A short time ago I was asked to make a large church suitable for use in the Leipzig campaign of 1813, by my goof friend Dave Lewis. The model was to be constructed to 15mm scale and fortunately he knew exactly what he wanted, to this end he had made a scale drawing of the church, all I had to do was to build it.

Construction.

First of all the tower, nave and side entrance were cut out of polystyrene block and covered in paper soaked in thinned down PVA glue. Once dry the building was assembled and card windows and doors were cut and glued into position.

The roof was then tiled with thin card tiles each measuring about 3mm x 6mm and the ridge was made from thin dowel to enhance the unusual shape of the roof. The steeple was made by simply cutting four wedge shaped pieces of mounting board and gluing them together, once dry it was glued to the top of the tower. The base of the steeple was tiled in the same way as the roof and the steeple itself was covered in pieces of glue soaked paper to simulate lead sheeting.

Finally, the steeple was finished off by fixing a small orb, made of Milliput, to the top of it. The Church was then glued to its base for painting.

Painting

First of all the whole building was painted with a thin mix of plaster and left overnight to dry out. The next day the whole building was painted with white matt emulsion and left to dry for a couple of hours. The tiling was then painted brown and heavily dry brushed with red acrylic paint. The lead sheeting was painted grey and the dry brushed with light grey until the right effect was achieved, again using acrylic paint.

The windows were painted black and the frames brown. The doors were painted brown with black lines to simulate their wooden construction. Lastly I painted the orb with gold enamel paint and the white walls were shaded with a very weak black wash to add character.

Basing

The base was painted with PVA glue onto which sand was scattered. When this had dried it was dry brushed green, followed latter by a dry brushing of yellow. The church was now complete and ready for use on the wargames table.