The Painting Table - September 2022

 It's been more of a modelling table for the last month rather than a painting table.  I finished the Old West General Store scratch build and then started onto the County Sheriff's office.  That isn't quite finished though.  I have everything glued together except the fencing around the exercise yard and an external stairway and I need to paint in the window on the front door.  My first attempt at the roof and parapet didn’t look right so I had to do it over.  The original roof was based on a sheet of card which didn’t sit flush to the top of the side walls.  I redid it using a foam sheet which I sat inside the parapet edges which looks much better and was actually easier to build.  Instead of having to plank the roof with individual lengths of bass wood I could scribe the foam sheet with a plank pattern.

View of the exercise yard end (Fencing not yet erected)

Front and roof area

Overview of the interior

The astute viewer will have spotted a couple of 'features', no stairs to the roof inside the building and no gates on the jail cells.  There are three hatches in the roof one for each cell and a ladder will be stored up there.  I'm going with an external wooden stair way to access the roof for reasons of playability.  The overview shows a front office accessed off the sidewalk, a rear office with a door to the cell area and a living area come bunkroom.  The corridor to the front of the cells would act as a drunk tank (this is a friendly jail only the real nasty types get chucked in a cell).

The jail also features ‘granny grating’ cell walls and window gratings.  I think that worked well.  I’m going to use the same material to make some snake rail fences for 2mm ACW games. Output during September and early October suffered as we had a weekend away and because of George’s declining health.  Hopefully next month will actually see some figures painted.

In other news, the figures on the painting table haven’t changed although they may have moved around a bit!  There are currently Hun light cavalry, Pictish cavalry, Late Roman infantry, Byzantine infantry (using Sassanid figures from Baccus) and an assortment of Dark Age command figures in 6mm and the Old West figures in 28mm awaiting my painting attention.  I also have Soviet light armoured vehicles in 3mm to finish basing.  It’s a good thing I don’t overstretch myself!