North African Buildings

My favorite forum, Lead Adventure Forum, started a thread necromancy club in which a person revives an old thread and abandoned project and vows to complete it.

I selected a project that I intended to be quite big at one point, but for whatever reason saw little to no forward movement. I'd built a 'Hollywood' harem building for the 2013 Lead Painter's League and I always intended to make more buildings for a generic Middle Eastern or North African setting. I acquired six of the Modellbau Najewitz buildings and let the boxes gather dust for two years…

Last week I set out the components of the six Modellbau Najewitz North African buildings (and some trees I purchased several months ago) and shook my head at the sheer number of palms I planned to use.

I then started on the buildings, which are quite the pain in the ass.

It took about eight to ten solid hours of work over the last week just to get them to this stage. Even though I wore a dust mask I'm sure I knocked a decade off my life, there was so much dust generated by the belt sander I used to flatten the backs of the pieces. This was necessary so that I could clear out the window screens and get an even fit on the walls. The depth of the components varied a lot- they're cast from open face molds. This is a big problem on the crenelations, which are separate pieces. Some pieces were missing corners because the pour was too thin and the mold was not level.

The wood support bars are cast in one piece with a perpendicular bar to support the roof… these do not fit right and required clipping and breaking apart to get them spaced right- not to mention having to bore out square holes to get many of the beams in. I discovered I was shorted beams for two of the buildings, so I had to acquire a piece of basswood to use for the missing pieces. I wish I'd started with that method because it went much quicker. If you intend to get these buildings, bin the included beams and make your own.

I think they will look good once the filler is sanded and they're painted. They have some very nice detailing which will set them apart from more generic looking middle eastern structures on the market.

I hope to have them painted soon- thanks for looking.