Building Of The Week Sarissa Precision Old West Store

Well 7 days without a post, sorry about that but I have been so busy at work on a computer that I was just not able to get it together to sit in front of another computer. Fortunately I have still had some time for hobby related activities but less so than normal. I have still managed good progress into painting Hougoumont with both sets of buildings having the walls and roofs worked on but have now put them to one side to allow me to work on the Prussians which are half way through being cleaned up.

Last night I started work on one of the buildings bought last weekend, this is Sarissa Precision D001 Old West 28mm (£8) and is the smallest building they do for Western games. I bought 3 different versions though they all have the same basic shape but the doors and windows are different. They also do a small Plus version that has a veranda I will possibly buy one or two of these next time.

And more I am sure there will be, as they are a good value do it yourself alternative to the excellent 4Ground buildings, though of course much simpler in their offering. As these are for use with the kids (me and Lee will hijack them every now and again) I wanted to inject a little humour into the buildings so here we have somewhere you can get a replacement gun should you find yours keeps missing the target.

The building has one small window on one side which can be placed on either side of the building. I washed the walls with watered down Mahogany (70.846) from Vallejo which gave the desired weathered look to the sides. My thinking was that the owner would try and keep the front of the building in better condition than the sides or rear.

My only bugbear of the whole model is the back door. It's actually wider than the two doors at the front added together. Not a deal breaker but an unnecessary gaff in my opinion. Of course I made it worse by painting it bright colours, oh well.

I painted up the back of the sign and roof a fairly none de-script grey, I think I may add a thin wash to it but in real life it's not got the bright look it seems to have here.

Nice to see the floorboards on the inside, again I may do some more work on these with a wash of ink that will bring out the wood a little better. I gave the inside four coats of Foundation White as I wanted it to not look too dark when the roof was on. Seems to have worked so worth the extra time taken.

Have you spotted what's missing? yes it's the back door on the inside, just like the missing front doors. It's one of those things that I think would be worse to try and paint in rather than leave blank. If I can pick up some door blanks I will do so and add them to the rear of the buildings and then I would consider painting in the doors.

Don't take the whole door issue to much to heart, when a building is just £8 you can accept such minor issues though at least the door width could be easily corrected. Sarissa Precision is based quite local to where I live so it's nice to see them doing so well. Their full range is large, even the Western has a lot of variants that would make a large town if you so wished, though actual houses seem not to be over optioned to say the least.

So can anyone come up with a few names for some of these buildings, I am thinking Custer's General Stores, Lynn Seed, Dry Goods but can you give me any better?

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