The pieces look like they came from the following molds:
Water Cavern Walls A (Cavern Mold #81)
Water Cavern Walls B (Cavern Mold #82)
Rock Cavern Pillar (Cavern Mold #84)
Cavern Floor Accessories (Cavern Mold #282)
I always thought that these were one part castings, but it isn't the case as some assembly is required. The Hirst Arts page is a trove of information, and I was able to put the parts together very quickly after taking a look at the instructions.
The pieces that I have were cast in Hydrostone, which went together pretty well with wood glue.
Once glued together, I could still see seams between the parts, so I used spackling paste to cover the gaps.
I didn't really see mention of doing this on the Hirst Arts site, but since they recommend using latex house paint with the pieces, maybe it's not necessary due to the thickness of the paint.
The natural stone arch was joined by pinning. Hydrostone is easy to drill, and the pin was attached using CA glue.
Spackling paste was used to make the arch look continuous and fill in the gaps between the parts.
I also did a little modification on the cut stone archway because the reverse side of the supporting pillars were completely devoid of features.
I carved some details into the pieces with a needle file to approximate the other surfaces of the pillars.
I recommend wearing some sort of mask if you do this, since I think I ended up giving myself Hydrostone silicosis in the process.
For painting the water cavern pieces, I plan to follow the rock wash technique described on the Hirst site. I like the cream base color because it conforms to the color that I see in pictures of actual caves.
The dark gray that is used in typical prepainted cave features seems to be the preferred standard of most people, but I don't think I've ever seen a picture of a real stalagmite or stalactite that was dark gray.
The rock cavern pieces will be painted in the typical dungeon gray colors.
Currently I've base coated all the parts, but I probably won't be able to finish painting until the weekend.
2 comments:
Cool set. Reminiscent of Otherworld Artefacts.
Thanks for reading David. I am only familiar with Otherworld Artefacts from one of your old blog posts. I wonder if the molds for their pieces survived somewhere. I really liked that weird pointy eared stalagmite idol that they made.
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