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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Paving the Roads

I have a knack for putting myself through a ton of work on my dios, this one is no different! I have begun the casting of the cobblestone setts that will be used to pack the roads on this base. The casting is a long process on a project this large.

Each time I pull the castings I get 75 stones. The estimated number needed to par all the roadway is roughly 3,200; all cast, cleaned and set individually onto the base. While this is a grueling process and I have had many people tell me I am crazy and I should do it a simpler way, the fact is this is the most realistic look as it is done like the real roads. 

To help smooth out the ruts in the roadway and to give a better surface for the stones to be glued, I have used sanded tile grout to cover the insulation foam used for the basic shapes.


Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Building a Village Corner

Now that I have the Italian home finished, I have been playing around with a few new projects trying to brain storm some new ideas for a diorama. During this time I have been building a Sherman M3A2 and needed a base to put it on once finished.

I began looking at some old buildings I never finished for one reason or another, and found one that I was still interested in finishing.

I had begun this building roughly ten years ago and got stalled to a halt do to some mistakes I made in constructing it. At the time I didn't know how to fix what I had done and figured it was a loss and put it away on a high shelf "out of sight".

I might have finished this one sooner had I realized how easy it was to undo the mistakes and refinish it. But all in all I am glad I waited until now as I have a new vision for it and have begun the construction, starting with a little demo of the affected areas.



It was quite simple to remove the mistake, which was infilling the beams with plaster and trying to scribe the brickwork and stucco into it. I was a bit to messy in the application and it just went down hill from there. But now I have a new slate to start the reconstruction and the construction of the surrounding buildings and streets.