Medieval Gatehouse–Part II

Having the basic gatehouse worked pretty well for the encounter around which it was based, but the “advanced” version looked too cool to ignore. Considering the amount of work that was involved, I probably should have ignored it…
First off was build a top extension to place on top of the basic gatehouse.

After the basic building extension was done, it was time to add the “optional” crenellations. Once build, two tabs at the bottom of the crenellations slides into two slots at the top of the building.

The end result actually looked really cool, and made it feel even more like a classic castle.

Once mounted to the top of the basic gatehouse, it doubled the height and made it look like an even more imposing structure.

The next part is where it started to get tricky. Printing chain and portcullis designs on transparency paper yielded see-through and fairly sturdy chains and portcullis. Slotting the portcullis bars in a gate from and running the chains through the gate slots resulted in the following.

Of course, we needed something to hook the chains to, and so the next step was building a working winch. This actually involved building a rotating center core suspended in a frame and held in place with straightened paperclip!

Fastening the winches in place beside the gates and at the top meant and attaching the “chains” to them meant you can actually winch up the gate and portcullis! The process is a bit slow and finicky, but being able to do that in a paper model is impressive nonetheless.

The end result is a rather stylin’ gatehouse that is a great centerpiece for any 25mm-28mm miniatures battle!

Now to build some walls to go along with it…