I have started work on a small table for my young son. He collects Dwarves and will soon be getting the Mines of Moria set so today, we started working together on this game table. Basically, it's going to be a version of the Chamber of Marzabul, with a gallery running around the outside and a number of fallen pillars etc.

It's to keep a promise I made to him ages ago, that when I finish my Jurassic Reich castle, I would work on his game table.

So here are a few photos of our afternoon in the workshop. Say hi to Sam everyone:



Click to biggify.

More pics will folow as the project progresses.

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Dagster

hi to sam everyone! cute boy

Nice! be sure to make an article on it!

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Backlog reduction Oath Participant

Hehe that´s great, a hobby you share with your son.
The chamber of Marzabul is great, I´ll follow this thread.

heeh great kids built moria table.Nice work at the moment

Good looking Kid.
Have fun with this.
They grow up so fast.
Looking forward to the post.

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

like sam gamgee

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But now he has a mind of metal...

Hello Sam...I'm sure that you'll put your father's work to shame some day soon and we'll have a new master of the terrain!!
Cannot wait to see your dwarves running about your game board!

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No one feels as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

I will follow this thread studiously.
Hi Sam.

Hello Sam

Good to see you and your dad share a hobby. I'll be following this thread closely, the board is looking great so far!

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Flying is the practice of trying to crash into the ground and missing.

what a lotr freak, calling ur child sam:)

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donuthare - helmsdeepbuilder - love this site

What do I bet Sam's reading this thread?


Looking forward to seeing this done Alan, hopefully with your son's expertise input it'll be better than what you've made up to now.

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"Mustard the Rohirrim! We've got to ketchup with those Uruk-fries before they capture the Hornburger!"

My wife chose the name, not me. But yeah, it crossed my mind.

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Dagster

Not much more to report since I've been busy on the weekends lately, but I have started making a master model of the pillars that will go around the outside of the central area. It's a block of plaster that I am carving into the right shape:





Click 'em to big 'em.

I should finish this tonight and then I can mould it on the weekend. I need about 20 of these half columns to line the table. Good practice for when I do some Gondorian buildings.

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Dagster

Really cool pillar! I especially like the dwarf runes you did. They look really great, as well as the rest of it. Can't wait to see this finished!

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My WIP thread: http://one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=18247

wow! your work is very impressive!
can't wait to see the finished table!

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htp://www.youtube.com/user/123Felarof
http://felarof.webs.com

The pillar looks great, I will look forward to seeing your take on this area of middle earth.

Dagorlad - Wow, they look really great. I'd like to try something like this myself.
May I ask where you got the block of plaster? I presume you made it, if so what should I look at buying to do this?

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It's all fun and games untill someone gets hurt.
Then it's a sport.

I have the same knive's

But I wondered, how do you mould them?
Is it also possible to mould shields in the same way?

The moulding process is fairly simple to do but you need a few things, (sorry no photographs) -

I use a two-part room-temperature vulcanisation (RTV) mixture to make the rubber mould. I get it from my local casting supplies shop, but you can order it from a number of places on the web. This is the stuff I use:

http://www.amcsupplies.com.au/index.php ... ts_id=1466

For this project, I cut a block of balsa wood to about the right size rectangle and coated it with a gloss varnish. Then I glued it onto a piece of 3mm Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) and built an open-topped box around it out of scrap MDF, leaving about 1cm around the outside for the mould compound.

Working out exactly how much mould mixture you need is next - here's a trick. Fill the box up with sand and then pour the sand into a measuring jar. That's how much mould mixture you need.

Seal off the edges of the box with plasticine or DAS or something similar, then pour in the mixture. It'll take about a day to dry. Once it's set, you should have a mould ready to take a decent sized block of plaster.

I plan on making a larger column next, so I'll document the process and take lots of photos along the way for an article.

I carve this one when it was fully dry, but will experiment and see if doing the carving while it's still a bit wet is easier. Having basic blocks of plaster means I can make all sorts of things now; statues, columns, fountains - I even thought of making a Tardis.

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Dagster

Good stuff. Thank you for the info. I'll look forward to seeing the larger one to.

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It's all fun and games untill someone gets hurt.
Then it's a sport.