6mm Napoleonic (& others) Terrain

I’m pretty sure nothing I will present here is completely new to most readers, but just in case, here is my approach to making these small scale houses/buildings.  I should say from the offset that I don’t bother measuring the size of these buildings.  It’s all “what looks OK”.

In this example a balsa block was cut using a fretsaw and a “roof” piece slightly larger was cut to size based on the original piece.  Note that if I had a bigger balsa piece, I’d probably ignore adding another block on top and slice the sides of the balsa block to create a “roof” directly.

In either case use a fresh sharp craft knife to cut the balsa. Although it is a soft wood, having a new/sharp blade helps in controlling the cuts (and avoids cutting yourself!)

I use small clamps to hold the balsa together while the glue dries.  I’m using a UHU type of glue, but there is specialized glues for balsa wood, and of course usual wood/PvA glue works just as well.

The pencil lines on the “roof” are to guide the cutting stage.

The buildings after the roof block has been trimmed down to the shape I want.  Other roofs will have the traditional triangle shape and of course some can be left flat depending on what building is being built.

For example I will probably have a church and some form of Municipal Town Hall which would require some different roof shapes.  I just glue pieces together to make shapes. You can let your imagination run wild.

These pictures show some examples of different shapes and buildings. All sizes are fine as the idea anyway is to have a diverse looking base which represents some form of dwelling space and not a modern gridded city.

The walls have been painted with acrylic paints.  I think using inks or, for example, felt tip pens, would leak into the rest of the wood.  I haven’t tried this, to be honest and will probably stick with using acrylics for the paint job, although a bit of me wonders if using colored pencils would be useful.

The roofs will be made up from the wood veneer tips I managed to buy last year although I am also thinking to color them further in some way to increase the variety of roof finishes.

So next time I hope to be able to present some finished town bases.