Building Bridges – Day 4

As day four began I began to feel a nagging sensation that I had bitten off more than I could chew, this project was easily going to take weeks now to complete to my satisfaction when I had only set aside five days.

To try and get things finished a bit quicker I’ve also started bringing some stuff home to work on in the evenings but of course that means I’m not working on the miniatures to use with the terrain. So last night I sat down to paint all the fascias for the arches and the passageway. I managed one and it took me over an hour! And when I was done I was unsure if it worked and as I didnt have the bricks to lay against I really couldn't tell until I went in to work today. So, here is the result, let me me if you think it works.

So, today’s job was to get the bridges done and that meant painting all the girders green. This had to be done by hand and it took a long time and I’ll still need to go back and edge everything properly.

I did two coats of Dark Angels Green. I haven't added any highlights though as I’m not sure it needs it. Next I took a stick and chipped away the salt and this was the result.

Pretty successful I would say. so that meant it was time to do the rest of them! It took me until well past lunchtime but eventually I had both bridges finished.

After lunch it was time to wrap them up with masking tape to make a start on the brick work.

Following the same procedure as the rest of the bricks I went with a coat of red followed by several coats of orange and here was the end result.

There was a little seepage through the masking tape but thankfully not onto the bridges. There are a couple of areas where the weathering is a bit too heavy so I’ll need to touch those up and obviously the brickwork will need dirtying down, but overall they are now perfectly serviceable. I also sprayed the tops of the arches too so they are now finished as well.

And here is what they look like with the inserts.

Obviously there is still lots of work to be done but if I wanted to use these for a game right now they wouldn’t stick out as unfinished. With that all done I tidied my work area which was completely covered with a thin layer of red/orange dust meaning I had to mop and scrub everything! Finally for the day I constructed the end stops . These hide the hollow insides of the arches and make them look like a single solid piece. I haven’t decided what I’m doing with them yet but I’ll probably just spray them grey. 

With a little time to kill before it was home time I designed two dozen more posters and added safe margins to my templates so that I could be sure the image would always fall in the right area.

From this point on what I have left to do is detailing and as I said at the start of this post, that could take weeks (probably months maybe even years) but I’ll keep you updated as I work to complete the project.

Until then, have fun gaming.

The Duke