Blog NIGHTBRINGER's Terrain & Warhammer Woodworking Projects

Agreed, he has created so much great content. There is so much to learn. My wife and I love his channel.

 

Sorry for the delay, but better late than never I suppose .

Tutorial: How to make a thatched roof:

Step# 1: Obtain some fake fur!

• To begin you need to find a suitable piece of synthetic fur. I would recommend dark brown fur, because it leaves a natural looking shade in the recessed areas of the thatched roof once you have finished dry brushing it.
• The length of the strands of the fur I used were approximately 1 cm. Any length that is close to about 1 cm should work nicely. You could probably go a little longer, but I wouldn't go much shorter.

Step# 2: Cut the fur to match the shape of your roof.

• It is advisable to use a single piece of fur to cover both slopes/sides of the roof. The rationale for using a single piece (as opposed to one for each side of the roof) is to avoid an awkward looking seam between the two adjoining sections.
• Using a white seamstress/tailor/sewing pencil on the opposite (non-fur side) of your fabric should allow you to draw out your roof pattern. Make a few quick measurements, draw on your guidelines using a ruler and break out the scissors.
• After you have cut it to shape, make sure you match it up to your roof to make sure you have an exact fit.

Step #3: Glue the fur onto the roof

• After you have cut out and double checked the size of the fur against your roof, it is time to adhere it to your roof.
• The trick is to find the right glue that will effectively adhere to both of the materials you are working with (the fur and whatever material you have constructed your roof from). The last thing you want is to use a glue that doesn't give you a strong bond. PVA (white glue) is not a good choice because it doesn't bond very well to fabric.
• For my project I used a glue gun because it provides a very strong bond between fabric and wood. Since the roof was relatively large, I glued the fabric/fur down in small sections, otherwise the glue would cool down and solidify before I could get the fur in place. When the glue had cooled down on the section I was working on, I would move on to the next section.
• Be extra vigilant to ensure that you glue the fur on accurately, it's better to go nice and slow than to rush forward and end up with a misalignment.
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Step#4: Use PVA glue to create the thatch effect

• Make sure that the glue from step #3 has fully dried/cured/cooled before proceeding with this step!
• Before you apply any glue, it is helpful to brush or push the fur with your hands so that the strands are facing the right direction on both sides of the roof... the tips of the strands should be facing downward (towards what would be the eavesdrop on a real house). Depending on how you aligned your fur, it should do this naturally on one side of the roof, while the other side may need a little persuasion. Pay extra attention to the very peak of your roof, where the two slopes meet.
• The next step is to saturate the fur in PVA glue. I read somewhere that you should dilute the PVA glue with a little water but I would advise against this. I ran a test piece with watered down PVA and the results were less than impressive. Use straight PVA as it will help you style the fur more easily. It may be a bit messy, but I found that the best way to do this is to use your hands (actually I only used one hand, so that the other clean hand could be used to manipulate the house and glue bottle). You'll have to use a fair bit of glue to saturate the fur but it is best to add it little at a time to avoid over saturating it. The best real life example I can think of is styling your hair using hair gel. That is pretty much what we are doing here, only instead of hair we have synthetic fur and instead of hair gel we are using PVA glue. Make sure you work the glue into the fur with your fingers.
• Immediately after saturating the fur with glue, use a small hair brush to brush the fur into place. For best results, make sure you don't end up with uniform running parallel lines. Move the brush around in such a way that it gives you a more natural (random) look.
• Once you a pleased with the results, proceed to wash the hair brush free of any glue.
• Let the glue dry. Since you've used a lot of glue, this may take a while. I left mine to dry for about a day, even though you could probably get away with less (better safe than sorry ).

Step #5: Paint!

• Choose a series of paints ranging from dark brown to a light straw colour. Thatch can range in colour, so it will be up to you to determine if you want to leave it a bit on the darker side (like I did) or go further and really lighten it up. For reference, I used the following paints:
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• Starting with the darkest paint and working towards the lightest, apply a series of "drybrushes". When you start with the darkest colour you should still have a significant amount of paint on your brush (a quasi dry brush if you will), but never to the point where you risk the paint seeping into the recesses of your thatch. As you work your way through to the lighter colours you should have less and less paint on your brush as you apply a genuine dry brush.
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Expert Tips (from a person who has only done this once and is in no way an expert )

Practice makes perfect!

• It's a good idea to create a test piece on a scrap piece of material before you proceed to work on your actual project. You'll end up getting better feel for how much glue you should add and how you should brush it to get a natural looking result. It also gives you an opportunity to mess around with the paints to see what colour you prefer.
• Below is the test piece I used for my project. In my opinion the finish on my actual terrain piece is far superior because I was able to apply the things I learned from my practice session to refine my techniques.
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If in doubt... test it out (but not on your actual project)!

• On the test piece I created (pictured above), I used PVA glue to affix the fur/fabric to the wood. Upon examination, I was not satisfied with the bond strength between the two surfaces. Not wanting to go out to by new glue, I collected all the different types of glue I had laying around. I created a quick experiment to see which glue created the best wood-fabric bond:
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• From the results I was able to determine that PVA glue provided the weakest bond, "No More Nails" was okay, super glue was effective and the glue gun provided the strongest bond.
• Alternatively, if you don't feel like going through the trouble of this step, you can probably find a rough guide on google.

Don't use your wife's/girlfriend's hairbrush for step #4!

• The glue should wash out just fine (if you wash it immediately after you finished with the brushing), but it just ain't worth the risk. I bought a cheap brush at the dollar store and it served me well. If you insist on using your wife's/girlfriend's brush... make sure you ask her first (I'd still rather buy my own though!).

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Feedback is always appreciated so that I can do a better job on any future tutorials. What did you like/dislike? Was it not detailed enough or too wordy? etc.

 

Great! It only seemed long but after starting it was no boring at all!! Thanks!

 

Thanks. I'm glad you found it interesting.

So perhaps for next time I'll try to shorten it up a bit. I may have added in bit too much detail.

I hope somebody will put it to good use and make a thatch roof for their own terrain project.

 

I haven't finished the house yet, but I've started something new. It's not really a serious piece, more a a test sample for basing my house and a way to use up some old wood cut outs I had lying around (for probably a decade)...

 

Nice!!

 

A little more progress; I used some filler to create a textured base. This technique is actually my main reason for creating this terrain piece. I want to see how the filler works so that I can decide if I want to use it on the base for the house. It might be difficult to see in the picture, but here goes...

 

Thanks Crowsfoot, I'm glad you liked it!

As for the thatched village... perhaps one day, but there are so many other wonderful projects to be made. However, I'm hoping that someone will make use of the tutorial and make some thatched roofed buildings for their tabletop. So maybe a collective village from the Lustria community?

 

Excellent! I look forward to seeing it! (and no doubt you'll have your house finished before mine )

 

A bit more progress... not much, but a bit...

 

Looks great and looking forward to seeing how that filler base turns out!!

 

Thank you. I'm curious too. Hopefully I can post an update soon!

 

I've applied the base coat (actually several base coats needed to be applied to attain decent coverage)....

 

Added a couple of more layers of paint. The texture of the base is showing through now. Still a couple of layers to go on the rocks and then it is on to the Orc symbol followed by the remaining nitty gritty small details.

 

Time for another quick update. I've finished painting the idol itself...




Now all that is left is to finish the base. I'm planning on having a bunch of weapons laid around the idol to represent sacrifices that the greenskins have made to their gods. Then a little bit of greenery and the piece is finished. I'm currently in the process of painting the weapons.

 

For the horde....wrong reffernce right ?