A Miller's Tale

I have divided all the tasks I need to do towards the Cravant game into two categories - essential and desirable. In the essential list are the extra figures, river boards, etc; all of which have an impact on putting on a representation of the battle. The desirables are mainly peripheral terrain pieces and some vignettes, which if they're not done won't seriously impact the demo game - they're just nice to do. And therein lies my dilemma, it's the desirables that are more interesting and appealing - and are currently absorbing much of my time (...at the risk of me missing doing all the essentials!).

One of these is a watermill, to place along my new river sections - just to one end, with no effect on the game, but purely for some visual appeal. This is where I've got to with the mill so far.

The mill house is a straightforward paint job on one of the finely detailed Hudson and Allen medieval buildings.  I chose this one as it's a little more substantial than most of the others and it's a nice mix of stone and timber frame (although the wooden doorway has a bit of an odd, non-medieval look about it). This is mostly careful drybrushing, as I've done with other H&A castings.

I spent some time searching for an appropriate wheel to use as the basis for the waterwheel, as I don't have the skills (nor time) to build one from scratch. I finally found plastic cartwheels from 'Hobbys' - made to go with their building plans for horsedrawn carts made from wood in 1/12 scale (or the like). They are a tad smaller than I really wanted to use, but they do have nice slim spokes. I glued two together and removed a narrow slice of the wheel to represent the part that's under the waterline.  I added paddles from thin plasticard; chamfering the edges and adding some wood grain texturing by scratching with a wire brush. I'm happy with the final pre-painted wheel.

The pillars that sit in the river, for the axle to rotate on are based on some photos I found on the web and medieval illustrated chronicles of mills (an example shown below). It's not clear to me if the axle sat on top of the pillar or inserted into it - so I've gone for the latter option. The wooden pillars are balsa, cut into sections that represent additions made over time to brace and strengthen the wheel. The wooden boardwalk on the mill side are based on metal jousting barriers made by Steve Barber Models, turned upside down with balsa added on top.

All of these have to be painted as aged wood, as the next stage. The river sections remain as work in progress too.