"Sarissa Japanese Watermill Review" Topic

"Once upon a time I grabbed one of Sarissa's watermill kits when it was on sale. This kit is designed in a similar style to their rice storehouses, with a matching roof style. As a communal building it's built partly from stone and obviously is a bit fancier-looking. It'll fit in nicely with the rest of my Japanese village.

The basic building is pretty simple, but you'll want to have a think about the staircase, waterwheel, etc before assembling everything. Leave the stairs off so you've got access to paint the stonework behind them, and while the waterwheel can be assembled you'll want to do the same to paint the wall behind it. The waterwheel itself is actually pretty fiddly to assemble, I had to do a bit of cutting and filing to get mine to go together. It's also a bit of a dog to paint due to all the angles. Don't do what I did, instead paint it on the sprue and then touch up once it's assembled.

The kit comes with a base, but frankly this is as much use as on a bull. The end section where the waterwheel attaches is very flimsy, and I bent mine pretty promptly. Apart from that, you're going to want to connect this waterwheel to your existing stream or river terrain, and to my mind by far the easiest way to do this is make a custom base which matches and connects to your river pieces. I retained the kit's own base, and stuck the whole thing onto another large base that will match my stream sections. I painted this about the right colour to match my Last Valley streams, and then on the down water side I added some gloss acrylic medium. That was a tip I picked up from Mel the Terrain Tutor, and is an easy way to make textured glossy water surfaces. It's an acrylic gel that you just slap on and can then move around. I just teased it with a toothpick to make some little frothy waves. I found less is more. Just form it into some little whitecaps and then stop fiddling with it…"
Full Review here
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Amicalement
Armand