Dropping in on my Vauban fortification
I'm home for a very short stay between a couple of work-related trips. There are still places on earth without wireless or even internet access, I seem to be good at finding them...
Needless to say, with travelling and family, the summer hasn't been amenable to much progress on the Syldavia project, though I have made some. I've done a little painting here and there and completed some bits of my fortification. I have experimented with sizes of ravelins, some wall sections and a bastion. As I described a few months ago, the pieces are made from masonry-textured panels of hydrocal cast here at home. I used sculpting putty (mostly Milliput) to finish details and hide imperfections. Trimmed down to size with a dremel moto-tool and with their ends well-filled with a cheap sculpting putty and sanded flat, the pieces fit pretty well together. They are a bit of a both but simple in concept and the work gets much easier with new piece. They are solid, durable (though I haven't yet dropped one) and not so heavy really.
The bastion works well, I think, the walls are ok and the ravelins are all too large or too small! I think that I will replace the ravelins with another bastion. The gate is definitely still a work in progress as it is far too ungainly and I still need a ravelin set up to be an outer gate and part of a covered way These pieces still need a lot of clean up, detailing and painting but from the pictures below you ought to get the general idea of how they are ending up. The fortification is quite large for my purposes, and is obvious by how the town buildings dwindle into insignificance. I don't need any more wall pieces and I can't really see how to use more than a half-circle of a fortification, except for eye candy.
Comments are welcome of course!
I see that my photos are not very good, I'll try to post new ones today.
Jim
Needless to say, with travelling and family, the summer hasn't been amenable to much progress on the Syldavia project, though I have made some. I've done a little painting here and there and completed some bits of my fortification. I have experimented with sizes of ravelins, some wall sections and a bastion. As I described a few months ago, the pieces are made from masonry-textured panels of hydrocal cast here at home. I used sculpting putty (mostly Milliput) to finish details and hide imperfections. Trimmed down to size with a dremel moto-tool and with their ends well-filled with a cheap sculpting putty and sanded flat, the pieces fit pretty well together. They are a bit of a both but simple in concept and the work gets much easier with new piece. They are solid, durable (though I haven't yet dropped one) and not so heavy really.
The bastion works well, I think, the walls are ok and the ravelins are all too large or too small! I think that I will replace the ravelins with another bastion. The gate is definitely still a work in progress as it is far too ungainly and I still need a ravelin set up to be an outer gate and part of a covered way These pieces still need a lot of clean up, detailing and painting but from the pictures below you ought to get the general idea of how they are ending up. The fortification is quite large for my purposes, and is obvious by how the town buildings dwindle into insignificance. I don't need any more wall pieces and I can't really see how to use more than a half-circle of a fortification, except for eye candy.
Comments are welcome of course!
I see that my photos are not very good, I'll try to post new ones today.
Jim
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