Eregion and The Walls Of KHAZAD DUM
I found a illustration of the Stair and waterfall on page109 of A Tolkien Bestiaryby David Day that might be useful for the RR lay out.
Sue Porter is the illustrator.

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

Thanks, I dug that up (have the Finnish translation) - seems that Sue places stairs and the road on the south side of the falls (Tolkien's pic had stairs on the north side, and Fellowship book says the road wound away left, i.e. north when approaching Hollin gate from west). But otherwise, the illustration supports the idea that there is a cleft in the rocks through which the Sirannon flows, and this is where a dam would be. There is a good map illustration in the Atlas of Middle Earth book p. 129, quite in agreement with Tolkien (and PJ, except for the aqueduct).

If the right side of the page is north instead of East. MS Porter's illustration matches the map on 129. Approaching from the west it will wind to the left.

I need to get that book.
The effort you put in to your research will pay off in the end. I can't wait to see it
Question
Do the runes on the walls of your Balin's tomb spell something out? I can't tell from the photo. I like the detail. I am trying to decide how to add that detail to mine.
Very good work!

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

I think I got a used copy of "Pictures" via Amazon for about 50 USD or so.
I will, at some point, start a thread in the "non-GW talent showcase" forum for my model railroad, but need to have something more concrete first. I'm going to do a 1:10 scale mock-up of the real thing first, and when I have that, I will post to OR, too.
The runes do not spell anything, just random markings. There were so many of them that I thought it faster to just keep embossing them totally randomly without any meaning.

I got a very old tolkien bestiary book, quite fun that 1

I found the illustration I think you are referring to on page157 of J.R.R. Tolkien Artist and Illustrator. Moria Gate and discarded lower section Pencil, colored Pencil.
According to the text, "The drawing depict the scene before Tolkien wrote the text. He removed the bottom section in an attempt to salvage most of the picture by removing the more active part of the Stair Falls." page 159.

One page 165 there is a drawing of Helms Deep on an discarded exam paper ( war time paper shortage).This drawing looks more like the illustration in The Atlas of Middle Earth.

This is fun

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

I'm absolutely blown away by the work you've produced to date! Really interesting discussions and links posted also. Thanks for sharing

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The Southern Fiefdoms: http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21928

I am thinking about adding this mold to my collection
http://keeblerstudios.com/?product=dwarf-runes-mold.
Let me know what you think of the axe shape floor tiles too

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

@lorderkenbrand, thanks for the praise! Keep following the thread - I have just started cutting the first parts for the Helm's Deep board ("ground floor" of the Hornburg), and will post regularly pics of the progress.

@Oldman Willow, that rune mold should go nicely with the Moria mold. I love the floor tile (it's a hammer rather than an axe, yes?). Although the movie sets didn't sport such tiles, they would look cool on any Moria board.

I'm slowly designing parts for my own mold - Helm's Deep has plenty of columns for which Hirst molds have no equivalent, and casting these from plaster seems like a viable option. At the same time I will create masters for some of the Seeing Seat repetitve details (Amon Hen terrain is next in line). There are also some Minas Tirith parts for which a casting mold would be useful, but that can wait. I believe another mold is needed before that for the many details of Orthanc...

I would like to see or make a wall builder mold for the dwarf blocks you engraved on the Durin's stair
I use #53 and #60 for my seeing seat building and stair. I tried to make my own chair/seat but I am unhappy with it. #71 and #65 were used to make the columns.



#40,#50,#60 are useful as Minas Tirith parts


I, and am sure others, would like to see more photos in a wip
I am inspired by your battle reports and can not wait to see more.

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

Yay - keep it coming - great work everybody

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Careful with that axe of yours... Dain!

Azog

Forum Guidelines
http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25260

Axe
http://keeblerstudios.com/?product_cat=silicone-molds

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

Ah sorry, mixed that with the hammer floor tile in the runes mold, and didn't note the separate axe floor tile mold. I like it - have to say, I am seriously thinking about ordering Keebler's Moria mold + perhaps also the axe floor tile and rune molds; they would be mighty useful when I start to tackle the Erebor board in the future...

Before getting fully involved with the Helm's Deep terrain, I did a quick test wall section for Minas Tirith. This was mainly because I need a Hirst Arts cavern mold for Helm's Deep - and before making an order, I wanted to find out what other molds I would need. I have entertained an idea of covering Minas Tirith walls with very thin Egyptian basic blocks, and if this works, the needed amount of said blocks is huge enough to warrant the purchase of a few extra Egyptian basic block molds. To find out, I created a 14 cm wide wall section, and covered half of it with Egyptian blocks, and the other half with embossed Depron foam. The wall framework is made from 5mm foam board, and the outside surface was first covered with cereal box cardboard (literally!), on top of which the final surface variants would be glued. The crenellations were cut from 6mm Depron and embossed. The height of the wall is 19 cm.



The parapet walk tiling is embossed directly on the foam board:



Here is a close-up of both surface types. I cut out some of the Depron foam tiles and glued them a bit deeper or higher to match the rather haphazard look of the plaster tiles. This effect is not altogether unwanted, but is a bit exaggerated due to me using hot glue to initially attach the plaster tiles on the cardboard backing. That was a mistake as hot glue failed to secure the tiles properly. I didn't bother removing the unwanted glue fully from the cardboard backing, and just slapped white glue liberally over the right side of the wall, resulting in plaster tile covering to be a bit more uneven than it would otherwise have been.



Both sides were painted using four different shades of latex paint. Embossed grooves on Depron were picked up with a pencil, and the cracks received a black wash.



For weathering, greatly thinned dark grey was airbrushed to the arches underneath the crenellations. The wall surface was also drybrushed with almost white latex paint, and the wall received some weathering powder treatment, too.





The end result: the Depron side is almost indistinguishable from the much more laborous side covered with individual plaster tiles. I will thus go with the Depron method, save time & money, and order the cavern mold only...

I wonder if Boromir will survive to fight for the White City!

You have convinced me that the texture of the sandstone mold is a better match than mold 200. The Depron will also save weight. Not sure It would save me time. I am not as fast with the engraving. Making some larger molds of the cavern floors will save time.


# 200 with GW wall section

Very good work

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

Most of the floor tile in the bottom drawer are from#281.They can be a bit repetitive. The river tiles require #282 . I use the chest and coin piles as objective markers. The My Hobbit door frames come from#282 and the stone door frames make half of a column for weather top. #282 is a very good value.
Making your own wall builder/floor builder mold will save a huge amount of time.


As a RR modeler you are already familiar with creating rock cast molds. Less expensive latex can also be used to create wall builder molds. All that is required is a back up to keep the latex from stretching. I made these from plaster. I glued the master to card. But to use Bruce's scrape method glue the master to plastic card. It cost me more to make a good quality mold from silicon rubber than to buy one from Hirst Arts. Latex can be a good alternative.

The molds are 15mm hedgerow cores and 25mm ACW hay stacks. The black mold is the mold from Woodland Scenics that most RR modelers are already familiar with.

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

Here are some better shots of the Moria terrain with regard to the Second Hall and the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. The first one is a pic of the causeway joint between the grand staircase and the doorway leading to the Second Hall from the side. Gandalf is added as a size reference.



Next, two overview shots towards the Bridge and away; note the chasm at the back of the Second Hall.





The Second Hall piece is almost rectangular; it is about 85 cm wide and about 80 cm from the back to the start of the Bridge. The large columns are 35 cm tall. The chasm under the Bridge is about 25 cm wide and 29 cm deep, helping to make the board quite high overall - it's 130 cm from the floor / table level to the top of the stairway piece.

Here are some more shots from different angles:















As can be seen from the last photo, the bridge is quite narrow and allows only one figure to pass at a time. There is a simple doorway at the back of the final piece on the other side of the Bridge, allowing models to escape the Moria board into freedom via the short staircase. Canonically, of course, there would be the First Hall, but gaming-wise, that was not needed. The three dwarven statues I used to dress up the farther side of the Second Hall are from Thomarillion. Here's a close-up of one of them:



The structure is mostly blue foam, with the more uneven rock faces done with extruding foam from a spray can. Lots of putty was used on the smoother-looking rocky faces within the chasms. I made nine large columns in total; they can be used in various ways in different Moria-based scenarios.

Very well done. Also the very photos I needed. I am most definitely going to add more depth to my base. How wide did you make your bridge?

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

The depth of the chasm adds much to the dramatic impact of the board; taken from suitable angles, pictures of the terrain won't show the bottom at all.

Here is the template for the side of the bridge I used; the length from end to end is 25 cm. I used 3cm thick foam for the bridge.



Here is a shot directly from above, illustrating the width of the bridge with the help of Gandalf. As you can see, the bridge is a bit narrower in the center, about 2cm compared to the full foam thickness of 3cm at the ends. You can also see the cuts where the bridge can be detached for transport / storage or after a successful sorcerous blast With a suitably tight positioning of the two abutting terrain pieces, I don't really need to secure the bridge in place in any way, but will probably use a small bit of blue tack just in case mere friction is not enough.