Desert Terrain Day 05

After Thursday's post I carried on for a bit and cut and bevelled some more ePVC - bases for the impassable and a steep hill, plus a bunch of 20cm strips for river (8cm wide) and road (4 cm wide) sections.

Those who have read the comments on Thursday's post will have spotted an error I made - Das clay shrinks as it dries, causing warping. After seeing that comment yesterday morning I checked the fields and "dunes" bases and sure enough, they'd warped. I ended up removing the Das (and Milliput - that one didn't warp) from the field/plantations and flexed the dunes to release the clay forms - I've since superglued them in place.

The bits I cut on Thursday night got taken into work yesterday and were sanded during my lunch break. I didn't do any more work in the evening as I had a couple of drinks after work.

Before heading out this morning I decided to try something out. I took one of the plantation bases (the textured wallpaper had come off with the Milliput) and gave it a coat of filler. When I got back a few hours later the filler had dried and there was no warping - I should be able to use filler to create the field ditches.

For the road and river sections there is a much bigger risk of warping, so I cut some 20cm lengths of bamboo skewers and superglued them near the edges. They're a bit too thick for the road banks (but ideal for the river banks) so I sanded them down to reduce the raised effect.

I also had some messy fun covering the gentle hills, gully and the flat (for scrub and village) pieces with filler. I've also glued the plateau and steep hill to their bases.

Here's a pic of everything:

And a close-up on some of the river & road sections:

Tomorrow I'll be doing some more work with the filler, doing the roads, rivers and dunes. And maybe the edges around the fields/plantations.


While I was out I did a bit of shopping. After last Saturday's post a couple of people had mentioned that they'd found small topiary balls in pound shops - I'd never seen any in my local ones. Until today that is, so I picked one up. I also picked up a couple of flower sprays in Wilko:

Bits from the topiary ball

The big petals and leaves probably can't be used, but the rest will add more variety and help to break up the green monotony a bit.