Tabletop Basement kitbash project - with interiors- and a new Kickstarter

[PhilB]

Yes, I've been slowly building a fantasy-medieval village. It all started with the Laketown house, which I kitbashed to include a playable interior. I went on to build a half-timbered house, completely from scratch, which I also featured in a recent post about a batch of Foundry Vikings. In the meantime, I participated in a kickstarter from the folks at Tabletop Basement, and ordered a bunch of their kits. Here is one kit laid out prior to painting and assembly:

Now I have to say that this is the first resin kit that I've assembled, but several aspects were really disappointing. I don't mean to trash the hard work of the folks at Tabletop Basement, especially since the exterior textures on the kit are top-notch, and I don't really know if the troubles I ran into are par for the course with resin kits in general. But here are the difficulties I had. Please let me know if this is typical for resin kits or not.

1) The castings are one-sided, so I had to deal with the interiors differently. OK, I was expecting this. But some of the parts were slightly warped, many had raised lips around the edges, had visible bubbles or were of uneven thickness. Sure, these problems were only on the non-textured backside of the castings. All of the textured front sides were fine. I had to spend a fair bit of time sanding down the non-textured backsides  before even attempting assembly.

2) No provisions were made for fitting the pieces together. No little nubs or slots or anything. Once I got round to final assembly (with two-part resin epoxy) I had to cobble together jigs with boxes and clamps to get pieces to sit properly together.


Now that I've got the bad stuff out of my system, on to the good stuff.
I really like these kits, even if they are all pretty much the same, with slight cosmetic variations. My plan is to do more and more radical kitbashes as I go along, but the first one I built up as the manufacturer intended... just with added bonuses like a working front door and a playable interior. Having had great success using pins to hinge the door of my scratchbuilt house, I tried the same technique here.

Of course, the flip side of the door was flat and featureless, but a little carving and it looked similar to the pre-textured side.

Wanting a simple solution to the interior walls, I downloaded some suitable textures and printed them out, cut them into strips and glued them to the unassembled wall pieces (with PVA).


Many clamps were used to prevent warping, and hopefully solve some of the pre-warped walls. This problem wasn't really solved until final assembly.

So my question at this stage to all you expert modellers is whether the problems I encountered are typical of resin kits, or specific to this manufacturer? At around 40 euros (~$50USD), should I expect more?

I'll post more about the interiors later today, but for now, here is one view of the finished twonhouse:

[roadskare63]

Nice assembly...can't wait to see the interiors!

[PhilB]

So, on to the interiors. I didn't take any "in progress" shots, so it's straight to the finished project.



Here is the upper floor. The fireplace is carved polystyrene. The bookcase and desk are scratchbuilt from bank calendar cardstock. The barrel and basket are from the Laketown house kit, and the chair is from a Dwarven Forge prepainted set.



Here is the other side of the upper floor, with two scrathbuilt beds and the chest is prepainted Dwarven Forge. I can see that the window frame between the beds needs some work. I only painted the frame *after* assembly, and it sucks, so I'll have to try to redo that. On to the ground floor.



The fireplace is again carved polystyrene, with a lively log fire burning inside, a pile of logs to the left, with a few fireplace tools in front. The stairway is scratchbuilt from balsa and bank calendar cardstock. The chairs, barrels, bar and steins are from Dwarven Forge. The tables and benches in the foreground are scratchbuilt from cardstock.



Here's the other end of the ground floor, with two Megaminis townsfolk who have seen heavy use, and need a touchup on their paint, especially the bases... but it's what I had on hand to liven up the scene.



Here's a view of the back of the house, with climbing vines and a bit of lichen along the side.

All in all, I'm fairly happy with this kit, and the way it turned out. Here are a few niggling questions that y'all might be able to help me with:

- The two-part epoxy I used to assemble the walls is marginally acceptable. It left a few unsightly glue drips on the interior, and the whole thing feels brittle, like bad handling could break the whole thing up. Should I be drilling holes in the corners to insert metal pins for a better and sturdier fit? Or is there some other solution, like different glue, that would give a sturdier result and leave less ugly glue bulges?

- The printed paper I used for the interior walls was OK, but I didn't finish all the details before assembly, leading to some tough painting angles that compromosed success for the painted-on window sills and such. Should I be building up the interior sills with cardstock or balsa wood, for a better 3D effect? Or just deal with all the wall details prior to assembly so that they are less fiddly to paint?

- The exterior shutters really make the kit. I mean visually, they are the detail which makes the house seem more real. I like how they work on this kit, and will be going back to the scratchbuilt half-timbered house to add shutters. Some of the other Tabletop Basement kits have complete windows and shutters pre-cast into the building facade, which looks OK, but leaves the inside with flat unopened surfaces. I'll have to carefully measure the placement of the windows and prepare inside surfaces to correspond, since there won't be any window openings to tart up. How would you deal with these pre-molded windows without any interior detail?

[FifteensAway]

Some of the nicest interior detailing I've seen for miniatures.

Two part epoxy is a bear to work with at times, very messy, but should yield a strong bond though perhaps the type of resin might make it a bit less sturdy.  Never tried miniature resin kits but in the model railroad world I've got a few and the warping is not uncommon unfortunately.  Simple solution is to 'gently' heat the pieces and then flatten them - your clamping is a good option.  Don't over heat though or you can melt a piece.  A good heat gun - like a blow dryer with variable heat settings is my go to heat source.

Not into the whole fantasy world but really nice looking buildings.

[PhilB]

Thanks for the comment, Fifteensaway. As I noted, I have very little experience with resin kits, so don't know if the drawbacks that annoyed me are typical.

Fortunately, everything I noted can be overcome by dilligent modelling, sanding, clamping and gluing. The first test house came out fairly well.

I half feel like I'm playing dollhouse with these, but many have been the times when I needed to plot out the interior rooms of a house during a roleplaying session. I used to use pre-printed 2d Rackham templates - very pretty, but still 2d. Although this adds at least 4 times more work on each house for the village project I've begun, the end result is very satisfying, and once my current Pathfinder campaign gets off a desert island and back to a decent settlement, I'll be able to have these scurvy pirates (my players) do their swashbuckling through gaudy interiors.

I think for my second resin kit I'll experiment with pegging the walls together with paperclip wire, and just use gel-type superglue instead of epoxy resin. Should make less mess and leave fewer or no unsightly glue bulges.

[PhilB]

For anyone interested, I just saw this new Kickstarter from Tabletop Basement for desert buildings. One option is for prepainted sets!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/162592473/28mm-desert-tabletop-buildings?ref=creator_nav