More work in Moria and a return to the Caribbean

With work on the Causeway stalling, due to a realization I'd positioned the stair way in the wrong place, I decided to find something else to make through the week, until the weekend rolled around again, and it would give me more time to fix up the causeway stairs...

So continuing the Moria theme, the one iconic thing about the Dwarrowdelf, are the pillars... the end of last weekend saw me rough out the main pillar shapes from Styrofoam, thanks to a heads up from 'Celevue' on the rough dimensions he had used for his.

They are made from 5cm thick styrofoam (I actually had 2.5cm thick sheet so had to glue two thicknesses together). The base piece is 9cm x 9cm. The mid piece 7cm x 7cm and the top pillar section is 25cm tall. Cutting these bits out was fairly straight forward. The lengthy bit was then cutting out all the polygon shapes. For this I used 5mm Depron sheet, which once each piece was cut out, I sliced it in half reducing the thickness to about 2.5mm. There are 3 overlaid pieces to each panel, to effect the design... This took me most of the week...

Dwarrowdelf-themed pillars, with orc for scale.

I am the first to admit they are not a perfect copy from the ones in the movie - its such a tricky design to copy perfectly - and so I am going to call these "Dwarrowdelf-themed" pillars! Since this picture was taken I have skim coated over the depron areas, in plaster to fill all the little gaps and give some texture. I have also cut back the corner side edges of the tall pillar sections by 1cm, and finally tonight, base painted them dark grey. A light drybrush with a lighter grey tomorrow should finish them off...

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When the weekend finally rolled around, it was time to go back to the causeway and figure out what to do...

I needed to shift the stair way about 4" to the right as you look at it. I grabbed a long wood saw and sawed the main upright from the back wall, then cut the widened base of each 'leg' from the base board. Thankfully it all came away in one piece. So after a bit of extra measuring, trimming and fitting, I glued it back into where it should go... I also used the time to clad and build up the widened board back and base with foam and poly off-cuts...

Back and base widened and foam/poly clad...

Once the glue has dried, I'll skim it up in plaster again to hide the joins  etc., then build up a rock surface again on the widened back wall section. You can see where I have cut back the yellow expanding foam and skimmed the rock surface previously, to left of back wall...

... and Causeway stair relocated.

So now when Boromir runs out to edge of the broken stairway, there is now nothing below him...

Looking down into the yawning chasm depths...

Back to the sidewall and it was a case of the 'appliance of science', or at least in this case the appliance of large weights, and strips of MDF to fix the warping issue! Once this is dry I'll be able to think about positioning the side wall again with the goblins 'shooting gallery'

fixing the warping...

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So after all this work down in the Black Pit that is Moria, (also known as my garage), it was time to come back up to the sun, and take a jaunt round the Caribbean!

Chris has been playing a new game he got with his pocket money for the Xbox; Assassins Creed 4 - which is set in the Pirate era, so as you can imagine we've been watching Pirates of the Caribbean again, and been looking at our Pirates and Legends of the High Seas stuff.

Having finally had success with water effects, on the Watcher board, I decided to do a full sea board with it, so have repainted one of my table tops in a sea pattern, using a stippling technique, with various blues, turquoises, a little green and dark patches. This I will go over with the Liquitex gel, but will need to order another pot to have sufficient to cover the board...

Caribbean sea, painted, awaiting Liquitex...

Also, having found an easier simpler method to bend balsa strips (just leave them soaking in water to soften them), I returned to a long forgotten project, and finished my jolly boat... a very simple design from a template, I made some time ago. I am just trying to decide if its worth making some oars for it...

Jolly boat brings pirate to shore...

This pirate activity, prompted a game of pirate action... Chris rarely wants to play a simple scenario... I guess that's where a child's imagination comes to the fore...

My Brig was set up, anchored just offshore of the Isle, then the Kraken attacked! ( using Watcher-in-the-water tentacles). Needless to say, my pirate crew were nimbly plucked from the vessel and squashed, pulled apart and drowned, (not necessarily in that order!) and the ship started taking a battering... seeing his doom near at hand, and having seen his captain pulled apart, the quartermaster thought "bugger this for a game of soldiers, I'm offski!" , and nimbly jumped overboard, despite his wooden leg, and landed in the jolly boat. A few other scurvy hands who had been hiding below decks, followed his example, and they rowed to shore while the Kraken remained distracted by destroying the ship...

Having made it ashore, they had just made it inland when they were set upon by cannibal natives, evidenced by blowpipe darts whizzing past their ears!

Having miraculously somehow managed to keep their powder dry, they fired a volley with their pistols and charged! The resulting fracas saw most of the cannibals cut down, with the rest fleeing back to their village, but not before the Quartermaster was murderously clubbed over the head!

And that was where we left our little adventure for the day... but not before I showed Chris this figure from the Northstar kickstarter... as expected, he just about exploded with excitement...

... not sure if I'll be going with the kickstarter, but I am certainly keen to pick this figure up once its available...

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To finish off the weekend, once I had rescued my Brig from the bottom of the depths, I added a little balsa detail to it; the Cat-heads for the anchors and some trim below the rigging on the hull sides... one of these days I'll fully complete it!

I also had a rummage in the 'unfinished projects box' and dug out my other pirate sloop I had half finished a long time ago - I feel more balsa cladding coming on...

Another weekend task was tarting up my old river sections, adding a water ripple surface texture with the Mod Podge I bought earlier... that I left drying over night... boy, has that stuff got an odd smell!

I finally had another look at my Khazad Dum bridge board... I felt I had cut a rather too linear cliff edge (again having simply followed the mission brief in the LOTR scenario books). So I broke out the jigsaw and cut a kind of sharks tooth type pattern along the chasm edges, and then started resurfacing the cliff face using home made plaster cloth; crepe bandage soaked in a mix of runny plaster and PVA glue, till I ran out of crepe... another project to finish off through the week...


As always busy busy...