Fortlet - Walls for a Watchtower

Way back when I built the Sub-Roman watchtower, I said it would be no problem to add some walls. I had forgotten about this. Playing various watchtower games in Dux Brit, it became clear that if you withdraw your force to a watchtower, unless there's some sort of wall, there actually isn't anywhere much to withdraw into.

This superb post by Emilio woke me up to the reality of what I needed. Also, his post shows a nice use of the walls as a standalone enclosure. On the grounds that there's nothing about it to not like, I built one.

Here's a lump of foam. Very cheap, somewhat cheerful, not really very nasty at all.

 Never seen a start like this, have you? Not more than several times!

And here it is, measured and marked out. The dimensions of the wall are derived (fairly roughly) from the reconstructed turf rampart with a wooden pallisade built at Vindolanda. The top of the wall is designed to be wide enough to take a mini on a 20mm base, and for there to be a space wide enough for a mini to stand in between the botton of the rampart and the tower wall.

The magic of a Magic Marker!

Now, cut out. Turf walls like this are fairly ephemeral. Unless regularly repaired, they will rapidly degrade due to the effects of weather and animal action. What this means is that your structure can be fairly rough and ready, and it will be totally authentic. This one was intended to end up being a reasonably neat version, kept in good repair because the place is under constant threat. The result was, well, you'll see.

Vaguely fort-shaped now

Next, loads of posts, cut from balsa, get fitted on three sides. I deliberately didn't cut the entrance at this stage, to make use of the rigidity provided by keeping the structure intact, so I also left the posts off that side. The posts are pushed into pilot holes in the foam and fixed with a drop of CA glue.

Think of the archaeology this lot would make!

I glued it to a base made of 3mm hardboard (cheap and somewhat nasty) with own-brand impact adhesive (cheap and VERY nasty!). The entranceway is cut wide enough to allow the smaller ox cart I built here to enter (to deliver food, weapons and, most importantly, beer for any garrison). Now before anyone laughs, there's a letter among those found at Vindolanda where a fort commander is pleading with the commissary for beer as his men are becoming deeply restless! At more or less the same time, I added the posts on the gateway side.

Base? Check. Gate? Check. What am I missing?

Now, here's a thing. On the Gask Ridge, up in Scotland, the Romans built a whole series of little watchtowers/fortlets like this (admittedly several centuries earlier) and several have been excavated. Where the site is well enough preserved for decent archaeology, the remains of the turf walls, banks and ditches and of postholes marking the corners of the tower can all be found. The entrances through the banks and walls are also pretty clear. What none of them seem to have is any evidence of postholes in the entrances, as would be needed to fit any sort of gate.

So, onward. Start cutting a couple of hundred short lengths of balsa, 3-6mm wide. Planks would have been sawn or riven out of whole trunks, in varying widths, and all used.

The first of very, very many...

And stick them all to the uprights. Best done in bursts, with breaks to do something else to regain your sanity. Ask me how I know...

Raw materials stored ready for use...

Having eventually planked the whole wall (which only took two evenings...), I gave the woodwork (and then everything else) a coat of PVA to help bind all the wooden pieces together, and provide a key for the rest of the groundwork. Next thing is some details on the ground: basically, turf wall sections are not very resistant to foot traffic, and the areas where people go up onto the walls are going to become a quagmire in no time flat. 

                

Walls, completed.

So, at the bottom of the wooden palisade go loads more short bits of balsa (another really interesting job!) laid on the ground, would prevent the garrison sinking up to their knees at the wrong moment. The corners, where planking is difficult, I added some hurdle sections, cast from  polymer clay. Making them (mould and item) is covered here.

I marked out in the centre for the location of the pre-existing tower, then started a horrible messy task: carefully covering all the foam and wood with a thin layer of painters' caulk. What a grotty job! The stuff gets everywhere.

I sprayed all the woodwork black, then went over the groundwork with a mix of brown emulsion, sand and PVA. Here it is ready for colour and details.

            

Walls, walkways, centres. All ready to detail.

Flock, dirty washes, drybrushing, clump foliage, more drybrushing, ivy (moss strands and hedgerow mix) and even more drybrushing follows, applied across the whole thing. Nothing you haven't seen before. Static grass completes the appearance.

Finally, some accessories. The open gateway is a thing. One possibility is that the defenders made something like a cheval de frise to block the entrance. The basic concept was well known in Roman times, so Sub-Romans could certainly have one. And, of course, once it started to rot, it would have gone straight on the fire and left precisely no archaeological evidence! My cheval (chevaux) de frise was made up from bamboo skewer, and an old favourite of mine, headless brad nails. All of these were painted to represent weathered wood, except for the tips of the arms, which were darkened. Whether this represents fire-hardened points, horse muck to promote infection or a subtle combination of both I leave to your imagination.

Two chevaux, one for this and a spare for the ECW!

Here's the finished article. A Warbases ladder got cut down to make two short pieces, which were glued on two sides of the internal bank. It would be a bit steep to climb in a hurry, especially if it's raining (and in England, what are the chances?).

Rain? What rain?

View through the gate

 Here's the fortlet, with a garrison. It's a motley collection of levy, warriors, skirmishers and slingers, with one elite companion trying to keep order. Good luck with that.

Tough nut to crack, this.

Attackers' eye view. Don't fancy it myself.

And again, with the tower in place.

Looking down into the fort.

And another attackers' view. Like this one even less.

Merry meet again!

Something A Little More Complicated - A Sub-Roman Church, Part 5

This has got a bit behind, what with doing other things, and especially with Bob completing his. After all the beggaring about with the roof, doing some work on the exterior was a bit of light relief!

Sharp sand, flock, a wash of burnt umber then drybrushing as appropriate gets the groundwork to where it needs to be. The tiled roof sections are washed with various mixes of burnt umber and ultramarine blue to give some tonal variation. Look at a tiled roof - different bits weather to totally different colours. Drybrushing with assorted light grey, terracotta and ochre shades brings everything out into relief.

Well grounded

I added the doors at this point. These come from Warbases. Very nice, inexpensive, and much quicker than making your own. I can barely believe I just wrote that! Although the doorways were carefully cut to fit the doors during construction, a little bit of fettling is inevitable post-painting. I gave the doors a couple of coats of Pledge floor wax to seal them. I'll wash, drybrush and pick out details later.

Must get rid of that nasty green stain!

Well here it is with the rest of the roof sections in place. To be honest, you could probably use it like this, once it has a coat or two of varnish for protection and to dull everything down nicely. Here's a view of apse, for those who can't wait to ogle it again...

What a gorgeous apse!

And for those who have had enough of the apse-derived innuendo, here it is from the other side.

Doesn't look too bad from here either.

Now, to just finish the interior and it really will be done!

Merry meet again!

Something A Little More Complicated - A Sub-Roman Church, Part 4

In the case of the roof of the nave, I first made and fitted a ridge for the roof from 4mm dowel. I have no idea how big Roman ridge tiles were, but this scales out to what is currently in use! The ridge had two angled mortices cut into the ends, to rest on the point of the pitched wall. The cut ridge was then dry-fitted, as shown here.

This is NOT a carrying handle!

After this, I glued on two tiled sections, attaching them to the ridge only. You can't see all the blu-tak that supported it during the process!

Even looks vaguely weatherproof!

After letting it all dry, I turned it over and closed up the joints. After letting everything dry again, I fitted  internal crossbraces  to help strengthen and locate the main roof section. It has the added effect of looking like there are actual trusses in the roof! And of course, a truss is just the thing you need in your nave! As with any timber roof, there is a certain amount of chaffering and fettling needed to get the bits to fit...

Roof timbers...

Fitted in place!

The roof is assembled with horizontal purlings made from thin balsa. These have the effect of reinforcing the butt joints in the plastic sections, and at the same time acting as supports, holding the sections in the correct place, while making them removable.

One in place, one for show!

I will confess I had not given enough thought to how to tile a conical roof from flat sheets. When I did, the obvious answer came to me in a flash. "With great difficulty!" Accurate, but very unhelpful. After a LOT of head scratching, I discovered that suitably-sized plastic cones are extremely rare. A few tries with cutting the cone out of plastic sheet was not any more successful. So, I decided there was only one way - the way most of the buildings on here get constructed. Carve it out of a block of foam!

I've got this problem with my apse...

Before going any further, I decided to start painting. I think trying to add details then painting the inside especially might be a recipe for disaster.

After gluing the cone in place and doing a basic paint job in and out, it was a case of cutting and adding strips cut from the Wills sheets.  Lots and lots of little wedges of tiles, all individually cut and fitted, plus a bit at the top to fill in the gap. Ooh, what a pain in the apse!

...But I think it's getting better.

Merry meet again!

Something A Little More Complex - A Sub-Roman Church, Part 2

With a church shaped wall outline, it was (I thought) a case of cracking on with decor and a roof!

And then Red Orc, over at the Lead Adventure Forum, said "...it should really have an apse. That's pretty much the mark of a church in the late Roman period in Britain, I'd say... British churches practically demand apses, as they do have late Roman models" 

I found his arguments (that above is the edited highlights - for the full discussion, go visit) compelling. So I added an apse. To do this, it was off out to the big workshop. This was too much work for my dining room table, needing big vices and such like.

The basis of the apse was a plastic bottle, about 40mm in diameter. Standard plastic waste pipe is about this diameter, but I didn't have any offcuts on hand, so this bottle (surplus due to the lack of a lid) stood in.

A church, and a bottle.

 The top and bottom get cut away with a hacksaw. The cuts are inevitably rough, but I'm not too worried.

Even I can't find a use for the top and bottom!

The resulting tube is cut into two pieces, along the conveniently provided lines, using shears.

 An apse, and a spare apse...

The position of the apse is marked...

X marks the spot...

 ...And a couple of large holes are made through the wall of the nave of the church.

...Where you DON'T drill the holes!

Next, the aperture for the apse is is cut out with a fret saw (my least favourite tool!) using the holes for access for the blade, then neatened up with a round rasp.

A neat hole - eventually!

After roughing up both sides of the plastic with some VERY coarse sandpaper, the plastic is fixed in place with cyanoacrylate.

An apse!

Now, the kicker is obviously that the rest of the walls are 9mm thick, and the apse is about 0.8mm, which stands out a bit. How to add the thickness was a bit of a poser. I toyed with gluing on some wood or plastic battens and making up the thickness by plastering over it with one strike filler, then decided to use extruded polystyrene foam.

Blue foam like this is obviously a great substrate, having a decent thickness and being easy to paint, scribe and so on. However, it isn't very keen of taking on cylindrical shapes - at least not in this thickness. I tried scoring and bending, with no success, before forming it to shape using the old hairdryer in the picture. This was cast off as "broken" at some point, but was repaired and now serves in the workshop! The heat does collapse the foam a bit, and I found I needed to be careful to get enough heat to make it flexible without going totally flat. The one here is only about the third go!

Now the walls are thick enough!

The scheme for adding an apse was not much different to how I would have done it had I decided to add one at the outset. It was just more difficult as an afterthought!

After this slight interlude, it's on with the rest of the construction!

Merry meet again!

Something A Little More Complex: A Sub-Roman Church

A looting raid on a church is a common enough Dark Ages scenario. It's applicable to most games, one way or another. For this you need (obviously) a church. Churches are nice pieces to add a bit of interest to a table, whether as an objective or just as a point of reference, and every wargamer should have one (or more...).

Now, I already have a Dark Ages church. However, this is a Saxon church, and for Dux Brit, we are talking about a time when a Saxon church was a contradiction in terms. So, I need a nice Sub-Roman church.

At Silchester, in Hampshire, the foundations of a Romano-British church survived in excellent condition. An overview of the archaeology can be found here and here. Even better, a floor plan can be found here.

Now, there's one problem with the church at Silchester. Actually the problem comes about because the church is in Silchester. Silchester was a large town in Roman times, with a forum, amphitheatre and extensive walls. An attack on Silchester (and hence its church) would not have been a raid, or a skirmish, but a knock-down, drag-out battle.

So the large, complicated church from Silchester goes out of the window, and a smaller, simpler version replaces it.

Basically, I took the Silchester ground plan (and the Reading reconstruction) and removed the vestibule, porticos and apse, leaving a building with a simple nave and two aisles. Much more plausible!

You can knock yourself a plan up from these resources. Note that the nave of the church at Silchester really does have non-parallel walls! I have no intention of trying to reproduce this, but of course if the building goes a bit of an odd shape, well, it's still totally authentic!

The first quandary is the construction method. A building like this lends itself to carving from multiple blocks and joining these together. Of course this offers no chance of an interior. Now, whilst an interior isn't exactly vital, it might be quite nice to be able to put figures inside, whether a raiding party, or some defenders, settling in to give someone a nasty little surprise.

The plan gives a width to the foundations of 2' to 2'6". Assuming the walls are a bit narrower, this gives a scale thickness of about 8-9mm. MDF in 9mm thickness is easy to work with, inexpensive and tough as old boots. So, 9mm MDF it is!

The parts list comprises the two gable walls for the nave, two long walls for the nave and two walls for the side aisles. The roof sections will come later.

Following a slight hiatus (while my table saw was otherwise engaged, acting as a storage area for bedroom furniture, mutter mutter...) I was able to crack on with this. Nearly everything is fairly large, straight pieces (with the exception of the gable walls) and it was very easy to rip out some suitably wide strips, then cut them to length on the chop saw. The nave walls were cut using the scroll saw and a paper template.

 Kit of parts for a church...

Windows and doorways are added at this stage. The scroll saw for the doors, with a bit of gentle chiselling for the windows, makes light work of these.

With WarBases double door ready for fitting.

The bits were assembled in two stages. After priming all the glue surfaces with a good coat of PVA (MDF is a bit thirsty, remember!), join the walls of the nave to the ends of the nave. Then add the side aisles. The beauty of 9mm MDF is you can glue it and reinforce the joints with brads or staples, taking great care to make sure everything is square. Once all the bits were brought together and joined, they got fixed to a 3mm MDF base.

Put together.

A quick dab of decorator's one-strike filler into the nail holes and cracks, and it's ready for the next stage.

Cover up the nail holes!

Well, it's vaguely church-shaped, and that's enough for now.

Merry meet!

A Quick Change of Plan (and a couple of quick projects!) Part 3 and a bit - Fences

Good fences make good neighbours they say, but to be honest I'm not sure that any of these sort of fences are proof against neighbours, not if those neighbours are Saxon or Pictish raiders.

The Dux Brittaniarum rules call for eight inches of fences for a village. I think the best way is to make a series of short pieces, say three to four inches each, and make three or four pieces.

The bases here are 2mm MDF, which is not always the easiest stuff to get hold of, but Jackson's Art usually carries it in various sizes in their mount boards section. A narrow strip of wood, chamfered with a plane, gets glued down to the centre. This gives something for the fence posts to sit in while not making the fence so wide that any mini's are miles back from it. Plus it make the base of the hedge wide enough to retain a decent level of stability on the table.

Bases, common to all

The first bit of fence is made the same way as the pig sty fence here, with cocktail stick posts and MIG wire woven through. I made two four inch sections. This is the sort of fencing that might be put in quickly as a temporary fix, so short sections give some versatility. This is quick and easy but only moderately robust - the cocktail sticks don't give a lot of strength. If this bothers you use the variations below.

 Woven timber fence - entry level!

The second bit is a post and rail fence made by gluing sections of bamboo skewer into holes in the base. The rails are made from bamboo skewers split lengthways. The post structure is stronger, but the rails can become detached (just like the real thing actually). A single eight inch section of this represents the baseline sort of fencing you might find.

Post and rail - a little more up market!

The third piece uses bamboo skewer for posts, with some 2mm balsa superglued horizontally between them. Two pieces, one about 5mm above the ground level, one 5mm below the top. Then loads and loads of 1-2mm wide balsa strips glued vertically between them. This looks very smart and might well be the early Medieval equivalent of remote-control gates, but it does take longer (much longer) to construct. Since this is a bit posh and pricey, there's only a six inch length (perhaps to go near the church?).

Picket fence - very particular!

I had already kicked this post into life when Gareson put this post on his Iron Kingdoms at War blog. If you don't like mine, you'll love his. If you don't like either, well...

Here they are, all finished. I added scrub and static grass around the woven fences and the post and rail, but not the picket fence. Well, anyone posh enough to have that is going to do his weeding, isn't he? The armoured sub-Roman warrior (finally!) for scale is from West Wind, with a home-made chi-rho shield decal.

Git orf moi laaaand! 

Merry meet!

A Quick Change of Plan (and a couple of quick projects!) Part 3 - A Barn

Right, straight on with part 3. Any farm or village would need a barn, whether to store the things that needed keeping but you didn't want piled up in the house (turnips, perhaps?) or for large things that the house simply wouldn't hold (like the plough).

You've now seen quite enough of how these are put together, so I won't bore you with a "how to" sequence. The basic block of foam is 100x70x70mm - a bit bigger than the granary. I went with  fewer wall timbers on this one, just some humungous corner posts. Any intermediate posts are inside on this building.

The doors are (again) from Warbases. I made every door on every building I had constructed up until these last three. Frankly I was a bit skeptical about pre-made doors like this, but I when I saw some up close at Vapnartak, I was very favourably impressed. The guys at Warbases (really lovely people - so helpful!) didn't have to try very hard to get me to part with my money, as their products are VERY competitively priced, especially given the quality. I am very happy with the results. I won't say I'll never make another door myself, but I certainly wouldn't default to building my own like I used to.

So here it is, finished and ready for the table, with a dubious Saxon ne'er do well for scale. Fairly soon now I'll have some decent upstanding Sub-Romans to chase him off, but in the mean time he shows scale nicely.

Must be something worth stealing in there!

These three projects averaged out at about three hours work each: a bit more for the granary and the pig sty, a bit less for this one. However you shake it out, I don't think nine hours work to put three reasonably sized, interesting  and quirky terrain pieces on the table is a bad investment. Cost wise, the whole lot probably came to under five quid - cheap even for me.

Here's another view, just for completeness, and to show I did finish the back! Since it's a big expanse of nothing, I inset a bit of home-cast wattle panel (made from Fimo clay) into the wall to add a bit of interest.

Nothing round here either!

Merry Meet!

A Quick Change of Plan (and a couple of quick projects!) Part 2 - A Pig Sty

Following swiftly from Part 1 is the pig sty. Pigs were an important asset from ancient times, as a valuable way of turning inedible things (cabbage stalks, acorns, beech mast and turnip tops) into edible matter (pork!).

A place to keep the sow when she farrowed and somewhere for the pigs to shelter while they grow was essential. Although pigs were turned out into the woods at times to take advantage of the abundance of things like acorns, most of the time they would have needed to be confined, as pigs are inquisitive, industrious and frankly downright destructive animals, especially if they get into a vegetable patch!

The pig sty follows the usual mode of construction: a simple block of foam, in this case 45x35x35mm is made into something shed-shaped, with vertical walls about 20mm high and a door cut  into one end.

The pig sty could be wattle and daub construction, or planked, according to your preference. I've gone with wattle and daub, made with paper and PVA glue, and framing glued in place. The roof is added with rafters and a towelling thatch. Pigs need plenty of ventilation to be healthy, and a lack of it will promote things like pneumonia, which will restrict the supply of bacon - and we wouldn't want that! The thatch and gaps under the eaves would supply this. You've seen enough of how these buildings are made so I'll skip straight to the stage of having a completed shell.

A very des res!

Now, glue the sty to a base, leaving a decent sized area of base to make an enclosure. The base is the cheap and nasty 3mm hardboard again. Plenty good enough for this, though. Slivers of waste foam are glued down to add some contours to the ground. The next thing the build needs is a good, solid fence. A REALLY solid fence. The strength, ingenuity and downright perseverance of pigs when they want to be somewhere else has to be seen to be believed. So any fence has to reflect this. Otherwise the pigs will be anywhere EXCEPT in the pen...

First, a row of holes gets drilled, at 15-20mm centres (so roughly 3-4 feet in scale) to take a row of posts.

Postholes - always good for archaeology!

Next, add the posts. These are cocktail sticks held in place with superglue, but thick wire would do. I aimed for 1-2mm diameter, so the posts would reflect using 2-4" timbers, which is about what might be used in the "real thing".

 Good stout posts!

Finally, the fence itself was woven in place. This is several feet of 0.7mm steel MIG welding wire, annealed with a blowtorch and cut into 40-60mm lengths. I was after the effect of thickish wooden poles interwoven. Copper wire or thin string would work. This was time consuming and fairly hard on my fingers, but I'm quite happy with how it looks. Once the weaving was completed I gave everything a good coat of thin cyanoacrylate to make sure it stayed in place.  I deliberately avoided trying to use something that looked like a wicker hurdle. Any pig worth its salt would be through a fence build like that in no time flat!

That ought to keep 'em in place!

Finally, a gate, in the gap I left for that purpose. This is made pretty roughly out of basswood offcuts, then glued in place.

Some way of getting the pigs in and out...

Following primer, paint, flock, an ink wash and a thorough dry brushing with a variety of different shades, the usual coat of gloss poly went on to provide protection, followed by two coats of matt.

Finally, some little details. Static grass and weedy scrub was added outside the pen (nothing grows in a pig pen - or not for very long anyway!), along with some straw in the pen. This was sisal string, dampened down a bit and glued in place. A bit out in the pen,and a good bit more in the entrance to the sty. A bit of brown ink wash here and there gives a "lived in look", if you follow me...

Finally, I added a tuft of scrub, to represent a breakfast of turnip tops, and filled the hollow at the end of the pen with PVA to give the look of a nice muddy puddle to wallow in. I'll get some pigs at some point, but until then, I'll just say they're having a kip in the sty.

Ready to move in!

Note that while the sty is partially hollow, there's no pretense of being able to put a mini in there. There's a reason for this. Nobody in their right senses would force their way into a small confined space occupied by a sow and her piglets. Even a man in armour equipped with a spear and a sword might think himself very lucky to come out without horrific injuries. Here's an armoured Saxon from Black Tree Design for scale. He's either unusually brave or really doesn't understand how serious the situation is.

Little pigs, little pigs, come out and play...

Hunter could rapidly become hunted...

Merry Meet!