With apologies to Tolkien, I have been busy this week upgrading a couple of features from our "Malta" show game, namely the two towers that guard the boom that blocks the harbour entrance to keep out sundry undesirables...
...and attacking Turks and North Africans in boats.
A couple of members of the Retinue (as in "Wyrley Retinue") thought we could enhance them easily enough, though the originals served us well for our first outing. I got the gig...
So here goes a blow by blow account of the work done so far. They are not yet finished, but just some texturing and a paint upgrade is all that is basically left, so they are not too far off.
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| The original towers were 18cm high, so truly dominated the harbour entrance, but had aesthetics more akin to chimneys than habitable defenceworks. They needed chopping down a bit. |
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| So I measured 4cm and 8 cm from the top and drew a line around the whole tower at these two heights. |
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| Then cut out the two sections had marked out. |
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| The original top section was inverted, glued down on the top of the main piece of the tower and crenellations cut into the card. Be careful here - knives are sharp. I did not cut myself, but I do not want a lawsuit from anyone who tries this for themselves! |
I used a bit of my schoolboy maths for the crenellations, as in the circumference of a circle being calculated using the formula 2PiR (I cannot find Pi on my PC, but you know what I mean...) This gave me spaces of 6mm and walls of 18mm, or ten alternating walls and spaces in a 24cm circumference.
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| The second cut out piece was cut vertically and used as a wrap around to bulk out the walls. Then I used bits of old corrugated card to bulk up the crenellations. I also added window surrounds from matchsticks and a garderobe, carefully placed to be able to drop its "contents" into the sea below. |
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| The story so far... |
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| The last bit done so far isd to add a floor, complete with trapdoor to access the roof, add more bulk to the crenellations and tile the roof of the garderobe. |
I am confident the enhancements will work, but feel free to come and have a look at the WMMS show on Sunday, 8th March, 2015, and let us know what you think. See you there!
G
Nice work!
ReplyDeletePlease keep posting as I'm quite interested in how you go about doing this project.
Also, what mini's do you plan on using as the Ottomans?
Darrell.
Hi Darrell.
ReplyDeleteThe Ottomans are mainly Old Glory figures. The North Africans are more of a mix, including Old Glory again, Gripping Beast Arabs and conversions based on mainly Perry Mahdists, but also with one or two "weird" ones based on Union Zouaves from the ACW. If it looks the part (IMO) or can be made to do so, I am happy to work on it.
If you are at the show, come and say "Hello" (and tell me how you made the water on your Gonzaga command element for Fornovo, because that is one serious piece of art!)
Gary