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Coastal fort

Coastal fort 
First stratchbuild of the year! I made a simple coastal fort to go with my ship the Halve Maen. I forgot to take work-in-progress pictures, but construction was very straightforward.

I started by making a rectangular box out of two 15x15 cm MDF picture frames for the top and bottom and four 18x15 cm sheets of polystyrene for the walls. The 18 cm height of the walls meant that I could divide the tower into three 6 cm tall levels. I simply hotglued these together to form the basic shape and then added a parapet using some left over blue foam. I made the parapet 3 cm high - giving the tower a total height of 21 cm - with the cut-outs being 1.5 cm high. 

For the external staircase I used strips of cork that I cut from a coaster. As the coaster was 1 cm thick, six steps gave me the exact height to reach the first floor. I wish I could say that this was clever planning on my part, but I’m afraid it was completely down to luck! 

After this, I added details like the gun slits, some exposed bricks and a door out of thin cardboard. I then applied  two layers of wall filler/spackle with a brush to texture the building and strengthen the foam parapet.

Coastal fort

Then came the painting. I started with a coat of white wood primer from the DIY store to which I added a little bit of beige craft paint to give the tower a base coat of broken white. I then gave it two very thinned down washes of burned sienna followed by black. I then painted most of the details before giving everything a light drybrush of the original base coat. After this I added a green wash in some small areas to represent moss. Finally, before varnishing, I painted the door and hatch on the roof.

Dutch

English 

I also gave my Blood & Plunder minis a bit of a touch up, because I had been a bit too heavy-handed with the wash. A complete strip and repaint may look better still, but I don’t feel like doing that right now.

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