On 5th Feb 2018 I said that I was thinking about making a church, it's taken little longer than I thought but I've actually started on the build now, so rather than start a new thread I decided to add it to my old but still existing thread I hope no one minds the Threadmancy.
A few days ago I was in East Anglia and visited West Stow which is a Saxon site that has been excavated but more importantly they have been conducting archaeological experiments, re-building Saxon houses and seeing what techniques worked and what didn't. This has been going on for about 25 years and they have had some successes and some failures, i.e. the buildings fell down because they were unstable.
Anyway this fired me up to re-start work on my Viking Village called surprisingly Vagabondy. I wanted a Saxon church but a wooden one with a thatched roof, they burn so much better than stone ones. The down side is that there is almost no evidence that I could find relating to wooden churches and so I drew inspiration from the few stone ones that still exist.
This is a rough idea of how I wanted it to look, I later decided that the 2 wings could be added later, if at all.
I'm going to be working in Foamboard the same as the rest of the village and so this is the initial set of cut pieces. All carefully measured so that they don't quite fit together.
This is it assembled, and I've gone for the traditional Saxon small triangular topped windows. I've set them high partly because at that time I was still intending doing the 2 wings and also because I wanted a small footprint but with an imposing building and I think they look cool.
One of the reasons for my original thread was to discover how to build cheap but serviceable buildings and pick the brains of anyone who cared to offer advice and to share my triumphs and tragedies. In this case a tragedy, I forgot to push the pins in at an angle to securely hold the walls in place and this one came apart. Note now the excess of glue and the fact that the red and green pins are pushed in forming a dovetail to pull it into place.
The basic shell in place.
I'm going to build this as a timber frame Church with mainly daube and wattle infill. I was a little surprised with the reconstructions at West Stow as only one building was daube and wattle all the rest have timber plank walls, something I've not seen much of at other reconstruction sites I've visited although the big hall at Trelleborg in Denmark is timber planked.
So I might include some timber planking to give a bit of visual interest and I'm thinking that if I build 2 roofs, one thatch and one tile or slate or stone that might extend the time period I can use it, although I'm not sure about the accuracy of that.
Ok the timber framing has started and it's a mix of lollypop sticks and fire lighter spills, unless I forget, these are individually distressed before applying, I use the teeth of a small saw and a sharp knife. If you look carefully you might see a small amount of blood adding to the authenticity of the building.
Ivor is having a look around and also to provide some idea of scale.
Ivor is wondering how he will enter the magnificent edifice and here we have the tears part of the Blood Sweat and Tears. If you remember the original drawing then you will realise that this end of the building should have the main doors. The architect and the builder had a major falling out about now.
At this point I had no idea how I was going to frame the small pointy windows, but I was tired and had had enough. The discovery that I was going to have to pull off some of the timber framing was the final straw.
More work tomorrow.
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April 29, 2024, 08:46:52 AM
January 07, 2010, 08:42:50 PM