I'm not so fond of the the stuff. I use UHU because it dries much quicker than PVA. This allows me to power on with a build rather than have to keep laying it aside to dry and rechecking that the glued sections haven'the allowed gravity or mishandling to knock them off alignment. The great thing about the power version of UHU is it fries even quicker. Sadly this is not a good thing. Time and again I find the first bit of glue is dry before I get to put the pieces together. So I recommend going for to hehe normal UHU. This comes in a larger tuse,  which also means you can make more buildings!

Because I'm making a thatched roof, I'm making it out of foam core as this will help bulk it up. I make mine 1cm wider than my building to allow a 5mm overhang at each side. To determine the height I add 5mm (the thickness of my foam core) to compensate for the apex, and allow an overhang of 1cm at the bottom. As to the length required between these two, you could always apply Pythagoras' Theorem (assuming you have a right angle) or go for the simple method. That's right. Measure the slope on your model.

Once you have the two roof sections measured and cut out, you need to compensate for the apex. To do this, I simply measure 5mm in from one long side. I then take my steel rule and knife and I carefully cut through the top layer of card and no further. I then extend the blade of my knife and make a 45° cut using the 5mm line as a guide on one side and the edge of the card on the other side of the foam core. By gently drawing rheumatoid knife towards you it'seems not difficult to get a lovely mitred edge as you can see in the next photo.

Now whatever you do, don't glue the roof in place just yet! It's much easier to clad the building first!

As usual I'm sparing no expense and using cereal packet card. It'seems a different cereal to the last one, so the card is a different colour to my last build. No biggy.  Won't alter the process at all.

First I measure out the first layer. Remember to compensate for the thickness of the card. And remember to locate the doors properly as a result. In my case I'must adding 2mm to the length, remembering to mark the first mm off before measuring in where the door goes. As I've added the width to the long sides of the building,  I won't need to add in the extra with to the short sides.

I also measured out guide lines for the 6mm outer planks of wood which are made from 6mm wide strips of card. Once the glue has dried the first later onto the foam core, I then apply thesee strips.

You may notice there are some lovely bits on my model where the glue has reacted with the ball point pen marks. I haven't had this problem before. The joy of a new cheaper pen, obviously!

You can also see that I have covered over the head exposed foamcore at the doors too. Top and bottom first,  sides second.

A careful look at the photos will also reveal that I made a few mistakes when measuring out the guide lines. Tiredness was obviously having an effect! Still, these can be rectified when applying the 6mm strips and the paint will cover a multitude of sins!

With this done and dried, the excess parts can be trimmed flush. All that's left is to glue on the roof.

And there you have it. One Chieftain's Hall, ready to have the thatching applied!

As always, thanks for stopping by!