Building 4Ground's Dead Man's Hand Side Street Building No.2

[Heisler]

I finally was able to acquire six of 4Ground's Dead Man's Hand buildings and built the first one up the day I arrived back from LA. Fantastic Service from Great Escape Games had them waiting for me on the doorstep (well in the house, one of the boys did bring the package inside). This is Side Street Building #2. I liked the kit and found it fun to build. Naturally I took extensive photos of my first build and noted some spots that I had difficulty with. Here are a couple pictures of the finished structure and if you interested in the trials and tribulations (actually not many) of building this beastie head on over to my blog: http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2013/08/building-4ground-dead-mans-hand-side.html  Note that this is a very picture intensive blog post even for me.

[geboom]

Looks good!

I wander how large the building is, and how high the walls are. Ask this because of my broken down wall structure on the inside of houses.

I must say those buildings of 4Ground do look good!

Geboom.

[Elbows]

The overall footprint for the DMH buildings is relatively small compared to most MDF buildings.  I used to have a comparison picture somewhere, I'll see if I can dig it up.

[Heisler]

The foundation only adds height so I'll leave that off. The basic building footprint 4" wide, 5 1/2" long and 2" tall (left off the roof to get that measurement) on the outside. The interior height of the walls is 1 7/8" inches so the floor is 1/8" thick or so.

The two story buildings have the same basic measurements, just add another 2" to the height. And Elbows is right, they are relatively small compared to some of the other manufacturers.

[geboom]

Thanks for the info.

I measured my shop just for comparisson.
That building is, outside measurements, 6" wide, 10.5" deep and 2.3" in height.
Sounds increadible large compared to your house but if you see them with the Black Scorpion figures on them it does look good enough I guess.
Since I want to be able to play inside the houses as well I do not mind having a bit more space in them.

Thanks again for the info.

Geboom

[Elbows]

I would definitely prefer much larger structures as many of the Old West MDF lines are all rather small compared to what they should be.  Your buildings emulate real life sizes much better I think.  True, some houses and shops were rather small, but not all of them.    I am looking to buy or build a couple of big main structures, because I'd like to have a frantic shoot out in a single building etc.

[Mindenbrush]

Nice looking building though a little on the small side - pre-painted?

Having just started 3 shops from another manufacturer I am beginning to realise that pre-painting parts when they are still on the "sprue is a great advantage. I thought I was making progress by pre-painting all door, window and frontage frames but painting the interiors would have been an even greater step forward.

[Heisler]

Its comparable in size to the Sarissa Herioc Small and Small+ buildings and the Knuckleduster/Tri City Laser small building. There are a couple of bigger buildings available from Knuckleduster right now and in general the Knuckleduster buildings are just larger which is a plus. Bigger structures need to be scratchbuilt for the most part which is why I would rather build the smaller ones from kits, just depends on where you want to invest your time. Finishing the interiors before assembly means you do have to be extra careful with your glue. At the moment I'm not as concerned with the interiors as the exteriors. I can always come back and finish off the inside. Its nice having at least a basic interior inside the DMH buildings. I prefer to do all my finish work after assembly just because I'm not sure what I want the outside to look like at that point, at least colorwise. And yes the DMH buildings are pre-painted although I will be priming the outside of them white anyway to apply my own weathering process. I would actually prefer that they come unpainted.

Western buildings, for the most part, are smaller than we expect them to be. There are large buildings just not very many However, we tend to give them the wrong proportions. The style during post of the old west/wild west period was a frontage equal to 1/3 of the length. So our buildings should be much deeper, the Tri City Laser buildings get close to this proportion as do the Sarissa Medium, Medium + and Large buildings. If we look at the DMH buildings they could be a whole "section" longer/deeper.

We also have perceptions, mostly from Hollywood, on what should be inside our buildings. For instance in most western saloons you would stand at the bar, there were no bar stools and the only tables (and not many of those) would be for gambling and typically not poker. Poker was certainly played but Faro and other smaller games were typically more popular and the saloon would get a cut of the winnings. General merchandise stores typically didn't have aisles where you would shop. There would be a counter at the front and the owner would pull your order for you. So really we do just have big box interiors, finish up the walls nice and you don't need much more than that.

[Elbows]

I just ordered up a batch of six DMH buildings to "finish" the basis for Drake's Branch.  I'll probably sell off two or three (the price was close to equal when I calculated in free shipping and the bulk discount...so I ordered more than I needed).  I'll recoup some costs.

I'll be using a few duplicate buildings this time so I'll be painting some exteriors and swapping roofs/signage etc.  It should be quite easy with the single story buildings to keep them mixed up.  I'll actually be putting a new roof on the new Main Street 3 building as well.

I'm hoping to have a couple more together before a convention coming up in just shy of three weeks.  Adding some more tree bases,painted a few more civilians, may knock out some horses...

[Heisler]

I realized that yesterday when I was measuring the building, all the roofs are interchangeable so you can really change things up a bit and get a little more variety out the basic six kits. I imagine the roof from the Sheriff's office can be swapped out as well.

[Elbows]

Yep.  That's what I'll be doing (especially if you're going to re-paint them all).  The roofs match, obviously the interior wall can be placed in either direction (and you have two variants).  The single story buildings sides and rear are also swappable.  The signage all mounts similarly and should be interchangeable.  Even the two story stuff all mounts to the same size/shape.  The only thing you'd need to do is paint to match stuff.