Life on the Ocean Wave

Ocean Wave tablecloth with submarine

I really couldn't resist the rather twee subject title for week's post as it's also the name of my latest addition to my piratical endeavours.
'Ocean Wave' is the colour scheme name of one of many party table cloths available on line at an interweb near you.
The table cloth is a very thin plastic, but still usable for careful gamers and very cheap too (an essential factor in anything I have to buy these days)
A quick search on evil-bay using "Ocean Wave party table cloth"
will suffice to give you a range of sellers.

Brig being stalked by submarine

The cloth is large! It works out at about 9 foot by 4 foot 6 inches (about 2.7m x 1.5) and will obviously easily overlap my own 8' x 4' gaming table although the photographs show the 'cloth' on my 5 foot x 3foot dining table.
The one gripe I have with this is the numerous creases caused by the way it's packaged. A quick google search of "how to remove creases from a plastic table cloth" surprisingly (to me at least) yielded a lot of very useful answers .
The cost of this bit of kit ranges from £2.49 to an average price of about £3.50 including p&p and you can also find some discounts for multiple purchases too !

Can you see what it is yet ?

I've been a lot better health-wise this week - thankfully, but not very productive, mostly on account of being old and the mandatory grumpiness (that's a word right ?) that comes with it, but I have managed to fiddle about with bits of shite scrap to produce a couple of 'extras' for the inside detailing of my church.
Some foamcard, a bbw skewer and a couple of lumps of balsa wood along with an inordinate amount of pva produced what you see in the photograph to the right. I reckon it's fairly obvious which bits were made from which scrap, but the 'columns' were glued together one at a time, left to dry then the next etc. - very time consuming but as it was all done during half-times and between football matches, but it did fill in the boring bits rather well.

If you squint it looks OK

  For some reason my photographer was more inept than usual and the photographs weren't blurred deliberately to hide the workmanship!
The base would have been made from cork but as I was unable to find any cork scrap I settled for balsa, a medium I don't like working with. The base turned out a bit on the large side and was subsequently cut in half so that figures wouldn't have to appear as if they were peering over the top of it!
Just in case you haven't figured out what it is yet, it's meant to be a font ("A 28pt Font" was the alternate title for this post).

Front view of pulpit.

As there was a lot more time to fill in between football matches I also started on a pulpit for my church, the results of which can be seen on the right.
Its made from many layers of foamboard, the remains of the skewer and some thin card.
I had realised, after the main building work on the body of the church had been completed, that I didn't know a thing about the inside of a typical Catholic church. Boiling down the many features that could be present, I've settle on making a Pulpit, generally situated back left in the church (if you're facing the altar); an altar, either free-standing or against the back wall; a lectern, back right of the altar; a confessional ( - wherever I can fit it in !)  and a font, front right. So, once I've got some pews too I think the inside will look pretty cramped!

Rear view of pulpit - as if you hadn't realised

I've been following Henry Durand's build of his take on Gary Chalk' church with interest, on both his blog and on the Facebook page Wargamers Terrain Tips and Talk, you can see his completed version on his blog here : Plastic Pirates, And if you're wondering why I haven't  commented on his blog about his excellent model, it's because I don't do Google+ and for no other nefarious reasons.
Similarly I don't have the requirement for commenting on many other blogs, though I may be a follower! - Sorry guys, but looking on the bright side I won't be telling anyone that their  Northumbrian flag is wrong either!
I've also seen a fountain on Lord Siwoc's blog, "Brains and Guts" that would be ideal for the  the rear area of my church (and I've got my fingers crossed) - take a look and decide for yourselves.


That's it then for this week, not a lot I know, but every little helps, as of course do your comments.
As always I hope you've found something of interest, thanks for taking the time to visit and your comments are always welcomed and appreciated.

Church 4

Not quite finished, but getting there.

Despite feeling a lot better this week (hurrah) I didn't get as much done on this model as I'd have liked, probably due to being bored with this build and of course the wall to wall football.
Nevertheless progress has been made, the main assembly work has been done and necessary little bits and pieces have also been fixed.
Assembing wasn't as ticky as I thought it would be and all the pre-cut bit seemed to fit together with only a single hiccup (the rear wall) delaying the whole process slightly.
I started the assembly with the tower and progressed to the diagonally opposite corner of the main building with the roof being the lst addition. The walls and entrances were then made to fit.
The photographs tell the whole story

Front facade with 'Oriel' cuti into it

Rear view of the inside

Start of the hatch and the front window

The internal behind the facade also had to have a the hole for the oriel cut into it of course before final ssembly. I decided to have a simple cross frame in the hole, mounted on a piece of perspex.
The photo on the left shows this (along with the  missing tower hatch - another one of those niggly things that are simple to do.

Top half of the twoarched entrances.

The 'major'  building work this last week has been the two entrances to the church grounds.
These are simple arches, made more complx by adding some decoration to them.
The photograph shows the 'detail' I added, simple enough and probably the last time anyone will notice it. The arches were based on the front door cut-out and were built up using foamcard, card, coffee stirrers and matchsticks.
These were then glued to the top of the walls and reinforced by the addition of pieces of card for strength.

Arched gateway in place.

The churchyard walls were all capped with thick card, slightly wider that the two thicknesses of foamboard making up the walls.

The other gateway (*yawn)

Net of the tower roof pyramid

The top of the tower also needed finishing off and rather than copy the domed roof of Gary Chalk's original I went for a tiled pyramid.
I drew a net of the pyramidal structure out on card  and added the stepped tiling as I done with the roof.
My first attempt didn't look right, it was too tall and the base didn't look big enough.
Another was made and looked much better.
The ridges on the tower (and the main church roof) have yet to be added.

Tiled tower roof

Another view of the tower.

Clamps !

The internal roof supports were carefully aligned with the internal walls (where the roof would rest upon) and clamped in place. Half the roof was then glued on and when dry the whole roof assembly was removed; the second half of the roof was then glued in place.
The roof has a folded piece of card across the ridge,joining the two halves and the final strip of tiles has also been added, but like the tower, the ridge tiling has yet to be done.

Half roof, showing the supports.

Here's some more views of the progress so far:

The Churchyard

Rear showing intended additional room location

There still a lot to do on this model before I think about painting it; I intend having a small room fixed to the rear of the church. I also haven't decided how to fill the rather large boring churchyard at the rear, maybe a fountain on some form of arbour. - I certainly won't be using it as a graveyard (still makes me laugh when I see model graves wrongly orientated).
I've also had to do some research on what to include internally and I'll be going for an altar (fairly obvious), a confessional, a font, a pulpit (and/or a lectern) and a few pews.
All the roofing has all the ridges to tile too and I'm sure that there's a host of other things I haven't though of yet!

Once more, that's it for this week thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are appreciated and welcomed.

Church 3

Sills and a door added

Despite having a hacking cough all week and the lure of wall to wall football over the weekend, I've managed an hour's building each day, save for Tuesday when I was just feeling too ill.
The sills of all the windows have been cut and glued in place (coffee stirrers of course) and three door have been made and glued in place too.
The door to the tower is in the wall of the tower section with just a portal into the main body of the church.
The main door to the church has been glued into another internal wall that will affix to the back of the main front facade.

The tower walls with sills and door.

Main door

 Some fiddling about, to make sure the main door aligned with the front portico, was necessary but not too difficult
I used a very thin piece of card (cereal packet thickness) to make the door, overlayed with coffee stirrers - cut to size when glued. The process being repeated for the other side of the door.
The horizontal beams were added and cut to size later.
The other two doors were done in a similar way, save for the tower door having one side left blank as this wouldn't be viewed as I'm not making any provision for figure access to the lower level of the tower.

Obligatory boring photo of glued foamboard bits

The walls that would surround the rear of the building are two pieces of 5mm foamboard, one 40mm in height (the outer wall) and the other 30mm in height (the inner wall).
The outer wall will butt onto the base whilst the internal wall will sit atop the base. I'm hoping that this will give a much stronger join than either of the two methods if used separately.
To add to the look of the walls I also made (and remade after piss-poor calculations) two corner posts for the rear corners.

The corner posts, cut into the base

The aborted post (left and the new post with walls.

Boring floor

The internal floor for the main building has been scored into 1cm squares to give some detail - very easy and effective imo.
I've ran a pencil through the cuts just to show them for the photograph. I haven't yet decided how these will be painted (badly, I'm guessing).

Hatch and floor

The tower has had a little bit of detailing added with flooring made from coffee stirrers and a hatch; lintels on the all the windows have also been added - as previously mentioned.

Fllor/roof - the hatch is yet to be added.

The lower part of the tower's floor has had a similar treatment (hatch still to be added) and this will be glued in place to the tower's base as its roof.









This of course meant that when the tower is glued in place with an the roof fixed in place, access for figures won't be possible, but I'd planned this.
With this in mind I've roughly painted the interior a dark brown as this would be visible from the tower's two small windows.

Boring picture of  tower's internal'paint'.

Internal view of the front

 To finish off this week here's a few photographs of the church in it's current state, but note that it has only been roughly fitted together, so many gaps etc. are present.
This final 'fitting' I'll be taking very slowly, gluing only a single wall into place before 'fitting the next.

Overall view

Front showing the facade

The front facade has had a wash of filler over it and been tidied up a bit, though it does need a lot more done to it
I've also finally decide to have an oriel added to the front, which will be tricky to line up with the internal wall, but very doable.

Another view of the front (in case you hadn't guessed)

This next week there's still be plenty to do  (that front step for one); the perimeter walls have to be finished along with the two entrances; the hole for the oriel needs to be cut through two walls and some form of window detail added. Finally the roof has to be added and although the roof supports have already been cut out (three triangles of foamboard and far too boring for a photo) these need to be fitted and as I hate doing lift-off pitched roofs this could take me a whole week.
The final stage of course will be painting the whole thing, but I've also to decide what to do with the rear 'yard' of the building, which currently is yet to be decided.

Thanks for taking the time to look and apologies for the poorer than normal photographs, but  i hope that there's something here of interest.
Comments of course are always welcomed and appreciated.

Church 2

All the pieces needed for the tower.

The building work on my church continued apace this week despite me having a heavy cold (the residue of my bronchitis) with lots of cutting out of pieces and the re-cutting some others. The main cutting out was the tower that abuts onto the church's main bulding and all the relevant pieces can be seen on the photograph to the right. Four pieces for each of the sides of  tower's three 'levels' and and an additional three square pieces for either their roofs or floors.

Top two tower sections assembled.

The top-most two sections of the tower were assembled fairly quickly and their roofs were also glued in place, however the top piece of the larger one has  been cut to allow the upper section to fit into it (bit tricky but I'm happy with the result).
The photograph below shows the assembled sections.

Showing how they fit together.

At the same as I was assembling the tower, I also cut out the base for the church fromtwo pieces of foamboard glued together to give a 1cm thick base. I used a large piece of MDF as a weight to prevent the inevitable warping that would have occurred. Two features of this base are the front two steps (on the right of the base as shown) and the two smaller bits that stick out of the top edge and the bottom edge, which will be small entrances to the back of the church - as per the original model).

The tower's four lower walls

The 'T' indicates the position of the tower and the idea occured to me at this stage that I needed to allow for the 1cm drop of the base. This 'drop' meant that I had to either re-cut or alter the existing sides of the tower. I opted for the former.
This did mean a little extra work but was worth the effort to get the tower looking the 'right' height above the church roof.
On the photograph you can just about see the rabbets cut into the sides and bottom of the pieces and the extra length of the two walls that will sit at the edge of base.
I also cut a doorway into the tower and as this will be the wall abutting onto the church then a corresponding portal would also have to be cut into the wall of the church.
It should be obvious that if I have an internal doorway then I will be making the whole building with a mind to having access for figures too. Whether or not the tower will have a door or merely a doorway I'm as yet undecided and as the lowest level of the tower  will be amost impossible to have access for figures I'll probably go with having sealed access, in other words, I'll be making a door!

Having made the lower tower wall flush with the base I also realised I would have to do someting similar with one of the long walls of the church too, which once again meant cutting another wall, rather than cut-down one of the existing ones.
Thankfully this wasn't as arduous a task as I'd thought it would be and didn't take long. I also used the opportunity too cut the portal in the wall that would correspond to the tower doorway.

Spot the boring area

I did want the front face od the church to be a little more imposing than the one on the orginal and had heightened it somewhat, but I wasn't entirely happy with leaving it like that and therefore I added a little more in the way of decoration.
The photograph shows the decoration (two strips of thin card) added to the top part and couple of strips of foamboard to sepaerate top and bottom halves.
The entrance pilasters were turnerd into columns by adding foamboard columns topped off with bits of ticker card.
I did tinker with the idea of having the main doors to the church openable but I'm not convinced of the usefulness of such a feature, despite the obvious attraction of having it.
I may still add a window, or something simlar, to the main front facade, as there's an obvious large plain boring area that needs "something".

Interal view of rear wall.

The rear end church wall had the window added, as well as a doorway to another interanl area that hasn't been completly thought through - yet.
I cut the hole for the window slightly smaller than was needed and carefully filed it until the plastic window had a firm fit and then it was glued in place.
The final bit of modelling I managed this week was the inside wall to the front face, this piece I felt was necessary to enable the roof to sit easily onto the model (the rear wall would be used as is).
Of course this necessitated another doorway into the main body of the church being cut and matched to the aleardy cut front two pieces.

Internal front wall (rabbets can just about be seen)

So that's all I managed this week, one which I feel has been very productive. Despite being unable to work on this for more than an hour at a time (due to age, aches and pains, general ill-health, lack of motivation, enthusiasm and rampant grumpiness) but I did manage at least two sessions a day for most of the week, which for me is virtually unknown!

I still have the perimeter walls to cut and fit, two entrances to model and the whole thing to assemble, which once done will be covered in filler to hide all the mistakes!  I've a small building to add to the rear of the main one, doors to make and the list goes on and on, before I can even think about painting!

So that's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments, good bad or indifferent are always welcomed and appreciated.