The design started with a set of elevations I found online for an existing building from the period.

I brought the elevations into Lightburn which is the program that I use for cutting with my laser and has a full package of design tools as well. First I had to scale the plans to fit with 28mm minis which involved scaling the drawing to get it in the ballpark, printing it out, then check the size next to actual minis. When you’re scaling for miniatures using actual scales rarely works like you’d hope.

Once I had the scale where I wanted it I just had to essentially trace the design to get the basic shapes in place. I ended up simplifying the entryway, eliminating the back door and changing it to a window and generally looking for things that didn’t need to exist.

When designing for cutting you need to keep in mind the thickness of the material you’re going to be using because that’s going to come into place if you add tabs to help hold the pieces together. I’m personally in the “fewer tabs are better” camp rather than the camp that likes the corners of all of their buildings look like intricate jigsaw puzzles. Anyway, my main material is 1/8″ birch plywood so that was figured into the design. FYI – for surface details I used 1/16″ birch plywood but the thickness of that material didn’t play into how I was designing things at this stage.

Cutting everything out was really the easy part. I’ve already done a lot of tests with various materials so that I had a sense of the settings I would use to get good cuts and etches. One thing I wasn’t sure about was my roof. I was planning to do the shingles in 1/16″ plywood but that turned out to be way too thick. So that’s why that isn’t done yet. Otherwise, I only had one failed attempt due to material that was warped more than I had initially thought. Otherwise, it was a smooth process.

Gluing on all of the surface details was where the thing really started looking good. This is also where I got to see things that I will probably change in the design to simplify it yet again. Areas that didn’t need to be as complex as they were and a couple of things I forgot to add – which I can still add now.

Painting was also pretty straightforward. I used the laser again to create a stencil for the General Merchandise sign on the front and airbrushed that on. I had considered adding an actual sign to the front rather than painting the front of the building. The period buildings did it both ways – but I opted for paint on the walls. It’s turning out cleaner than I thought I wanted initially but I’m leaning towards the idea that this is a newer store from a wealthy businessperson so it’s going to stand out from the rest

The inside looks so nice I’d like to fill it out with shop goods but I don’t know if I’m going to be that ambitious.