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Constructing a 15mm church
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| Materials: 3-5mm foam board PVA white glue (Elmer's) Thin cardboard (cereal box) |
Tools: Hobby Knife (X-acto) Ruler |
Dimensions Side Walls: 140mm width x 60mm height. Center Tower: 60mm width x 55mm height. Upper Tower: 50mm width x 70mm height. Windows: Side - 10mm x 35mm Steeple: 40mm width x 80mm height Front door: 20mm width x 30mm height Roof length:
Attached rooms (transepts): Windows: Small - 5mm x 5mm Roof: 40mm width x 70mm length (35mm each side) |
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I began my effort by doing a lot of research on the web. I searched for churches in the Normandy area of France, so I can have some accuracy to the design. I found this excellent site with pictures and floor plans. http://www.pitt.edu/~medart/menufrance/mainfran.html After making a final design, I started scaling the church down to 15mm scale. This would still be considered a small town church rather than an abbey or cathedral. I wanted to add a rear apse and buttresses but decided to save those for a larger church, one that was battle damaged with more features to move and hide around. I cut out my patterns from foamboard, then pinned the pieces together to make sure it was what I wanted. |
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| It looked good, so I continued cutting out all the pieces for the main body, then the transepts. I used scraps to build roof peak structures for the main roof and attached room roofs to set on. I also cut out floor/roof squares for the tower, one for the center and one for the top. The top tower will sit on the center floor and the steeple will sit on the upper tower roof. |
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| After pinning the walls together, I cut out the roofs and steeple from thin cardboard. I used a cereal box. Everything looked good, so now I need to pencil in all the windows and door and cut then out(step not shown, sorry!). |
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While cutting out all the windows, I decided to keep the scape from the cut out and re-insert it back into the window whole and recess it about halfway. I did this so I could have a surface to paint stained glass windows on them later. The only ones I removed completely were the upper tower because I wanted it to be used as a sniper/machine gun nest. The upper tower can be remove and the church looks just as good, or leave it and remove just the steeple. I used the same recessed technique for the front door, recessing each 5mm ring halfway. Then I added a staircase. I could have easily cut the door down to the ground and excluded the stairs. |
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I intentionally made the upper tower large enough to fit a small Flames of War miniature base. This also included cutting the window down to 5mm from the bottom to allow a soldier line of site out the window. It took me about a few hours a day over one week to complete. I think it looks pretty cool and is at a good scale for 15mm minis. Now, onto painting it!!! |
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