Sunday, May 22, 2011

Constructing Adelheim, Part V

After a couple of weeks of things going on outside gaming, and weather too bad to take work outside, a nice day and a weekend finally lined up yesterday.  Unfortunately, it was the day that I was supposed to be cleaning the house in anticipation of a visit by my mother, whose sympathy for toy soldier clutter remains limited after forty years...but I'll deal with that today.

I was able to cut the glacis sections yesterday.
After marking and measuring I was able to freehand the cuts using a Hot Wire Foam Factory tool lent by Don Hogge, another of the HAWKs.  Some irregularity in the final product is acceptable on these glacis segments; everything will be covered in felt except the rear vertical side, to be painted as a retaining wall.
We got to the hardware store for supplies, glue and spray paint for the most part, and I had hoped to spray texture the felt.  However, the weather was holding, and I thought it prudent to see if we could make some of the siege artillery.

We cast several mortars, both from a Meisterzinn mold and a Prince August mold, and four large cannons from Meisterzinn.  I had a problem with that; there is a small metal key in the Meisterzinn mold, which separates the "dolphins" on top of the gun barrel...and plugs a hole in the side of the mold.  I managed to break it on the first casting, while extracting the sprue from the mold.  It was clearly brittle, snapping into three pieces.  We plugged the hole with a binder clip and continued casting, but those later gun barrels are going to need some extra file work.  In the long run, I suppose I could fabricate something from heavy sheet brass to replace it, but after this game is done, it's unlikely that I'd ever need more of them, so it may be file work for any future uses...

4 comments:

  1. I´m looking forward to seeing this finished.
    Luckily, I have all my toy soldier clutter in one room...which looks like chaos..but it´s only used for modelling.
    Cheers
    Paul

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  2. About that...extra hands available after tomorrow.

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  3. Hi Robert, I'm really enjoying watching this project develop. In fact, I'm even tempted to start making my own! Keep up the good work :)

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