WIP Week: Promethium Reactorum IX

The Ferric Highlands leading to the Secondus Promethium Reactorum have taken shape. The second 6 feet of the reactorum table are the low lying wastelands leading to the entrance of the industrial sector. In the first picture, you can see the access routes through the wasteland.

I started by matching the tiles with the previous 6 feet of the table at the two ends. I'll show more pics soon about how they all come together. These 3 tiles (2' x 4' each) started with 3/4" mdf, with the raised areas built up with insulation sheeting. The mountains were made according to the same technique in the previous reactorum pics. You will see mountains at each corner. If you are interested, look back at the WIP posts and try to see how they match up with the other tiles.

I started by casting up many floor tiles from the mechanicum sets, and gluing some of these down to the mdf. I first glued the ones that were not near edges, and left the ones near the edges un-glued. Then, at the joints, I used a sawzall to cut the tiles where each board piece meets. If you compare the picture above to the one below, you will see how I used black spray to stencil very straight guidelines for cutting.  I basically use a straight edge of hardboard and spray over it to give a perfect line. Then each small tile was cut before gluing them down at the join. This is somewhat tedious, but I've also developed several techniques for carefully cutting plastic components like these floor tiles. If you are interested, add comments and I can post on this soon too.

I'm getting much better at making mountains and much more efficient. Once you get the hang of building up the foam sheets, it's actually quite fun to sculpt and give texture to the mountains. Again, I used a large variety of woodland scenics rock parts cast up in polyurethane. 

And an aerial view of the wastelands.

You'll notice in this last picture a few of my favorite features of these board tiles: the small barriers at the end of the road piece at left, and the buttressed walls that elevate the side features from the lowered region at the middle. I'll post about these cool little wall pieces soon, as they went from 3D design to 3D print to multipart sculpt to (finally) molding and casting to build up the long walls. Hope you enjoy! More soon.