De Lancy - Blacksmith's Forge

The Dog House Saloon is completed so it's onwards to the Sarissa Precision Blacksmith's Forge.  This is a lovely little model and as a bonus I found a You-Tube video on assembling it.  To be honest the instructions which came with the kit were more than enough but sometimes it's nice to hear that there were no unexpected snags.  The kit consists of a stable with an attached outdoor forge so there is a bit of overlap with the Livery Stable but apparently a bit of competition is healthy for the market place (although Colonel De Lancy seems to favour the monopoly system as long as it's him who holds that monopoly).  Unlike the Warbase's Livery stable the Sarissa kit has internal detail so I don't need to do any scratch building on this kit.  Mind you it was also around 20% more expensive than the Warbases offering so you pays your money and all that.

It goes together very nicely but I didn't glue the forge roof, forge, troughs, or hitching rail into place so I could easily paint them.  I also wanted to texture the base which is easier without these being glued into place.  Other than that there is very little I can say about assembling the kit.  I made very few additions;  some off cuts of MDF into the forges fireplace as fuel, some ridge tiles to cover the gap where the two main roof parts meet at the roof apex and some rough covering for the forge roof's open area, but other than that I had no need to add anything major.

Blacksmith's Forge and wagon

Side view of the forge

I do strongly suggest painting all the door and window frames and the main structure before gluing the window frames to the (now painted) walls as it makes for a much neater finish to the edges of the frames.   In the photos I can see where some touching up is needed as I didn't paint before assembly, lesson learned for next time!  Other than that the painting was fairly straightforward as well.  The brickwork areas were painted in a Vallejo Scarlet Red to which I had added Orange fire and some Moon Yellow to lighten the mix.  This gave a nice brick red tone.  I added some Vallejo Black-Grey as soot marks around the mouth of the fire place and the top of the chimney.  The roof and beams were painted in Vallejo Dark Sand and then washed these with a couple of coats of  GW’s Agrax Earthshade.  I hummed and hawed about the colour of walls of the stable block but settled on trying for a slightly faded white wash look.  For that I used an off white which I painted on rather unevenly and then added spots of Agrax Earthshade which I smeared into streaks with a finger tip, making sure the streaks were parallel to the planking on the model.

To texture the floor I used the chopped sisal string 'straw' in the horse stalls but tried a new technique for the earth floor of the smithy area.  I used a sand texture paste from Hobbycraft and as it was almost dry used the flat surface of a plastic glue spreader to create some ripples.  Mrs E says it's a bit like the way she makes decorative peaks in Christmas cake icing but less tasty.  Once the sand texture dried I painted it Burnt Sienna (Windsor and Newton Galleria paint) then dry brushed heavily using Vallejo Earth followed by a lighter drybrush of Vallejo Khaki.  I quite like the result.

Inside view of the main building

Close up of the forge floor area

I also assembled the wagon which looks really nice alongside the buildings.  This was painted in the same way as the forge's timber.  As a bonus I added some extra signs to the saloon's frontage. 

New Saloon signs attached to the balcony and the roof has been finished

That's the new MDF kits completed which leaves the figures from Vapnartak to paint now.  These have only been spray undercoated so far.  I'm going to have to rethink my normal approach to figure painting for them and revert (or at least try to revert) to an older painting style of high and lowlighting similar to the Dallimore method.  They may have to sit on the back burner for a while as the next order of business is to finish the 2mm ACW project.