BASIC CONSTRUCTION
Trace around the leg template, onto the 3mm balsa wood, four times. Using your craft knife, carefully cut out the legs (taking care as modelling and craft knives are very sharp!). For the thin slot under the jaw on the horse’s head, use your pin vice with a 1mm drill bit and drill a few holes along the jawline. Then cut out the gap one bit at the time: this prevents the wood splitting. To finish off, use your sandpaper to smooth out the curves on the legs.

Trace around the floor template onto your 5mm balsa wood, and cut out the floor using your craft knife. Take a sharp pencil and ruler and draw lines to represent planking on the floor. For a more realistic effect, cut the ends of the planks to different lengths.

Slot the leg panels onto each corner of the floor panel and use a ruler to line up the legs across the corners. When you’re happy with the position, glue them in place with PVA woodwork glue. Leave these to dry while you can start on the wall sections.

Trace the wall panel template onto the 3mm balsa wood, nine times. When cutting it out, be careful not to split the balsa wood. Trace the wall support posts out onto the 3mm balsa wood. The strips for the sides are wider than the ones for the front and rear, so be careful not to mix them up. Rule lines onto the walls to look like planks.

Make up the side panels by gluing a wall section on either side of one of the wider support beams.

The front panel was made in the same way, using three wall panels and two wall support beams. The rear wall uses the remaining two. To add extra strength to the panels, glue 5mm wide strips of 3mm balsa approximately 4mm in from the base of the panels. Starting with the side panels, slot the panels between the leg supports and glue with PVA woodwork glue. Next glue the rear wall in place and finally the front wall.

THE ROOF
To start making the roof trace both roof sections onto the thin card twice. Cut these out with your craft knife and use them as a template for cutting out the fur. Make sure that the lay of the fur is aimed down towards the bottom edge of the roof.

Tape the panels together to give you your basic roof shape, and test fit on your tower. As you may need to adjust the cut-outs in the corners. When you’re happy with the fit, glue the fur in place on the roof with PVA woodwork glue and allow to dry thoroughly.

Mix up one part of PVA woodwork glue with one part water. Then, taking an old toothbrush, apply the mixture generously to the fur. Once thoroughly saturated, brush down on the fur to reduce the volume and create the thatch effect.

Let the glue/water mixture thoroughly dry, then trim away any excess fur from the corners. Test fit it to the model and then trim off more if you need to, to get as snug a fit as possible.

BASING
Cut out the base for your watchtower from the thick card and glue the tower down with PVA woodwork glue. Take a plastic ladder from The Two Towers Uruk-hai plastic sprue and cut off the blades on the ends with a pair of clippers. Then glue it in place.

Using ready-mixed filler, cover the bottom of each leg of the tower for extra sturdiness. When the filler has dried, paint the filler with PVA woodwork glue and stick sand and gravel to it to give the appearance of rough earth. Drybrush the base using Bestial Brown and Bleached Bone, then apply flock to finish.

PAINTING THE MODEL
Undercoat the building with Chaos Black. Drybrush the woodwork with a mix of Chaos Black, Scorched Brown and Codex Grey. Finish off with Bleached Bone.

Paint the thatch using the same mix for the basecoat as for the woodwork. Add Snakebite Leather to this mix and heavily drybrush the thatch. For the consecutive highlights add Vomit Brown and Bleached Bone to the mix.

The Rohan Watchtower is a fairly simple model to make that will bring a lot of character to your The Lord of The Rings games. Using the basis of this building, you can create all kinds of Rohan buildings, and eventually, if you want, you can make your own Rohan village.

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Building A Rohan House

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