First western building completed

The first building for De Lancy is complete, well almost there are a few things I will probably touch up in due course.  That said it is in a playable form so the De Lancy General Store, proprietor Colonel J De Lancy, is open for business.  It's made of balsa and bass wood cladding over a foam board core.  I went with a removable flat roof design for this one.  Signage is a mix of home designed and Sarissa Precision items. The brown plate part way up the right side of the building is:

a) a plate for me to mount a lamp to, and

b) a disguise for a poor bit of building work!

My shoddy workmanship shows in this shot!

And some of the required touching up can be seen here.

I copied some modelling tips from a couple of blog sites where the authors had scratch built their towns, but I'm not entirely happy with the suggested build process.  To me the main failing is that there is a solid box core to the building with no gaps for windows or doors, so figures inside cannot be seen from the street and doors are always closed.  For my next build I have cut gaps in the foam board so let's see how that works.  The other issue is that there is no internal detail.  I don't think the designer really intended fights to happen inside buildings.  I'm expecting that they will.

That next building under construction is a County Sheriff's office and jail (Yes, I know that civilised folks spell it gaol, but this is Texas when all is said and done).  This represents a stone-built structure, so I have been inscribing the foam board and applying washes to make it look, well, stony!  That also means no balsa cladding is needed.  Unlike the store I am putting in internal walls and detail.  At present I have the external walls done and one of the internal walls completed but the building is not glued together.  The bits of bass wood lying on the foam in the picture are being tested for size, they will line cut outs for the doorways and windows to give a flat surface to place doors and windows into.

Who knew stone walls came flat pack!

As back story to the building I'm saying that it was a block house built as a defence against Commanche raids by the Mexican military back in the 1820's.  Subsequently it was taken over by the Texas Rangers as a way station before settling into its current use.  It will probably be known locally as the 'old block house' rather than the sheriff's office.