Thanks again for the praise (@Mothball, that is some heavy praise indeed!). @OMW, I tried using MDF when I made master parts for my Helm’s Deep mold, but that didn’t work out too good. It was very hard to do small details. Perhaps my MDF wasn’t dense enough. As you said, a combination is probably a best deal, and MDF has its use as base, or in some cases, as support structure. For the visible parts, I will mainly stick with Depron and foam, and in some cases, will probably also leave foamcore on top. @Gandlaf, looking forward to seeing your take on HA blocks!
@Sithious, the bricks are scored simply with a black ballpoint pen (although the color doesn’t really matter, given that I will basecoat / spray paint the entire piece black before adding other colors; the seams will be picked with washes and pencil later). And just to clarify, the steel wire drill bit (in fact, I don’t have a real Dremel either) I use for marring the block surface is hand-held:
I have used the GW sculpting tool to make the ramp surface stones look worn.
…and, of course, a sharp hobby knife to do cracks. An interesting next stage begins as I’ve used a hot knife to cut formers for the jutting rock from foam. For transport / storing reasons, I’ve divided the rock into two sections; the tallest part on the right is separate from the rest (which is intersected by the causeway).
I will try, for the first time, Woodland Scenics’ new shaper sheet, to form the actual rock shape. Shaper sheets come in rolls of two different widths; it is basically heavy-duty foil with fiber mesh on the other side.
It can be easily cut to size, crunched and folded to get rock-like creases, and it holds its shape – even without undersupport. The foam risers I made are merely marking the ends of the separate terrain pieces. Once I have shaped the sheets to my liking, I’ll hot-glue them to the foam risers. The fiber mesh is then covered with another WS product meant to be used with shaper sheets: shaper sheet plaster. Three thin layers of plaster on top of shaper sheet creates durable hard shell. I will probably add some cast rocks, too, but let’s see how the overall shape turns out first.
I also got a large order from a supplier in Italy, Mirliton, with several of their metal horses:
There is a pair of various galloping, trotting, walking and rampant heavy and light horses; these I will give to Rohan commanders and heroes to make them stand out more. In the top right hand corner you can also see a group of standing and grazing horses – these will populate the Hornburg stables. There are also two dead horses to be used as casualty markers or in a diorama. Finally, at the back, there are two covered horses – these will be used by the Witch King. I realized that I don’t have a horse-mounted crowned Witch King figure, but do have extra rider Witch Kings that came with the plastic Nazgûl & fell beast kits, so all I needed was a suitably evil-looking horse. These will fit the bill perfectly! A GW plastic horse is included for size reference – the Mirliton horses are perfectly in line size-wise.
The Mirliton order also contained several medieval civilians, mostly children. The pic has a rather tall kid defiantly looking at a Uruk sapper, shown for size comparison. When I do the Helm’s Deep full diorama for the local model show, I intend to have plenty of civilians in the Glittering Caves underneath Hornburg.
Finally, the Mirliton order also had a number of their lit torches, perfectly suited for the Great Hall and other parts of Hornburg. The photo shows the slim Mirliton torches, and below it, Thomarillion candelabra (the tops of which, attached to a longer poles, will be used along the Deeping Wall and elsewhere on the Helm’s Deep ramparts) and a Thomarillion torch. What the Mirliton page failed to mention is how many torches are included in a pack – there were, in fact, ten. To be on the safe side, I ordered eight packs, so I may end up having quite a number as spares!
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