Review - Knuckleduster - 28mm Western Building - Saloon

Next up in the town deal I purchased from Knuckleduster is the Saloon building. Now I know some of you are thinking why did you get another saloon? Well, no Wild West town worth its salt only had one saloon. In fact I'm pretty far behind as far as saloons go at this point. I have seven buildings and only two saloons right now I need at least three more!

Basically this kit is the same as the Barbershop only longer. The first thing I noticed is a slight warping to both the floor and roof. Just about inevitable when dealing with long thin pieces of plywood. The floor will be okay once the building has been assembled and I'm replacing the flat roof with the pitched roof kit so that's not an issue either. There are ways to fix that but I won't get into that now.

Again there aren't any instructions for the building itself, but there is a small sheet with a few pictures of the bar. Yes, the bar! This building comes complete with a long bar and two tables (no chairs, but then our minis don't really bend well at the knees and waist anyway). I started off with the building, as with the barbershop I glued and clamped the window and door frames to the sides first, this is important as it forms the notch for the sides when you glue the building together. After those had dried I assembled the building on to the base. I clamped where possible and because the components were made from plywood I could use my big spring loaded clamps without a problem. MDF doesn't hold up to my biggest clamps very well. Again a very straight forward operation. Like the Barbershop I think they missed by not having engraved floorboards on a building that is probably going to see a lot of action on the inside,

While that was drying I pulled out the pieces for the bar and tables. The tables were straightforward consisting of three pieces. I glued and clamped those together. I struggled with the bar for a bit. The pictures were only adequate in this regard as they must be of a prototype version which made me wonder if I was missing something. I think they missed another opportunity here to really stand out. While one piece is laser engraved to show cabinet doors the top of the bar is not. Bars could be pretty ornate and a little engraving on the top of the bar wouldn't have really added some nice detail. I also figured out afterwards that I assembled my bar backwards, that just means it will be sitting up against the other wall!

Instructions, basically non-existent and the picture of the bar doesn't match the pictures you get. So still a 1 out of 5 on that.

Components are still nice, hard to miss with laser cutting so 5 out of 5 for the components, I just feel that they missed a couple of chances to throw in some details, like engraving the floor and the top of the bar.

I managed to take a few pictures of the construction.

What you get

And the components

On to some assembly

The Bar Assembly

Finished building with some Black Scorpion miniatures for scale