Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Constructing Fort St Elmo

I thought I'd put up a couple of WiP shots to let you all know how I'm going about building Fort St Elmo. As you can see, the main structure of the fort is just polystyrene that i salvaged from a construction site. It's 10 cm/4" thick. I've just cut it out with a thin-bladed saw I have and then carefully sliced the "batter" of the walls so they slope. That then gets smoothed off and generally tidied up with a block and 120 grit sandpaper.
The base and fighting platform are both 3mm/ 1/8th" MDF cut to shape with my jig-saw. I got the shapes right by tracing around the top and bottom of the balsa with a marker. Make sure that there is a couple of millimetres' overlap on the top layer to produce the "lip" that you see on many vauban-type fortifications just below the ramparts.


The sentry box is just a piece of balsa rod with a half a foam ball stuck on.


The figure is a 30mm "Willie" who is standing in for the whole Turk army.

1 comment:

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said...

Morning/Evening Greg,

Just a brief not to say "What Ho!" and that I've nominated you for the Stylish Blogger Award currently making the rounds of the blogging community. To accept:

1) Provide a link back to the nominating blogger and his/her blog.

2) Tell us seven things about yourself that you deem fit for public consumption.

3) Nominate another blog/blogger (or several) for the award.

4) Notify those bloggers.

Hope things are well for you and your family otherwise. And the fortress is coming along swimmingly.

Best regards,

Stokes