Another small corner of Portugal

For those that have been following my Peninsular project,will know i have been working on creating the early part of the Peninsular war in 28mm scale and have been painting units as and when i need them, i also have been scratch building the terrain for the campaign as and when i need it. for the next battle which is going to be the skirmishing around the town of Rolica, and was also the first battle for the British in the Peninsular. For my next game i will need a windmill, so armed with some pictures of windmills from Portugal see below i moved onto the modelling.

Portuguese windmills 

As you can see by the pictures most windmills in Portugal were of the same design single tower and canvas sails rather than wooden sails found on other windmills in Europe.

For this project I'm going to use a large cardboard tube, for the tower and cover it with air dry clay for the texture. For the roof I'm going to use card tiles, and for the sail struts I'm going to use what i can find.

starting  point the cardboard tube cut to size with the help of a 60th rifleman to test the scale.

tube covered with a layer of air dry clay

To get the right texture of the stone, i have found the best way is to use a stone to mark or stab the clay this gives it the right look

Next i cut out the door and windows and using a blunt pencil i drew in the stone work. I found that after i had finished with the detail the clay had expanded due to me working on it, and it had become lose around the tube, so i cut the overlap off and gave the cardboard tub a coat of PVA glue to help the clay to stick to the tube. Once this work is done leave to dry mine took about 12 hours to dry. 

With everything dry i have painted in the windows and doors and added the roof. i have also added a base at this stage to give the structure strength.

At this stage a quick look at the pictures as i wanted to see how the sails are constructed and attached to the mill.

Roof tiles attached not the most easiest of things to do but it gives the right effect.

first coat of paint on the model plus i have washed the stone with a ink wash

Two coats of dry brushing each one giving a lighter finish

The sail struts are attached to the mill I'm not going to attach sails to the mill.

Sail struts base coated and the string given a ink wash

The finished mill with the struts high lighted and the door and window details painted in.
all ready for the skirmish of Rolica.

Hope this has been an interesting look at windmill construction. Next up on the terrain building is some villages for the battle of Rolica. Till next time