City Blocks, 2: windows & doors

It's a horrible job trying to paint windows & doors neatly on plain wooden blocks.

I reckoned the easiest way (other than a template) would be to stamp window reveals and door openings onto the wooden building shapes then I would have something a bit 3D.

Mk1

The Mk1 range of architectural stampers consisted of plasticard window shapes superglued onto an old flat bracket in a line so I could stamp one vertical column of windows in one go without having to do a lot of lining up. But it was all very well having them in the middle of a good bit of metal but it was impossible to see if they were in line. 

There was a Mk1A for full height windows for single storey buildings but this was quite hard to impress on the wood due to the pressures needed.

Mk2 & Mk1A

A square doorknob spindle (only 1mm wider than the window shapes) was used instead which meant you could easily see how the plasticard bits were lining up with the other windows.

Mk3

The Mk3 stamper had a bit of plasticard big enough to be a door glued onto another part of the spindle to extend any of the windows down to floor level.

If you hit too hard (I was using a club hammer but gently), the pine would splinter a bit as the window shape was pushed in and also you cannot stamp windows & doors where there are knots in the wood or on the ends of the grain as the wood is just too hard. Hopefully any splintering might be hideable at the painting stage or put some flock on it like ivy. By some fluke I got a regular window arrangement all down some of the city blocks but it was easier to do them in coumns of 2, 3, 4 or 5 and then convert some of the lower windows into doors.

(fairly) Regularly spaced, square windows & doors

Then I started using the slightly rounded end of the spindle to make arched doors which actually looked slightly better than square ones. I gave up on doing chimney stacks for the time being as cutting the plasticard was fiddly but I'll keep an eye out for any suitable scrap as the roofs look bit plain otherwise and I really did want a lot of chimnies running down the apex of the roofs.

Off for some tins of spray paint tomorrow...