Review - Battle Flag - 28mm Western Buildings - The Saloon

Tonight I took the General Store that I built last night and tried out my razor saw on it. I use the razor saw on plastic and wood pieces to create a deeper grain pattern and to roughen up smooth surfaces. Well it doesn't do much on MDF except create some fuzz. I'm may have the distressing step except that my paint work on this kind of depends on it. I tried just scoring the boards with the x-acto knife and I got more of a pattern but still managed to generate a bunch of fuzz. I'll have to mull over this technique. Without doing something the walls are just so smooth to represent weathered boards. This will probably only bother me.

Tonight I cracked open the Saloon. I picked this one because the assembly was basically the same as the General Store (its uses the same directions) and because I was able to avoid making the same mistakes I made on the General Store. This second building went together much easier, its a simpler design so there is not a lot of fussy around with the detail on the facade. Again an excellent little kit, so my opinion on the Battle Flag line continues to be a very good value for the money and I recommend them if you are building a western town, Still waiting for the Sarissa Precision order to arrive. I ordered a livery stable from them that I'm really looking forward to adding to the town of Calamity.

This building came on the frames, I had already punched some stuff out because I needed the frame to fix a mistake I made on the General store. Like most lasercut kits this stuff practically falls off the frames. There are little arrows etch in the scrap portion of the frame showing you were the attachment points to the frame are. I found that quite useful on the more delicate parts as I know exactly where to apply pressure. Nice feature!

Back to the roof. This time I made sure I had the end caps on the correct ends. The flat no detail piece on the end marked front because that sits behind the false front and the detailed end piece on the back. I was a little less clamp happy this time around.

Well that is until I got to building the front, then the clamps were back in force.

Here I'm following the directions and attaching the boardwalk to the front. From an ease of build perspective I think I would leave the boardwalk off until I assemble the whole building. Putting the four walls together without the extension of the boardwalk is a lot easier.

A side wall and the rear wall get their window frames and door frame.

A page from the instructions showing the window/door page as well as laying out the foundation for the boardwalk. On the boardwalk be sure you dry fit the pieces and make sure have them facing the right way. Detail needs to be facing out on the boardwalk and there must be room for two steps on the back of the building which is also notched to accept the backwall. You will be unhappy if you get this wrong and MDF is extremely difficult to pry apart after you have applied glue. You definitely need to get this right the first time. Fortunately I managed to pull off that feat again!

Everything is just about ready for the main "box" assembly. The boardwalk foundation pieces are still clamped down. I remembered to remove the clamps before I tried dry fitting the building together.

So a couple steps beyond the dryfitting. Walls assembled and glued together (you can see some glue I missed cleaning up) and the interior floor supports around in the inside edges are in place. These supports require a little attention because they are notched to fit together at the ends. So again pay attention to how you are putting them in place.

The floating floor is in and being weighted down to dry. Apply your glue to the bottom of the floor where it will rest on the supports. The fit inside the building is so tight that any glue on the edges will get scraped off against the walls when you set the floor in place.

Time for the stairs and the hitching posts.

Popping the roof into place to show off the finished structure.

A few scale shots with my posse of cowboys from Black Scorpion. You can tell these are older because they are in pewter and not resin! Again the Black Scorpion minis are a bit tall on their bases. That cowboy is going to lose his hat when he tries to go inside for a drink.

And now on the growing streets of Calimity. The Saloon and the General Store side by side.

I have one more Battle Flag building to go and hopefully I will get to that tonight. After that one is complete I'll start adding a bit of additional detail that will hopefully hide the interlocking sides a bit more and fix the rear gable of the general store so that its not a blank space. After that I can move on to getting them painted and weathered. Definitely pulling the airbrush out for these monsters!