Walls

I need a number of walls for my Jacobite Rebellion set-up. I had previously made some Paper Terrain ones for my Napoleonic set-up, but these were white, from their Mediterranean collection. I had used Paper Terrain North European Houses for most of my Scottish houses and these Paper Terrain sets also came with walls, in a cream stone colour which matched those houses.

I had made a few of them when I took the picture of Prestonpans which is used as the banner at the top of the website, as can be seen enlarged here:

The ones above were the only ones which I originally had and I really needed a lot more, so this post is about how I made them.

The Paper Terrain walls come in sheets with 6 strips of wall per sheet.

The components I used to make my walls are below:

My walls are all in either 6″ or 3″ sections. The one above is a 6″ standard wall. The wall itself has been cut out, scored along the two inner lines on the coping and then folded into its wall shape. I cut out two small end pieces, each 1cm wide then scored down each side so they can wrap around the ends of the wall. The core of the wall is a piece of foamboard, paper on the outside and foam in the middle (normally used for mounting posters, and sold in art shops or hobby shops). The board is 5mm thick which is exactly right for the 15mm scale Paper Terrain walls (all my buildings are 15mm, one scale down from my 1:72 figures). I have cut out a section 20mm high x 6″ long (I do use both imperial and metric measurements as best suits). The base is a piece of cork tiling (bought in a DIY store), 6″ long and 15mm wide with the edges chamfered and the ends trimmed diagonally to 45%.

Trimming the ends of the bases at a 45% angle allows walls to be positioned at 90% to each other.

I chamfer the edges of the cork tile bases of my buildings and walls, so they fit in better with the terrain bases. I do this with a Stanley knife scalpel (they sell these scalpels in packs of three at my local DIY store). I hold the cork tile against the edge of an old kitchen chopping board then run the knife along the cork at a 45% angle.

I keep my newest “best” scalpel for cutting card and plastic figures. When the knife gets old (and a bit blunt) it is relegated to cutting cork or card bases. I engrave the word “OLD” on it with my miniature soldering iron. If my best knife becomes blunt it gets relegated and the old “OLD” gets thrown away.

In building the walls, the first thing I do is stick the wall ends onto the foamboard, using Pritt Stick, which will not stretch the paper (as PVA glue would do) and not melt the foamboard (as a spirit based glue like Bostik or UHU would do).

I then paste Pritt Stick all over the back of the wall image and wrap it around the foamboard, making sure the wall ends are covered. Finally, I glue the completed wall onto the base, using PVA glue.

Some Paper Terrain walls come with small gates.

However, I am not happy with the effect of the wall coping being over the gate, so I cut these gates out.

I then make a wall end with a hinge, made from a staple pushed through two holes in the card.

Here is a wall end with a hinge protruding.

I glue both sides of the door with Bostick, then glue it over the hinge.

Here is a completed small gate section. I coloured the edges of the gate with a brown pencil, so they do not show as white.

Paper Terrain also have large double gates, but these do come as separate gates, not built into the walls.

I cut each gate up into their four separate sections, left, right, front and back, again colouring the edges with a brown pencil.

I glued these gates onto hinges so they could open normally.

I wanted some damaged wall sections, so here are the components I used.

The long strips at the centre bottom are used to cover the sloping damaged section. I scored these along the lines, then made lots of small cuts between those lines and the edges of the strips, so that they could be bent to fit the shape of the damaged section.

Here is a completed damaged section. I have glued a few chunks of cork tiles to represent rubble.

Finally, I paint all of the bases. Here are examples of all the completed different types of my wall sections. I have 12 x 6″ walls, 2 x damaged 6″ walls, 2 x 6″ walls with small single gates, 2 x 6″ walls with large double gates, 4 x 3″ walls, 2 x damaged 3″ walls, 2 x 3″ walls with double gates and 2 x 3″ walls with single gates.

The Paper Terrain North European packs also come with dry stone walls. These were originally 20mm high, but I trimmed them to 15mm high as that looked better for dry stone walls. I used these for the baggage enclosure at Prestonpans and the enclosures at the south west of Culloden which Hawley’s cavalry negotiated in their left flank attack, plus various other Jacobite scenarios.

I have made up a selection of these, improved by adding stone chippings to the top of the walls. These chippings were brushed up from loose tarmac on the drive of a previous house, and I have a coffee jar full of them.

I have 20 x 6″ dry stone walls, 4 x damaged 6″ dry stone walls, 2 x 6″ dry stone walls with gates, 6 x 3″ dry stone walls, 2 x 3″ dry stone walls with gates and 2 x 3″ damaged dry stone walls. The gates are shortened Airfix plastic ones, on gateposts made from matchsticks.

I will make some marshes next, which were a feature of Prestonpans and several other battles in Scotland.