Mead hall box — a Viking longhouse whose whole roof lifts off

A Viking mead hall, 199 × 99 × 108 mm, whose whole shingled roof lifts off. Heorot, Meduseld, Valhalla: a bowed-wall longhouse with a roof that is most of the building, crossed bargeboards ending in beast heads, and a planked door between proud posts. Under the roof is a 177 × 83 × 31 mm tub, plus the whole roof void above it, so a sleeved deck of cards lies flat inside.

Two STLs, two prints, nothing to assemble. No screws, no magnets, no glue, no hardware of any kind. It is designed for one filament, a wood-fill PLA: nothing on it is a colour solid. Every plank, groove, knot and shingle is cut into the surface, and every cut is jittered from one seed — stave widths 5.7-9.3 mm, each plank leaning its own way by up to 1.6°, a wandering grain line per plank, 4-7 mm shingles with a random stagger and every single butt sitting at its own height. That per-shingle jitter is what makes the roof read as hand-laid rather than tiled. Set the jitter to 0 in the source and you get a modern kit house. Keep it.

The lid rests. It does not latch. The tongue locates it precisely and it sits flush without rocking, but nothing grips it: tilt the hall and the roof comes off. This is a box that lives on a table or a shelf, not one to carry in a bag. If it must travel, glue a pair of Ø5 × 3 mm magnets into the tongue and the groove, or pack it roof-up.

Materials

• Filament: wood-fill PLA, roughly 200 g for both prints at 0.2 mm / 3 walls / 15 % infill (about 110 g for the hall, 90 g for the roof). Plain PLA in a tan or brown works too. It also prints fine in one ordinary colour, since the whole design is texture, not paint.

• Non-printed parts: none.

• Tools: none. A deburring blade for the tongue if the roof ends up snug.

The two parts

Step 1 — print the hall

As exported, flat on the bed. The floor is the print face. Walls are 3.6 mm, the floor 3.0 mm, and the thinnest wood anywhere on the base is 2.7 mm behind the door pocket. No supports, no brim needed.

Step 2 — print the roof

As exported, ridge up. The lid's underside is a flat wall-plate ring and Bambu drops it onto the bed. The roof pitch is 49° at the belly and 55° at the gables, so the whole hollow underside self-supports. Every shingle butt is a world-vertical riser that tapers back into the slope 4 mm downhill, and the joints between shingles are vertical grooves, so nothing on the roof overhangs. The beast heads hang in the air past the ridge, but their lower jaws rise toward the tip and stay under 10° from horizontal. The eye is a Ø1.4 mm through-hole that bridges itself.

One feature bridges: the 2.8 mm ceiling of the tongue groove, 4.2 mm above the bed, all the way round the ring. It prints clean without support.

Optional: turn on slicer Fuzzy Skin (0.3 mm / 0.4 mm) for the base walls. It stacks on top of the plank cuts and reads as adze marks.

Step 3 — put the roof on

Drop the roof onto the hall. The base wall's inner 2.4 mm rises 4 mm above the wall top as a tongue and enters a groove in the roof's wall-plate ring with 0.2 mm of clearance per side. That locates the roof in both axes without any push-fit, and the seam sits in the shadow of the 4 mm eave overhang, so the joint reads as a plate line rather than a print seam.

If the roof rocks, deburr the elephant's foot on the tongue rather than sanding the groove: the groove ceiling is a bridge and is the softer of the two.

Inside

177 × 83 mm at the belly and 31 mm deep to the seam. Above the seam the roof is hollow to the ridge, 102 mm up, so tall things lean and a sleeved deck lies flat. Dice, a deck, keys and coins by the door, a watch, or a gift that does not need wrapping.

The .scad source is included. One seed value redraws every irregularity; the length, bow, pitch and wall thickness are all named variables at the top.