Modern African Buildings
These buildings are designed to compliment the Middle East buildings and add a more African flavour to the setting. Both sets are designed to be used together for a generic modern Third World setting. Since most of the larger structures have already been built as part of the Middle East set this collection will be quite small and quick to do. As usual there will be a mix of one and two story buildings in two of the three sizes I normally make, medium and small.
Here is the cutting plan for the biggest building, a two story medium structure. All the other buildings use components from this one so it's a good place to start to see if everything works according to plan. The doors are 30mm x 20mm and the windows are 20mm x 10mm. I have allowed for a 4mm wall thickness in the plans which is more than needed but only by half a mm which is about the limit of the cork tolerance.
Assembly is very quick. The only guesswork is positioning the floor on to the base which has a 10mm clearance all round but isn't critical so doesn't really need to be measured. The long walls go inside the short walls and it's easier to start the assembly from the rear wall as this will then give you all your positioning without any further need to measure.
I have added a balsa wood bracer to the roof and made door frames from matchsticks.
The actual roof is cut from thick card. Each half measures 140mm x 55mm. I have secured the two halves together with a strip of masking tape on the underside which will form a hinge.
I have used some sheet styrene card with a corrugated iron pattern to make a corrugated iron roof. I considered using corrugated card but the ribs are too large and this styrene is very cheap. It cost me £1.65 per sheet from Antenociti's Workshop and you can get seven large roof panels from a sheet with some extra left over for the loose patchwork pieces.
Cut two pieces of styrene to match the size of the card and glue them down with wood glue or PVA; this allows you time to position them correctly. Once they were positioned I ran some super glue along all the edges to secure everything.
The card can then be glued to the roof support section. Again I used wood glue and finished with super glue. There is a 10mm roof overhang all the way around.
The roof is finished with a strip of thin card to mask the join and some randomly placed pieces of corrugated styrene to add a patched and mended look to the proceedings.
Originally I planned to cut scale sheets of corrugated iron from each styrene sheet and overlap them to make an authentic looking roof. However, whilst this may give a better look to the finished building, it involves a lot more styrene sheeting to do and a lot of work to get it right. Ultimately I went with this easier compromise. You might like to try both to see if the difference is worth the effort.
Here are the three component sections completed. The second story balcony is 20mm high and made from cork off-cuts. The supports are matchsticks. The top ones have been cut to size (40mm) and glued against the balcony corners; the lower ones have been left their full length and glued into holes drilled into the cork.
These three sections aren't glued together, they remain separate so figures can be placed on each floor of the building during play.
Here's the finished building.
Here are the plans for the other buildings in the set. The first ones take the finished building above as their template and are just variations on a theme. The single story buildings are the same as the two story ones but with the middle sections removed. Each blue square on the plans represents 10mm.
This shows the sides and the backs of the buildings which are all the same. The variation comes from the fronts which are shown below.
I've missed off the roofs because they're all the same. The lower left building is the one already completed.
The top two are designed to be shops and will have car body mesh inserted in the large windows. The bottom right building has an open top floor with a 20mm wall running around it and the roof supported on posts. The half tone area delineates the open part.
I plan to make one of each of these and then single story versions of all but the open one.
The final medium building is a single story sideways one designed to be a Police station or other official structure. It has a central corridor, open to the front with two rooms coming off it. The small wall at the bottom of the plans is an interior wall.
Once all the medium buildings have been done I want to do two small buildings with attached yards. One is shown below, the second will be a mirror image.
Finally I plan to build nine shanties, each on a 100mm x 100mm base. I will get nine from a single 300mm square base board that I've pre-cut. These can be dotted about as needed.
The basic design for the shanties is shown on the left. The front wall variations are shown along with a rear wall variant with windows. All the side walls and most of the rear walls will be blank.
