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Thatched Native Huts |
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Thatched Native Huts |
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As I launch myself whole-hog into Darkest Africa (after resisting for years and then learning that I'm just not that strong), one of the first things I needed was a native village. I had a variety of native huts collected over the years for different purposes. Some were simple resin huts, others were birdhouses made of bark with the lower portion sawed away or small baskets turned upside down. None of them had that distinctive, heart of Africa look that I wanted.
So I pulled down my Eyewitness Books: AFRICA (Yvonne Avo; Alfred A. Knopf, NY/Dorling Kindersley, London, 1995) and started looking for architecture. (If you've never looked at this line of books, you should. They cover a huge range of cultures and historical periods–Middle Ages, China, Rome, and so on–plus lots of specific topics–ships, buildings, castles, soldiers. Fabulous photographs and illustrations. As usual, the best research material for modeling is found in the children's section.)
In the book I found a
two-page spread showing a model of a house from Botswana and its construction techniques. Not only were these cool-looking huts, but Michael's craft stores sell paper birdhouses for 50 cents that are perfect for using as the basic shape.
The job was broken down this way:
The strings pull out with a bit of a tug. The doors are easy to cut out with a hobby knife. Be sure to clean up the edges so no tattered, jagged bits of paper are visible.
I cut the round bases from an empty box of microwave popcorn. Any similar card would do: cereal box, cake mix box. Glue them on with white glue. Put glue only around the outside edge of the house's base, for two reasons. First, the bottoms of the houses are slightly concave and you don't want the cardboard bases to become concave, too, which they might if you cover them with glue and then press them in the middle. Second, the glue trapped in the center would take a loooong time to dry, and you don't need it anyway.
I glued the bases on with the blank side down and the printed side up. That might seem backward, but the upper side is going to be covered with paint and flock anyway. This way, I can write identification notes on the bases if I want to, and the houses won't have microwave popcorn instructions on their bottoms.
The painting is straightforward. In Botswana, the walls are made of clay-covered bricks and the upper half is whitewashed. I did it the other way round, painting the whole wall white and then repainting the lower half terra cotta (approximately half–I varied the heights to make the collection more interesting). I didn't paint the roofs at all.
This stage went very quickly. (At the upper right corner of the houses, notice one that's finished. It was my prototype. On a project like this it's a good idea to work completely through one piece before starting mass production. That way you get a better idea of the process and can resolve problems with the procedure and sequence up front.)Although the house from the book has no decoration, I wanted these to have some distinctive ornamentation. I used a normal set of kids' fine-tipped watercolor markers to draw the symbols on the walls. Checkerboards, circles, half-circles, triangles, and waves were the basic patterns. I didn't use many colors. The best result came from the black marker–as it soaked into the paint and cardboard, it faded to a soft, Prussian blue-gray that was much more attractive than black would have been. Brown and green also gave good results.
One thing I discovered after all the painting was done was that I should have painted the insides somehow. I thought that the interiors would be so dark they wouldn't show up, but I was wrong. The cardboard is light enough that it does show up through the doors. It would have been good to slop some very thinned-out black or terra cotta paint through the doors before doing the other painting. I realized this only after all the other painting was done, however, and decided at that point that I'd probably only mess up the outside paint if I tried to darken the floors. It's a minor thing, but if you're a perfectionist, keep it in mind.
Next came the thatching. This was by far the biggest part of the job.
The thatching is done with natural jute twine and white glue. The glue needs to be thinned about 50/50 with water. You'll go through a lot of this. I like to use an old glue bottle (Elmer's works great, with its orange twist cap). The bottle should be about one-third filled with glue. Add an equal amount of water. Close the cap and shake it up until it's thoroughly mixed. Now you can squeeze out however much you need at a time.
Cut the twine into approximately 35-40mm lengths. You'll need 16 to 20 pieces to do the lower layer of thatching. The middle layer takes 12 to 18 pieces about 30mm long, and the top knot uses six. To speed up the process of cutting the twine into sections, I marked out the desired length on the paper covering my work table. Then I doubled up a length of twine so I could cut two pieces at once. There's no reason you couldn't cut three or four, for that matter. Stretch out the twine along your marks, grip it so your thumb marks the cutting point, and snip.
Here's the method that works best for me. I'm sure there are others; experiment until you find a system you like.
Take two or three lengths of twine and pinch them between your thumb and forefinger. Then use a comb (just a regular, old-fashioned pocket comb such as men used to carry at all times is perfect) to
comb out the twine into fine, individual strands. Turn the twine around so you're pinching the combed-out ends and comb the other ends. Use a scissors to trim away all the loose, scraggly fibers.With a cheap, flat-tipped paint brush that's, say, a half-inch wide, paint some glue onto the roof. With the end of the fibers still held between your thumb and forefinger, shape them into a fan.
Press the fibers onto the glue so that the bottom edges extend about a quarter-inch beyond the bottom edge of the roof. Then get a good brush-load of glue and slobber it all over the fibers. You want to soak them thoroughly. When the bottom half is soaked, remove your thumb and glue the top half, being careful not to shift their position. I found that it helped to pick up the house and tip it so the upper ends of the fibers were below the already glued portion; that way, you can brush from the middle toward the end and still be brushing downhill. Again, you want to really soak the fibers.Now repeat that process until you've thatched one complete circuit around the roof. Let each new batch of fibers slightly overlap the last one, because they naturally get thinner toward the outside. Once a bunch of fibers is plastered down, you can slide them around with a toothpick or the handle of your paintbrush to reshape the fan and keep the fibers parallel and the edges pointing at the peak of the roof.
The first time you do it, expect this to take quite a while, probably 30 minutes at least, and that's just to do one layer. As you get better at it, you can cut that time in half.
Do the bottom layers on all your huts at the same time. The wet glue takes quite a while to dry, and it's best to let one layer dry completely before starting on the next one; there is less chance of inadvertently causing something to shift or peel away from the roof. Once the glue dries, however, the fibers become quite stiff and the thatching is very sturdy.
Also wait until the glue is completely dry before trimming the bottom edge of the fibers. Use scissors to clean up the edge. If the glue isn't dry, you're certain to pull fibers out of position.
You can make the thatching as thick as you want. The thicker you make it, the longer it will take to finish the roof, but the better it will probably look. Natural jute twine is almost exactly the same color as the underlying paper of the birdhouse, so if you happen to leave a small bare patch here or there, no one is likely to notice.
After the first layer is dry, you can start the second layer. This is done exactly the same as the first, except you want the bottom edges of the fibers to slightly overlap the top edge of the first layer. You'll also need to gather the top of the fan into a tighter bundle because it will be very close to the peak of the roof. The second layer covers a slightly smaller circumference than the first, so it goes a bit faster, too.
For a simple peak, you could finish the house with strips of fiber laid right across the peak and glued down. I decided to do something a little different and bundle the fibers at the top, just because I like that look.
For this, cut six lengths of twine and comb them out all together, then trim the ends with scissors. Tie a piece of kite string around one end so
the fibers look like the bristles of a tiny broom (in fact, if you stick in a toothpick for a handle, you'd have a tiny broom to lean against the wall of a settler's cabin). To place this on the roof, stick the point of a pencil up the middle of the fibers from the open end and swirl it around. This fans out the fibers so they will sit atop the roof peak. Position the splayed-out bundle atop the roof and hold it in place while you plaster down the fibers with glue. After the glue is dry you can snip or slide the kite string off the top. I don't glue the bundled fibers that stick up above the roof because I think they look better au naturale, but glue them if you want the extra durability.The posts were bamboo skewers stained with Minwax wood stain and then wiped with a paper towel (watch out for splinters!). The bamboo absorbs the stain very unevenly, quickly giving the wood a weathered look.
The roofs of the birdhouses are not symmetrical or even, and the houses even vary significantly in height. That means each post needs to be measured and cut for a specific position. This custom fitting doesn't need to be super precise, but it's surprising how much variance there is between birdhouses. Bevel the top cut so that it sits flush, or nearly so, against the underside of the roof. Glue in place with white glue.
Flock the bases and the houses are done.
Set up in a little village, they look like this. The baskets are plastic and wooden beads. The beehive-shaped granaries are wooden beehives from the craft store. Add some stockades, animals, and firepits, and the village is complete.More could be done. The roofs could be given a darker wash and then dry brushed for a more dramatic appearance. I didn't build the clay dike around the houses' bases, but it could be done this way. First, cut a strip of thin card about one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch wide and long enough to wrap nearly around the house's base, outside the posts. Glue it in place, wrapping the two ends around the posts that flank the door. Then use drywall spackle to fill the triangular space formed by the card strip and the outer edge of the base that extends beyond the card strip, all the way around the house. When the spackle is dry, paint it terra cotta and dry brush with a lighter, dirt color.
This thatching technique could be used just as well to make domed Zulu houses (glue the thatching onto a styrofoam hemisphere, available at most craft and fabric stores), the reed houses of the dinkas, Zimbabwean timber and daub houses, or thatched Elizabethan cottages.
It's impossible to calculate the cost precisely, but I'm sure it's less than $1 per house in materials. Most of that is 50 cents for the basic birdhouse. The real investment is the time required. This is not a fast process. From beginning to end, each house probably took 60 to 80 minutes once I was up to speed. Compare that to 15 minutes spent painting the resin house. There's nothing wrong with the resin house, but I like my thatched houses a lot better.
