Building the Old West
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About the Project
I attempt to make an Old West town to play Fistful of Lead, Reloaded.
Related Genre: Western
Related Contest: TerrainFest 2023
This Project is Active
The Sheriff’s Office
Next up is the Sheriff’s Office. Made of both wood and brick, and having some interior details, this’ll be a slightly more complicated build. I’ll probably paint some components before assembly.
I’ll probably paint the interior iron bars prior to assembly. I’ll also need to decide on a color scheme for the building interior as there isn’t a lot of detail beyond the cells and some doors and windows.
I have no idea why those photos are rotating the wrong way.
Finishing touches
Had a little bit of Army Painter Desert Yellow so used it to paint the base then gave it a dry brush of Army Painter Skeleton Bone. Since this is a gallows, I decided to add a noose. If you lookup how to tie one you’ll probably get a warning directing you to a suicide prevention site. If you need that help, you should seek it. You are not alone.
With everything thing dry, I glued the stairs to the stage. First Paint
In case anyone cares, here’s the relative size of the various paints I use. Choose wisely. 
Quick brush of just one coat. I’ll let it dry and see if it needs another coat but given it only needs to look good from about 3 feet away, I’m pretty pleased. Hang ‘em high
First up, the gallows. Probably the simplest structure to build and paint I’ll use it to test out a few ideas.
In order to make things easier on myself, I’ll going to prime the MDF while it’s still on the sprue and then build the structures as sub assemblies, then paint the individual subassemblies before getting to the final assembly.
Primed the whole thing before punching out the components. This may require a bit of sanding during the assembly stage. 
I made the stairs and stage separate assemblies to make them easier to paint. I used the gallows base as a jig to get the stage built but didn’t glue it to the base. Once the stage assembly dried I removed it from the base for the next step. 
I covered the base with Elmers glue ( a brand of PVA glue), then fitted the stage, then poured sand over the wet glue. I let it set for a minute then removed the stage. 
The stairs seemed a little more wobbly so I did glue them to the base and once the assembly dried, I added the sand in the same way as with the stage. I was worried that priming the parts before punching them out would make assembly more difficult but that didn’t seem to be the case. For kits with tighter tolerances this may be an issue. But sanding the offending parts should take care of any problems.
Results
I bought some artist acrylics as they are significantly cheaper than hobby paints and the buildings will obviously need more paint than a standard figure.
These basic colors should be more than sufficient to blend into any colors I want. 
I just did a very basic test of the colors to see how’d they react to the test kits. This was only to test if the primer and lacquer would change the appearance much. Fortunately it didn’t.
While to get an even coat without brush marks, I’d recommend two coats, the slightly thinner application over the grey primer does give the surface a more weathered look so I think I’ll go with that.
Experiments
I’ve built a few MDF kits but mostly pre-colored 4Ground kits. So while I have some experience with unpainted MDF kits, it’s still pretty new to me.
I have some old unpainted kits that I’m going to experiment on. One I’ll use spray primer on. The other with get some lacquer.
Brush on lacquer and lacquer thinner to clean the brush. If you’ve never used lacquer, use outdoors are in a very well ventilated area. I’m also trying standard hardware store spray primer, Krylon in this case, as it’s much less expensive than hobby primer. 
A 10mm ruined building from an old project. One coat of Krylon primer. 
A different building with two coats of brushed on lacquer. I let both buildings dry for roughly 24 hours. I’ll next try some paint to see what sort of results I get before starting on my western buildings.
Loquacious Bill
It’s been a few years but I used to do competitive Cowboy Action Shooting under the alias Loquacious Bill. 
I played a lot of Dropzone Commander so my local game store put up this print as a hybrid cowboy and a UCM soldier from the Dropverse. Loquacious Bill is also my Instagram handle and is mostly gaming related.
The Miniatures
The gangs for Dead Man’s Hand have 7 miniatures per gang whereas Reloaded generally only uses five, so this lot will give me four distinct gangs with options. 
