It's been a while since my last update - I took a breather lasting through March after the hectic January-February and the workload that was Amon Hen. But I'm slowly ramping up my pace, and here's an update on what's been going on recently with Helm's Deep.
I'm still attempting to build a section ready by mid-June for the diorama challenge, namely the 80x90 board having the majority of the Deeping Wall, the Deeping Stream, a bit of the stairs leading to Hornburg side, as well as the start of the carved staircase heading to the back courtyard behind the tower:
I started with a foamcore skeleton for the wall sections, with several vertical supports near the culvert:
I'm building the shorter section of the Deeping Wall at the same time; here the 5mm foamcore skeleton is waiting for a cereal box cardboard covering:
The longer section fully covered with cardboard:
The cardboard will, in turn, be covered with 3mm Depron, to which I will engrave the block structure:
The lower part of the Deeping Wall is built of heavier, larger blocks. In general, the blocks are quite varying in size:
Liberal amounts of white glue is used to secure the engraved Depron sheets in place on top of the cardboard backing:
Once the glue is fully dried, individual stones are cut and re-glued either a bit raised or sunken, to give a slightly irregular look. The stones will eventually get cracks and other blemishes before painting.
The crenellations are also not of equal length; a template is drawn with individual pieces numbered:
...and cut from 3cm blue foam with a hot wire cutter. At the same time I also cut the long stairs to the back courtyard from 5cm foam:
The crenellations are beveled, again with the help of the wire cutter:
Tile / block seams are carved into crenellations with black ball-point pen, just as in the Depron sheets. Note the block of blue foam raising the height of the tower.
The Deeping Wall top is cut from 6mm Depron. A tile pattern is again embossed with a black ball-point pen.
I've yet to complete the wall top tile pattern, but once that is done, I can glue the tops in place, followed by the blue foam block for the tower. Thin sheets of Depron will then be embossed and glued to complete the tower walls, followed by crenellations and short stairs for the tower. Stay tuned...
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