Building a modular table / MORE PICS OVER THE HOLIDAYS

Currently doing some sketches. And setting up my blog. Hope to post something this weekend.

Oh, and Skyrim does not only deliver great inspirations, but also very many distractions.

Thanks for your patience.

I did it. I have pictures, and an update for you.

Regarding the problems with the available space, I've come up with the following idea: I want to create a series of narrow buildings, which cover almost the whole length of a single terrain tile.

Today, I started building the first of these buildings.

The footprint of the whole thing is roughly 4 x 20 inches, which means that we have around 4 inches of "sidewalk" for our miniatures before they start dropping into the canals (which, basically as The Yak suggested, will get a series of walkways halfway down the wall, adding yet another level to the table).

I managed to finish the foamcore work. Coming up next is cutting the timber framing out of cardboard, placing the wooden floor and "plastering" the walls with glue-soaked toilet paper as well as figuring out how to add a collapsed roof, some stairways and a balcony.

But enough of the talking, let's get to the pictures, shall we?



This is the front of the building, with cutouts for the windows, doors and of course, damage. The slots just beside the top doors will become quite important later.



This is the floor, with damaged sections cut out. Notice the pegs? They go into the slots I've mentioned earlier. After taking this picture, I've cut slots for the inner walls as well (see below).



This is the back wall, with upper floor windows and damage cut out.



These are the inner walls. I've actually used just three of them, but I like to keep a spare part at the ready. The horizontal slots slide into matching slots I've cut into the floor board (which, as I've mentioned before, were cut after I took the picture of the floor board).



Here's the whole thing. At the moment it's only a dry-fit, since I'm going to do the final assembly after painting the interior. Oh, and please welcome Barry. Barry is going to demonstrate the scale of the whole building for you today.



View from above. Please note that I've added some more damage to the rear section of the building.



Rear view. Again, note the additional damage to facilitate moving the miniatures on the bottom floor.



Here are the parts for a partly collapsed jutty. Barry, the lazy git, is taking a nap.



The jutty has been dry-fitted and fixed with masking tape. And Barry's awake again, too!



Barry taking a stroll down the waterfront, showing you how much space there is now (compared to the first pic I've posted with the prototype buildings). If you take into consideration that there is going to be another 2 inches of walkway a little down the wall, I guess you can move down these streets rather easily. And I just love narrow streets and alleys...

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That's it for today, folks. And thanks for your patience with me... I actually feel kind of bad, showing up with such an amount of boasting and then not delivering that many results... but we're getting there, I promise. While I was putting this building together, I made notes and took measurements - once I'm finished, I'm giving them to my colleague and he can start building a few more of them, freeing some time for me to start building other stuff.

Stuff is looking good so far! I really like those wall-to-wall houses, kinda like a small apartment complex. Need to make me some of those...

Theo

Thanks, Theo.

Once I got it finished, I'm going to summarize the measurements for my buddy. I'll gladly provide a downloadable plan then, if anyone's interested.

The Beasty has potential. It has the look of a block of row houses...kind of a Dickens thing. I hope you don't take offense at this, but I think you are over planning the project. Cities of the Renaissance & earlier are more organic; a planned/designed city is a product of 19th Century thinking...that, of course, is only my view of terrain building &, as such, may be taken cum salo.

I understand what you're trying to say, DeafNala.

And believe me, I'd rather go totally crazy and try to emulate Wolfangs Mordheim table from Gidian Gelände, but since we want the table to be highly modular, we have to compromise and try to make the buildings look as different as possible while still keeping a sense of order and pattern (to make sure everything fits together). I was always thinking of Amsterdam (with all the canals) as well as Dinan (picture) and Colmar in France...

...where everything looks rather tidy and neat concerning the alignment of houses, yet every house has its own character. I guess a whole lot of this "character" has to be achieved via superdetailing the houses (which, in itself, is quite a task).

And, please remember - these buildings are only intended to be put on the narrow sides of the table (see attached image)... in the areas where we have more space we're planning to do a few crooked houses as well.


I'll just keep working on this beasty here and see how it ends up. Thanks for watching, following and commenting so far, guys.

I'm glad you took my comments in the spirit intended, Doc.
You're absolutely correct: i.e., the buildings develop their character as you detail them...the detailing is when the fun really begins. AND I love that photo.

Welcome, welcome! I'm on kind of a streak right now, I guess,

I've engraved the floor boards onto 1mm balsa wood with a pencil (if you try to do it yourself, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, please be careful, the things snap sooo easily) and glued them to the piece of foamcore I cut out for the top floor. Then I also glued the interior walls into their designated slots and glued the whole thing to the building's front. Here's what it looked like then.



Then I've spent some time cutting out the front's timber framing from a 1.7mm sheet of cardboard. I actually cut the whole thing in one single piece - no extra pieces, just one single piece. To pass the time cutting the damn thing, I regulary cursed like a drunk soldier on shore leave - 1.7mm is pretty damn solid, I tell you - but it provides great definition to the surface. Here's the piece...



After that, I glued the timber frame to the front of the building. Because I wanted to add a balcony with a staircase above the left door, I cut a stair template into the timberwork as well. I then constructed the rest of the balcony out of 1.7mm cardboard and two pieces of 5x5mm pine bars. Here's the whole thing dry-fitted (notice the jutty, also dry-fitted).



Please notice that I haven't cut the damage off the timber framing yet - that's going to be done during the "outer detailing" phase of the build.
Oh, and here's a detail shot of the stair template on the outer wall. The steps will be made out of balsa wood strips.




That's it for tonight, folks. As always, thanks for reading and commenting.

Coming up next:

• building and placing the ruined roof,
• finishing up the timber framing on the jutty and the back panels
• detailing the interior (skirtings, window frames etc)
  This will be made with thinner cardboard, though)

HI BARRY! What a nice guy ther's not many Chaos Warriors out there who give up their free time to help show people round the city.

Talking of city, your doing marvellous things with this board. I think the idea of narrow streets is great for Mordheim and that building you have started is top drawer. I like the steps leading up to the raised platform I can imagine many battles being fought up and down those steps (in fact has any one done any rules for fighting on steps? Might be a good idea having some advantages/disadvantages if your board is going to have so many different levels). If you carry on like this you will have one mighty little city.

PS: Looks like Barry's job is safe for a while as this is one massive project. Much respect sir for the amount of detail you are putting in.

Keep up the good work

You're on a roll! The house keeps getting better, I would have started deliberately cutting myself before I managed to cut out the entire front plankwork in one piece probably, lol.

Nice balcony there, too. Good placement. It'll really help when trying to get into and out of the building.

Theo

LOOKIN' GOOD...the flooring is especially nice.

I showed the pics to my colleague today... he looked a bit... hmm... let's say "intimidated".

Just a quick update - I'm nearly finished engraving the master for the cobblestone plates. I'm glad it's almost over - my Dremel nearly fainted twice during the whole process (I've got the Dremel Stylus, with the Lithium-Ion battery), and from all the vibrations during the engraving my wrist hurts and my fingertips kind of tingle while I type this.

I'm also in the process of finishing the order sheet for all the wood needed to make the table pieces... I found out that during the construction of the first table, I've actually built the individual components too big, which means I'll have to do all four pieces. To minimize the margin for errors, I'm ordering all the wood at once and let the wood shop do the cutting.

So, project for this week and weekend: Finishing the masters for the cobblestone and canal wall, making the silicone rubber molds for said masters, and maybe build all four terrain tiles.

Very nice project you got here. Keep it going...

Yes! I'm still alive, and good old Dr. Hobo has not given up on this monster of a project yet!

Today I'm very proud to announce that I have made a very big leap forward today (well, tonight, technically) - I've finished the masters for the cobblestone tiles as well as the canal walls, and have successfully made a silicone mold for the cobblestone as well. I'm going to pick up some more silicone today, I think I will be ready for mass-producing the tiles by evening. I'll have to do 21 cobblestone tiles and 21 canal walls, as well as 2 half-sized cobblestone and 4 half-sized canal walls for the terrain tile with the two dead ends.

And, of course, I'll keep true to Internet Rule #32, which says "You must have pictures to prove your statements", so without further talk, here they are:

This is the master for the cobblestone plate - I've made a plaster plate, and after it had dried, I sprayed it with black primer to check my engraving. Then I used my Dremel to engrave the cobblestone texture (I've already mentioned the hurting wrist and the tingling fingers? This thing here's is to blame.) To achieve a seamless effect, I've bevelled off the edges of the plate, which means that every time two plates are placed next to each other, the seam is always a recessed area..



Here's the finished silicone mold, already inside a simple support frame to stabilize it while pouring the Keramin. It needs some cleaning up, but I think I'm going to let it dry fully until the evening.



And finally, here's the master plate for the canal walls - pretty straightforward, the canal walls are built out of large stone bricks. Maybe I'm going to add some weathering, but the whole thing's rather fresh out of the frame (about 1 hour).



So you might have one more question: What are these holes for?

Well, a few posts earlier we've discussed that I might be wasting a lot of playing surface with all these deep and wide canals, and some forum members, namely Horatio, Theorox and The Yak, have suggested that I might add a second level of rickety walkways to the walls to add another layer of action to the table. These holes are going to take a round birch rod to simulate wooden support struts for said walkways.


That's it for today, folks. As usual, thanks for reading and commenting.

Dude, molding! Awesome. Very good-looking so far, looking forward to more. Think this board will turn out awesome.

Theo

First casting is officially done, folks. I've slapped on some black water color to better illustrate the texture. It came out really, really well, and the second plate is already drying in the mold. Supposed that I don't run out of Keramin tonight, I might be able to cast two or three plates- and once I got more, I'll be able to churn them out at a rate of one per 45 minutes (that's the minimum time the Keramin need to get dry enough to remove it from the mold.



As for the canal wall mold - I think I underdosed the hardener a little. which means it's not fully cured yet (after about 5 hours). Maybe I'll pull it later - I've still got one movie left to watch, so I guess I let it sit for another two hours or so.

EDIT:

Well, I just "un-molded" the second cast. And I grossly overestimated the extent of my Keramin stockpile, so I can't make any more until Monday.

But enough of that talk, here's a shot of both plates side-by-side. Note that the right panel has a completely different facing than the first one (the first's upper right corner is the left's lower left corner - which gives me a bit of flexibility regarding the placement of the tiles on the table.



Please disregard the darker corner to the bottom right - that's just a shadow.



Here's the seam between the two panels again - I'll figure out how to cover it up once I glued the pieces to the actual table.

Now that was it for today, folks. I gotta clean up my workspace- damn Keramin powder, my table looks like Charlie Sheen has visited.

Just a quick update:
I'm currently busy finishing all the wood work for the table. But, as it is every year, three weeks before Christmas, clients tend to go apeshit-berserk and so I haven't got much time for the project at the moment.

But after Christmas, it's two weeks of vacation. Hopefully I'll be able to make some significant project....

Whoa! Just caught up with this project! You have a grand vision for our favourite ruined city. Looking forward to seeing your ongoing progress, especially how you incorporate the molded sections; I just started dabbling in silicon molding a few months ago, but nothing as ambitious as this. Bookmarked!

Looking great, I look forward to seeing the segments being put together into modules, and then the complete table. It'll be great, I'm sure!

Theo

Yes! I'm still alive!

Just to let you know, the build's still not finished, and it has taken kind of a back seat since we decided to finish the table in time to move it to my buddy's house when he finished building it... so I'm looking at a Christmas 2012 deadline, maybe even spring 2013.

Got a bit distracted, too - got sucked into three more miniature games, which means more painting, and started attending two separate RPG groups.

But I haven't cancelled the project. It's just going to take some more time...