W.I.P- Another Gold Mine

[cmsciulli]

Cross posted in Old West forum as well.  I have been working on some prospector figures and their pack mules.  Well, where else do you go to prospect but a mine, and hopefully a gold or silver mine!

Inspired by Admiral Benbow's absolutely fantastic mine project- http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=7443.0  and based on the need to have a mine for an upcoming convention game, my father and I have taken it upon ourselves to make a mine. . . one week away from said convention!

Get out the straight jackets and strap yourselves in for the ride!

This is how it all started:



That's our original idea for how we wanted to build the height and where we wanted to place the mine entrances.  The next step was to start cutting the styrofoam into a more mine/mountain-like shape:



Here we have done that and glued our pieces into place.  We have also begun to build the mountain out using newspaper.  These styrofoam pieces came from a box that contained my HP printer/scanner/copier, so there are plenty of odd angles and curves that we need to build out or that we can use to our advantage to create caves:



We want the back to have an Anasazi cliff dwelling feel because in our scenarios this mine is damned as it is part of a sacred Indian burial site.

Now that the basic shape and structure of the mine is there, it's time to apply a layer of plaster tape and plaster of paris in order to cover over all the newspaper and also to create a surface that is more textured and more durable so that we can apply paint, flocking etc:



Looking more like a mountain mine, but we need some boulders and rocks!  We purchased silicon molds and a casting material from a local hobby store:




The rock molds were $9.00 US each and the casting material was $5.00 US for 2lbs.  Yes, the molds are a bit pricey, however they are extremely easy to use, should last forever, and the results are great:


What fabulous rocks!  I would really recommend these types of molds to any terrain builders out there, well worth the investment.

Now that we had rocks, it was time to add the rocks to our mountain.  We used hot glue for this task, and it worked fairly well.  We then primed the whole piece in brown:





It's looking more and more mine like every hour!

The next steps will be to paint this bad boy.

If any veteran terrain builders have any suggestions on materials, techniques etc. for any step in this process, please feel free to share!

[cmsciulli]

Painted and flocked. . . please excuse the drying glue, it will show as white:


















Will need to touch up the big, gray boulders with brown and red-brown paint so that they blend in more.  Other than that, I think this project is close to complete.

[Hitman]

That looks awesome...what about the back...ancient Indian burial grounds...how's that side look?
Regards,
Hitman