I felt this deserved a write-up as though there are not a lot of 20mm Cold War era buildings in MDF, there are some good reasons for this article.
1. There's plenty in 15mm and 28mm and the advice here is scale agnostic.
2. This is a newish development in the hobby.
What I built yesterday was Sarissa's Two Story Colonial House, it's a very simple kit. One sprue for the buildings, one for the windows/doors, and one page of instructions.
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| I hope mine comes out looking half as good! Pic taken from Sarissa's Website. |
I've taken some improvement ideas from the Tactical Painter blog, which even though his ideas are geared toward WWII, makes a lot of good points for MDF. I'd certainly take his advice.
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| The first floor is not too shabby, also note the Chopper II in the background, it was a recent procurement, and well worth it. I see this thing getting a lot of use. |
The actual book construction was really easy and I liked how fast the actual construction was. It really was a snap, and white (PVA for those in the UK) glue is really the preferred adhesive, as it's far more forgiving than super glue for this sort of thing.
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| The second floor, sans balcony |
As I said, the model itself was a total snap. I think I had the basic kit together in about ten to fifteen minutes tops.
I did make some improvements to the kit as suggested by Tactical Painter, first, I used some decorative toothpicks to make some nicer-looking columns for the balcony, and I used the remains of said toothpicks to make columns for the front of the building. I then used Woodland Scenics Foam Putty to hide the joins. That didn't work as well as I would have liked, but it did the job mostly. I will probably just use some regular home spackle next time.
I stopped my work once I got to the windows, as I wanted to get some emulsion or house paint to do the initial coat for the building. I know a lot of folks tell me that normal acrylic is going to get absorbed by the wood, and you need something a bit hardier. I don't wanna get the full-sized containers, hard to store. And I don't need that big, samples are fine for me.
We'll see, as I have yet to paint any of my MDF as of yet. But if I can make this work, then I should be able to make the rest work well. Does anyone know a cheap source of samples online?
Here are the final results, thus far.
More to come as this project continues!
