My Flemish farmstead model - Part 1 - The Longhouse (2 of 4)

The chimney

Before tackling the challenging task of covering with bricks the large surfaces of the gable-end wall, I thought it advisable to practice first with the much smaller surfaces of the chimney.

In the 1/32 scale a brick should measure about 7mm (length) x 3.5mm (width) x 2.2mm (height). However, having to cut hundreds of bricks for the chimney and the gable wall, I rounded up their dimensions to 8mm x 4mm x 3mm respectively.

Thus, the visible face of a brick is represented by a 3mm strip of card 8mm-long when laid along its length (a “stretcher”), and 4mm-long when laid along its width (a “header”). A corner brick is represented by a 3mm strip of card bent at 90°,  the long side measuring 8mm and the short side 4mm.

Bricks can be laid following different patterns, the most common being referred to as “English bond”, “Flemish bond”, and “stretcher bond”, or “common bond”. Most of the buildings at the Bokrjik Open Air Museum follow the English bond masonry pattern. However, since the stretcher bond pattern features a much simpler brick layout, I decided to follow that one instead.

In the stretcher bond masonry pattern, all visible bricks in the model are represented by 8mm x 3mm card strips about 0.5mm thick, excepting of course the corner bricks, which I obtained from card strips 3mm high and 13mm long, bent at about 8.5mm – the extra 1mm in length (13mm instead of 12mm) compensating for the bending.

                             

Having sorted out the dimensions of the bricks, I revised those of the chimney, which I had tentatively stipulated in my preliminary sketch, and adjusted them to the size of the bricks, so as to insure that the height and side widths of the chimney were close enough to entire multiples of the bricks’ dimensions (paying due attention to the corners, and providing about 1mm allowance for the gaps between the bricks). 

                             

This done, gluing the bricks in position was a quick, simple task. I then applied several coats of white glue to smoothen the bricks contours, and also to seal the whole thing in preparation for painting.

The roof-ridge tiles

To make the roof-ridge tiles, I proceeded as follows. 

First, I glued a piece of thick fabric string along the ridge, making sure that the ridge’s humpback contour was maintained. 

Next, I cut a long, narrow strip of craft paper and glued it on the string, carefully sealing the gaps between the paper and the plush thatch with diluted papier-mâché representing the off-white mortar spread underneath the ridge tiles.  

Finally, I glued narrow strips of card at regular intervals, to represent the raised profile where each tile overlaps with the next one.

Painting the roof

I painted the thatched roof with successive light coats of diluted acrylic paint, using a mix of raw umber and lime-green, until I obtained the right shade of color.

I really enjoyed painting the bricks and ridge tiles. I used a mix of red ocher and mauve red acrylic paints, applying very thin washes so as to prevent the paint from depositing too uniformly, and  adding small amounts of yellow ocher and raw umber here and there for brick color variation. Painting the thin, off-white mortar lines between the chimney bricks was a bit tedious, but really brought the whole thing to life. And as a final touch, I gave the chimney and ridge tiles a coat of semi-gloss varnish for a realistic, glazing effect.

In the event, I found the end result so appealing that really I could not wait starting work on the gable wall!

(to be continued)