Vietnamese Riverside Hut

Once you have a river running across your gaming board, it is impossible not to feel compelled to produce suitable riverside huts and dwellings to populate the banks. River scenes in almost all books that I have seen depict lots of dwellings that are semi-hidden by jungle foliage but which face on to the river itself. As the main means of transport, the river is much like a highway and people built their dwellings close by in order to use the river.

This particular dwelling is purely imaginative and not based on any particular picture that I have seen. Nonetheless, there are clear characteristics that I was trying to achieve in order to give it both the look and feel of Vietnam as I imagine it. The main body of the house actually extends across the river-bank and is anchored into the river bed itself. The model is free-standing and although it could be used and placed in any type of terrain, it was designed with the river in mind.

Before I started any actual modelling, I decided upon the dimensions of the building and made a scale drawing. Ostensibly it was to be used with my 10mm collection but I also wanted it to not look out of place when using 15mm figures. A main consideration was that my 10mm figure-stands should be able to be fitted inside the structure.

Materials

The materials that I used for this model are as follows:

• 2mm Picture Framing Card
• Loofah
• PVA glue
• Contact Adhesive
• 3mm Wooden Dowel
• Balsa sheet

Measurements

The following measurements were used:

Plan of Base, Wall ends and walls - all measurements in cms (not to scale)

Construction

The method of construction is outlined and illustrated below.

The hut is built on a raised platform. The legs of the platform are 1cm in length and cut from 3mm wooden dowel. They were glued into place as in the picture below. Because I wanted part of the platform to stand in the water, a sufficient gap was left between the legs of the two sections to permit this - in effect, the river-bank runs under the hut and through the gap that is left (see 'The Finished Article' picture below)

Base (upside down) with legs attached

The main structure was built from picture-mounting card. Each piece was individually cut to size and glued into place on the base using PVA.

Main Structures attached to base

To make the window frames, I cut sections from balsa and glued these in place. Each window consists of four individual sections. I glued these in place quite haphazardly without making any attempt to measure width or height. For doors I simply cut oblongs of card and glued them in place.

Windows and doors fitted

The roof of the building is constructed separately and is completely removable so that troop-stands can be placed inside the building. Constructing the two roof sections was probably the most challenging part of the project since it involved angles and I did not have a clue how to work these out - in the end, I cut the smaller roof to shape by eye without any of the maths. The roof sections were cut from card and they should be longer and wider than the building itself in order to have an overhang. Using a craft-knife I cut a shallow score-mark down the middle of the roof card and folded it back on itself to get the roof ridge-line. I made the main roof first and then measured were the other roof-piece would connect and cut out a suitable slot.

Main Roof section in place

On completion of the secondary roof, there was a big gap where the two met! To cover this, I filled the space with copious quantities of PVA!

Secondary Roof fully fitted (and filled!)

The construction phase was now complete and had taken me about an hour. Having now built the 'proto-type', I could probably build this hut in a quarter of that time. Now it was simply a question of painting the completed model.

The Completed Model

The riverside hootch in its natural setting