Redvers and Son Get Into Bushido

Returning to the MDF buildings, we set to work on the rice stores. I looked up some pictures for reference and found a Yayoi historical museum in southern Japan that has built some of these as part of the exhibits. These are all thatched and our MDF building isn’t so we need to rectify that.

There’s a few ways of making thatched roofs and there’s even a Gerry Can on it as well but here’s how we tackled it.

Heading to our local Poundland, we bought a wallpaper brush for £1 (who’d have thought?). Removing the metal rim, it was easy to take the bristles off ready for adding to the roof.

The roof was then smeared liberally with PVA and the bristles applied. Fortunately, the bristles are about the same length as the roof, so there will be minimum trimming once in place. Once the PVA dried, we then added two separate applications of terrain cement, just to make sure that everything stayed in place.

Once this was all dry, the whole thing got primed and I then set my son to work painting it. We’re using cheap acrylic paint from The Works for this – no point using the good stuff on MDF terrain!

The wood was painted a dark brown and the thatch black, just to make sure that there were no light patches.

The thatch then got a dry brush of grey.

To finish things off, we gave the model a dry brush of Iraqi Sand before applying a coat of gloss varnish. Once dry, I broke out the Mig enamel panel liner and applied this into the grooves of the wood planking and door, just to really bring out the shadow.

This then got a final matt varnish to lock everything in place. Quick and easy but quite effective.