Realizing that I simply couldn't build a to scale piece to show off the ridiculous size of Imperial ship construction I settled for it to simply dwarf the miniatures that would be fighting across it. I only needed it to represent the section of the ship's side where it extends outward to accommodate the engine housing. It also needed to have buttresses since almost all Imperial construction has them. With that in mind, I gathered my materials.
For this project I used:- Farming Square
- Marker
- Exacto knife with a new, sharp blade
- 3/16" thick foam board
- A plan
Step 1: I started by drawing and cutting out the side panels for the ship side. To get the height I wanted, I decided 12" would be sufficient. The base would be 4" and the top 3" so to achieve a slight decline from the side of the ship. I then cut two 24" by 12" front panel and two 12" by 3" top panels.
Step 2: After I cut all four side panels out, I scored the slanted front edge and picked away the foam core for the front panel to fit between them. Using the edge of the side panel and the width of the farming square, I created a template for the buttresses by placing the base of the panel on the edge of a half inch thick piece of foam board and placing the edge of the square 8" away from the edge of the side panel. I used this to make the other five buttresses.
Step 4: Once the wall sections were dry, I used more NMN to glue the buttresses to the walls. Using a flat surface, I lined up the base of the buttresses against the walls.
Step 5: After seeing the completed piece it still didn't feel it was quite right, so I decided that having an elevated base would improve its look. I took two sheets of 24" by 12" blue foam and glued it to the base of both wall sections using more NMN. Once that was dry, I attached a piece of 24" by 4" blue foam to form a step, gluing two inches worth of it under the initial blue foam base. Finally I attached two pieces of 6" by 1" blue foam to keep the piece level.
Step 6: Once the whole thing had 24 hours to dry, I then sloshed on a coat of latex house paint so that the silver spray I intended on using wouldn't burn through the foam. I painted over all the exposed foam areas of both the blue foam and the foam core.
Step 7: Now that the paint was dry, I took both pieces out and gave them as thin of a coat of silver spray as possible. I used some cheap Tremclad anti-rust spray. This in retrospect was a bad idea. That spray smells something awful and leaves a greasy mess on the materials I was using. It absolutely required a coat of clear varnish to seal it so that the silver wouldn't rub off on my fingers.
There you have it, another piece of the ship board puzzle built. Later on I will have a post showing how I detailed all the pieces together, once I figure out how I'm going to detail them. Any suggestions are welcome; that means you Porky! As always, feel free to leave your comments, questions, concerns, flames or feedback down below. That's all for now.
Signing out,
Cursed13
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