Scratchbuilt windmill

This is a little project that I had started some time ago, but had not gotten around to finishing yet. A completely scratchbuilt windmill! Most models that you can find online are of timber windmills. I, however, wanted mine to look like it was made of plastered brick. Additionally, I wanted it to look quintessentially/stereotypically Dutch.

One characteristic of most Dutch windmills is that the main body tends to taper slightly towards the top. So how did I accomplish this? Well, by making the body out of a cheap metal cocktail shaker. Before starting I gave the shaker a light sanding, so the glue and paint would stick better. I then cut out a small base for the windmill out of a sheet of polystyrene.

The cocktail shaker is very thin-walled and provides almost no surface for gluing it to the base. I therefore cut out a circular plug out of some cork, which I hotglued into the opening of the shaker. This gave me a nice large gluing area.

With the body of the windmill fixed to the base, I could start working on the door and windows. These were cut out of thin cardboard and then glued directly to the metal. The frame of the wooden upper structure was made of polystyrene sheet. This was then detailed by gluing on thin, overlapping strips of cardboard.

On a real windmill, the upper structure can be rotated to face the wind. I briefly thought of doing that as well, but I didn’t feel like trying to drill through the metal. So, in the end, I simply hotglued it in place. I did decide to magnetise the blades, however, so they can be easily removed for storage.

As you can see, the blades of the wind mill were made out of thin polystyrene sheet, and then detailed using coffee stirrers and cardboard.

I then gave the whole thing two coats of water-based wood primer applied with a brush. I made sure to stipple the wall sections to give it a texture resembling a coarse layer of plaster. It doesn’t show very well in the pictures, but in person it is quite noticeable.

I think it will look pretty good on the gaming table, together with my Sarissa Precision Dutch farm building.

And for scale, here is the windmill next to a 28mm scale Sherman Firefly from Rubicon Models.

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