Project Log: Wild West Exodus Harbor, Part 3

The Wild West Exodus harbor project is proceeding smoothly. If you are new to this series, I am building this for Warcradle Studios, and it will be on display in their booth at Gencon. This time out we'll take a look at some of the details around the harbor...

I finished up the previous installment with this wooden dock extension. I felt it was a little too rickety and small for the large port, so I pulled off all of the planks and remade the top, widening the dock and cleaning things up a bit.

 

 

 

The ladder was made by bending a straight Plastruct styrene ladder with a heat gun. Then the brackets were added using bits of L-strips.

 

I used a power drill to twist lengths of floral wire to make ropes, and wrapped these around the pilings and coiled them up on the ground.

 

The bolts on the dock were made from cuts of hex-rod with a smaller round rod glued in the center. The final touch was to add some sand around the bottom of the dock piling, and around the harbor. When painted, these will look like barnacles.

 

On the street there are railroad tracks coming in from the edge of the board. These use the same mold that I had for the first Wild West Exodus table. I cast up sections of the track and then added some ballast along the edge.

 

The tracks were made with a styrene T-beam and a thin U-beam layered on top.

 

At the end of the track, I added the bumper and a section of pipe. The bumper was made from foam core board and covered with rivet-punched styrene card. The pipes were made from PVC plumbing fixtures. One of the important details when working with PVC parts is to file off all of the ID numbers and text. They will break the illusion if ignored.

 

The sidewalks were made out of 1/4-inch MDF. Each was cut to shape and then I added the seams between the "concrete" panels and curbs by making a series of V-cuts.

 

The larger pieces were magnetized so they can be removed for storage and transport. THe magnets in the street were covered over with a thin layer of wood filler and wood glue so they will be camouflaged if the building is left off of the table.

 

The wall lamps for the harbor were made from styrene rod with circles of styrene tube at the top and bottom and thin square rod for the vertical frames. The bottoms were tapered by putting the rod in an electric pencil sharpener, and the tops were trimmed and rounded with sandpaper. The final touch was a "bolt" added to the top and bottom of each. These will be painted separately and then attached during the final assembly.

 

The ship and buildings are beginning to take shape. I'll talk about them later this week.

 

'Til next time!