Stoelzel's Structures Barn

I've just finished making a Stoelzel's Structures 28mm scale Barn. This was one of the first models that Carl produced and it was designed with the beginner in mind. However, as is usual with me, I have gone the extra mile on this model to show just what can be done if you put your mind to it.

I begin with a photo showing the front of the Barn and one side. My figure of Vampifan is included to give you some idea of the size of the model. It is 7" (18cm) wide, by 9" (23cm) long and 7" (18cm) tall. That is quite big. Note on the very top of the roof there is a row of tiles slightly darker than the others. When I made the roof there was a small but unsightly gap between the two halves. I covered this up with a strip of thick cartridge paper folded in half and then painted. It is hardly noticeable in my photos but I just wanted to point out that it was there and that it is not part of the set that Carl offers.

Here is Vampifan at the back of the Barn. You will notice that the front and back are identical and the two sides are slightly different. So how do I know which is the front and back? Simple. I keep the front doors open and the back doors closed. All of my doors are hinged and can open and close.

Here is the front of the Barn with all of the doors opened. Note on the upper door there is a grey bar at the top of the opening. That is part of the roof support beams. It is just as well I made the doors open outwards otherwise that would be a design flaw. Although if you took the roof off, it wouldn't matter.

This view shows one side of the Barn. Note the big hole in the wall. I actually cut that out for extra realism. You don't have to but I wanted to. As I said at the start, I like to go the extra mile.

Here is the back of the Barn. When Carl originally produced this model the big front and back doors were missing. This was not a good idea in my opinion. Carl had done a similar thing with his Warehouse model  and when I was making that I asked him to include doors with the model. He very kindly did and because the opening of the Warehouse was the same size as the openings in the Barn he added the same doors to the Barn set. Good move, Carl!

This the other side of the Barn and once again I cut the big hole in the wall. This was much more fiddly to cut than the other wall due to the small openings above and below the two wooden beams.

This photo shows the underside of the roof. Carl suggested printing out the roof tiles twice for the two outer halves of the roof but I printed them out four times to make inner and outer tiles. I also added four of the support beams that came with the set. These help to keep the roof in its distinctive shape.

Here is an overhead view of the interior of the Barn. I want to talk to you about the floor. You should note that the Barn does not come with a floor. I wanted my Barn to have a floor. Sadly, Carl had nothing suitable (or so I thought) and so I used some WWG tiles from their Deadfall Streets of Blood Wilderness tiles. The colour and texture was just what I was looking for. Shortly after I had finished making the Barn I bought and downloaded Carl's Wild West set - Fatal Frontier. In this set there are three options for making barns. One of them has the same footprint as this Barn and does come with a floor tile. Oh, if only I had known beforehand. I could have used that tile instead. Carl, if you're reading this how about adding that tile as an option for the contemporary Barn?

Let's take a closer look at the interior. Normally, for my interior photos I show front, back and side views but for this model I thought it best to shoot diagonally to show the four corners. I'll start by telling you about the ladders, The Barn comes with two ladders, which take up very little space on an A4 sheet of paper. Carl, you might think about adding more than two ladders. For sure, you only need two ladders for this model but I ended up making six because they are so versatile and I can see me using the spare ladders in other model buildings. The way I made them was as follows. First, print them out. Then cut them out, making sure you cut out both halves. You do not want the two halves folding. Next cut out all the black spaces between the rungs. Because you are only cutting paper this is easily done. It is a bit time consuming, especially, if like me, you're making six ladders. Next I cut out two long thin strips of mounting board for the sides of the ladders. My strips were 3mm wide. Glue these to the back of all the ladders you've printed - four separate ladders if you're only making two. Next, cut out lots of thinner strips of mounting board for the rungs. Mine were 2mm wide. Glue these in between the two long strips on the back of the rungs. When dry glue two ladders back to back. This will give you a very sturdy ladder. Finish off by painting the edges.

The Barn comes with a page of six hay-bales and three pages of crates of various sizes. I did not want to include any crates in my barn but I did want lots of hay bales. So I printed out five pages to give me a total of 30 hay bales. I used two pieces of foam-board stuck back to back and cut to size to reinforce my hay bales. The hay bales were cut out with their tabs removed and glued around the boxes formed by my foam-board. Once the glue had dried I painted the edges. In the corner shown, on the ground is my biggest stack of hay bales. I kind of cheated by using three foam-board boxes that did not have a print out glued to them for the hay bales hidden under this stack. So in actual fact, there are 33 hay bales in this Barn.

The two platforms are 2" (5cm) wide, giving you plenty of room for placing figures on them. Access to them is by the ladders, which you can place anywhere. There is plenty of space between the two platforms for placing figures on the floor.

I wanted to place hay bales all over my Barn - on the floor and on the platform. They add a lot to the ambience of the building.
My final thoughts on this model are that it will indeed be an excellent model for newbies to start on. You do not have to go to the lengths that I went to with my model. You can make the barn with or without the big doors. I would recommend adding them. Whether you want them to open and close is entirely up to you. Also, you can build this model with or without the props (ladders, hay bales or crates). Once I built this model it occurred to me that this would work just as well in a Wild West setting as in a contemporary setting. Indeed, it is such a generic design that it is almost timeless. I have always had a hankering for playing Wild West skirmish games in 28mm scale so I decided to download Carl's Wild West set of model buildings - Final Frontier. There are three barns in this set, including one that is quite similar to this one. They are well worth checking out.