Graveyard Walls, Assembling

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I had my hands full with a scenery commission, but now that it is finished, I can return to the blog with... More scenery! Time to build some graveyard walls for my battlefield.

 

For this project, I'm using the Skull Forge Scenics Graveyard Walls and Ruined Graveyard Walls resin kits.

 

I already have a bunch painted up, but I've kept these in their modular configuration– The walls and posts are designed to be kept separate so they can be arranged in different combinations when setting up the battlefield.

 

 

Having that level of variety is great, but I wanted to build a handful of finished wall segments that I could take to the shop and slap on the table without any fuss. Fully assembled walls would make transportation, setup, and cleanup much easier. My plan was also to complete this project as fast as possible, spending no more than a few days building and painting.

Day 1

When I resin cast, there are inevitably miscasts that I can't sell. I usually hang on to these to use in my own terrain projects. I took a look through my box of miscasts, and pulled out all of the wall components that have been amassing over the years.

 

 

I played around with some different configurations, and put together seven lengths of wall. I had more long ruined wall segments than anything, so I broke a few of these to create crumbles ends on the walls.

 

 

With the configurations established, I traced out a base for each one on some thick card stock. The white card is cold press art board, and the brown card is the backing from a large drawing pad. I generally don't like to use cardboard as a basing material because it isn't very sturdy and tends to warp once glue is applied, but I made an exception in this case. I was using all left-over parts for this, and thought the rigid resin walls would prevent the cardboard from curling.

 

 

Once the bases were cut out, I cleaned up the parts and super glued each component to the card stock.

 

 

The Skull Forge Scenics walls are designed with paving stones along the top. I didn't have enough of these in my miscast bin to cover all the tops, so I made some extra stones out of thick styrene card.

 

 

Once the glue had dried, I set to work trimming the bases. I used a sharp hobby knife to trim the base closer to the wall and beveled the edges.

 

 

I spent a few hours that first day putting the pieces together and had most of the basing trimmed before calling it quits.

 

 

Day 2

The next day, I finished up the remaining bases, and used Skull Forge Scenics tombstones and skulls to establish these as proper graveyard walls.

The tombstones were attached to the bases right up against the wall so they wouldn't add too much width to the piece. (I still need these to function as a linear obstacle and allow a unit of troops to be positioned up against the wall on either side.) I used super glue to affix the tombstones and skulls, and sprinkled a bit of fine ballast around them to help fix them in place. I only put the tombstones on one side of each wall, and in the case of the corner sections I placed them on the interior side, so they would appear to be inside the wall surrounding the graveyard.

 

 

The next step was to add sand to the base. I applied some waterproof wood glue around the perimeter and sprinkled play sand over it.

 

 

As the glue dried, I laid the bag of sand over the walls to weigh them down and hopefully prevent any warping. The sandbag was perfect for this because it could contour to the shape of the walls and distribute the weight evenly.

 

 

After a few hours, the glue was dry and there was no warping.

 

 

One final step I did before finishing out the second day was to address the joins between some of the wall segments. Normally, each section would be inserted into a wall post concealing any join, but since I didn't have enough, I ended up butting two sections together, which left a vertical gap (seen on the top wall in this image).

A strategically placed tombstone hid the gap on one side of the wall. On the opposite side, I applied some super glue and sprinkled baking soda over it. When baking soda mixes with cyanoacrylate glue (aka, super glue or "CA" glue), it hardens into a rock-hard substance. This allowed me to fill in the gap, and then carve new grooves around the stones to re-sculpt that bit of detail and eliminate the seam where the walls connected. (The bottom two walls have the re-sculpted stonework.)

 

 

And with that, the walls were ready for priming and their base spray. That is, if this bloody wind would ever die down...

 

 

'Til next time!