Mountain Fortress

[David Kuijt]

Mountain Fortress (camp) for my Empire of the Apes Fantasy Triumph army.

Here are the parts:

Mountains (front view)

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Mountains (angled view)

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Building pieces lying flat

IMG_1429 mod.jpg (660.69 KiB) Viewed 5802 times

Building pieces upright

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[David Kuijt]

And here are some pics of how the pieces go together:

Left side view

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Right side view

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View of the upper courtyard and access to the watchtower

IMG_1427.JPG (666.32 KiB) Viewed 5802 times

[David Kuijt]

Materials:

• One piece of scrap 2x4 lumber, about 8" long
• A hunk of scrap 2" thick pink insulation a bit bigger than my hand with fingers spread
• A scrap piece of 1/8" MDF for the base
• Some 1/16" craft sticks
• A few pieces of scrap balsa wood

Tools:

• Exacto knife (#11 blade)
• Tablesaw
• I forget the name of it saw -- not a jigsaw, as it is a table mount, but I used it to cut the MDF to shape
• Good (draw-cut) handsaw
• Big snap-blade utility knife
• Wood chisels, 1/4" and 1/2"
• Sanding block

Steps:

• I cut the 2x4 to a very slight bevel on the tablesaw. The bevel is on three sides of the 2x4. Don't try this at home unless you are very good with a tablesaw, or you want to be called "<insert name here> of the Nine Fingers". There's safe ways to do it, but if you take shortcuts, you won't be able to count to 10 any more without taking your socks off.
• Then I chopped the top off the beveled 2x4 to make the angled front piece, and beveled a scrap cutoff to make the tower by hand (chisel, utility knife, and sanding).
• Moved the front piece around until I figured what looked good, then chopped into it using the handsaw, cleaning up the join with the chisel.
• Marked the windows on some graph paper, cut them out with the exacto knife, then traced them on the buildings. Cut on the lines with the chisels to make windows with angled bottoms, and to indent the doors. Same for the big front door.
• Glued craft sticks to make the decorative window tops and door tops, then cut them to length and glued them in place. Same for the rails on the balconies
• Cut the mountains out with utility knife, detailing with the exacto knife
• Mark the buildings on the mountains, then cut the holes out so the buildings fit into the mountains.

Painting tomorrow.

[Texus Maximus]

This looks great! I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. That is some careful planning you did, getting all that to fit together. What was your inspiration?

[chris6]

Wow, that wooden fortress is great!

[Gregorius]

It's going to look spectacular when finiished David. So what will be the stronghold's footprint?

Cheers,

[David Kuijt]

It's going to look spectacular when finiished David. So what will be the stronghold's footprint?

Not sure; I didn't measure it. It's base is approximately the size of two of my fists, which works well for an army on 80mm wide bases.

[David Kuijt]

Here's the finished fortress.

I had to repaint it three times; the first two just didn't look right.

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Note the decorative nail heads used as door bosses.

attachment=0]IMG_1434 trimmed.jpg[/attachment]

[Gregorius]

Nice one David. There seems to be a happy accident (a Bob Ross moment) in that the right hand side of the mountain looks to have facial features.

Cheers,

[David Kuijt]

Nice one David. There seems to be a happy accident (a Bob Ross moment) in that the right hand side of the mountain looks to have facial features.

"Facial features" has a much looser and more flexible definition in Australia, it seems...