Next step is to add the siding along the frame. One again, these strips of wood were attached using both wood glue and super glue.

These strips were cut from a larger 1/32”x 4”x 24” piece of basswood. They were cut irregularly with jagged edges to further emulate the dilapidated look our reference images of real slave cabins presented.

This process was carried out for all four walls, being sure to cut pieces accordingly for each of the windows and doors.

A porch roof frame, and a porch frame were constructed in a similar manner to the house, and were built based off the drawings.

Shingles were then applied randomly one by one. Each shingle was applied using super glue.

The shingles were cut from 1/32”x 3”x 36” balsa wood strips. Each shingle had a length of roughly 3/4” and the width varied from 3/16” to 1/2.”

Roughly half of the shingles were textured with either an X-Acto blade, or 80 grit sandpaper in the direction of the grain.

Structures built by slaves at the Wormsloe Plantation in Georgia was my main reference for the application and painting of the shingles.

The first step to building this cabin is to build a frame. It is constructed using a variety of basswood strips.

In order to achieve a weathered and worn look to the wood, each piece was textured using 80 grit sand paper.

The frame was assembled using both wood glue and super glue. While the frame is relatively square, perfection is not necessary. This cabin is supposed to be scrapped together.

The time period is roughly 1850’s America. By this time, these slave quarter cabins would roughly be 70 years old specific to this plantation.

The roof frame is constructed from both basswood strips and laser cut chipboard.

The rafters were laser cut from chipboard to easily control the bowing/warping of the roofline.

The two tallest chipboard pieces were glued to the frame, and the siding was continued all the way up. The seven remaining pieces in the middle were temporarily held in place, the shortest being towards the middle.

Then, 1/8” and 3/16” pieces of basswood were glued to the inner seven chipboard rafters.

Once dry, this ensured that the model would have a removable roof, as these strips weren’t glued to the outer two walls.

Bricks were hand scribed and textured into extruded polystyrene (pink foam) using an X-Acto blade and a pencil. The pink foam is carved to the basic shapes of different parts of the chimney, and stilts that raise the frame off the foundation before bricks are scribed.

The porch has wooden planks glued onto its frame, each are roughly a 1/4” in width.

This side of the cabin features a ledger board with rafters that were cut off. This was a design feature that Mark Friedberg wanted to dive into for Mabel’s Cabin in The Underground Railroad. 10 of these slave quarter cabins were made for the Randall Plantation set, and each had a shed attached to the side of the cabin. In order to make Mabel’s cabin stand out from the rest, her cabin was to look as if the shed was detached from the main structure, and a garden would reside in place of the shed.