Waterside Chinese Building

[marianas_gamer]

I always splurge on wargaming stuff on my birthday. Being a total Sinophile (or at least the China in my head) there is always Chinese swag. Last year, among other treasures, I took a chance on a Chinese stamped balsa wood building puzzle kit, hoping it would be in the right scale. The dreaded Real Life intervened (and boy oh boy has it!) and I finally got around to unboxing the kit this long labor day weekend



Only to find that that the instructions made flat pack furniture assembly childs play    and the 8 1/2 year child
 they say can put this together must be some sort of genius.



After a number of hours, and some sailor-like words mumbled into my mustache the kit came together (minus a number of small odd pieces that I couldn't figure out where in #%$ they went! ...but will not matter once I glue things in place)



In all, I am pretty happy with the scale and the bare bones of the model. I am going to do a lot of work though before this will ever show up on my table. It will be raised on a corkboard base so that it can be incorporated into my Chinese dockside and so that sanpans can dock under it. I will also replace the doors and windows, retexture the building, plastic clad the roofs in pan tiles and the base in stone texture plastic. It should be pretty cool when I finish it but it will definitely take time.

[Poiter50]

When you say that you are happy with the scale, what scale is it? 15mm, 20mm, 28mm? Enquiring minds would like to know. 

[marianas_gamer]

Good point Poiter50! I was a might vague on that wasn't I? I game in 28mm but I like my terrain to be just a might smaller. Here is the house with a 28mm mini for scale.

[Bravo Six]

Oh that looks the part Lon! Nice gift to yourself. 

[Poiter50]

Thank you.

Good point Poiter50! I was a might vague on that wasn't I? I game in 28mm but I like my terrain to be just a might smaller. Here is the house with a 28mm mini for scale.

[white knight]

Looking forward to see how you pimp this.

[Mason]

Nice find!
A very good base to build from.
 

Looking forward to watching this baby grow.
 

[Pan Marek]

I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.  I've not yet seen thread on converting these kits to wargame use.

Poiter50 brought up a point that I've wondered every time I see such a kit.   Is there any way to determine  (roughly) the scale of these kits before opening the box? 

[marianas_gamer]

Pan Marek,
I don't think so. You just have to take the risk. That is part of the reason that I showed the box art so that folks could see if it would fit their needs as well.
Lon

[zebcook]

I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.  I've not yet seen thread on converting these kits to wargame use.

Poiter50 brought up a point that I've wondered every time I see such a kit.   Is there any way to determine  (roughly) the scale of these kits before opening the box?

If you go to Ebay or Amazon, the listing usually include details that give the model size in cm. Sometimes there will be a box picture that lists dimensions. One maker, CHUKER, even lists a building scale on their boxes. Check out their 1/40 Wanchun Pavilion model for example.

[marianas_gamer]

I have been working on getting this house up to standard. Supplies acquired,


and almost all of the roof clad in plastic pan tiles. I still need to fill some small gaps and finish some long narrow gaps along the ridgepoles.



It has required a lot of precise cutting and going back and forth with the puzzle base to actually fit everything back together correctly. It is always a bit more challenging than expected  I think that just redoing the roofs is already an improvement and most of the flaws will be covered up by fill and paint.

[fred]

That’s a great improvement. I think as you see more of the roof than any other part of a building, then any improvements there have a big impact.

Adding a few 3d bits to flat walls helps too -which I guess you are planning to do from some of the other items in your pile of bits.

[Vanvlak]

The roof improvement works superbly - I might get some of those.
I misread the label in the first pic as 'pantiles' (I pronounced it mentally as panteeles...) and was a bit bewildered for a minute or so; in my defence, I am attending a Zoom meeting at the same time, so

[Mason]

'Tis coming along nicely, mate.
 

[bandit86]

really  looking forward to seeing how you paint this...looking good so far