PROJECT LEWES

Having fine but cold weather these past few days has enabled me to complete my Downs of Lewes to the sanding stage. I have completed all eight levels of the Styrofoam construction, being mindful to return and justify the sides repeatedly. They need to be a near to perfectly square as I can make them, requiring re-shaving and sanding back each time a new layer is added . As you can see, it looks quite the colossus in pure white and for the time being my car has taken up residence on the drive. The dots in the mid-left quadrant are figures from my Lewes collection to give some idea of scale. There was a time early in this build that I pondered whether to add another 300mm to the left of this shot (another half tile width) but then decided against it. The table is big enough and players need to be able to reach into the middle from at least one side. I moved straight on to the chamfering stage and started out with a hot-wire cutter - this time a hand held 'Polylon' cutter ...

The Royal army edge of the battle field complete to basic construction Well now I'm home once more, I have commenced building the terrain for my version of a 28mm Lewes 'Downs'. This has required about AUD250.00 thus far with a ways to go before completion. I bought several sheets of quite solid (and rigid) 9mm interior ply which was cut into 900x900mm squares (near enough to 3'x3' in stone age measurements) and 14 sheets of 600x1200mm polystyrene (white foam) 25mm thick. I went with the 9mm ply to ensure against warping and help anchor the built up terrain pieces - they do make for heavy(ish) pieces. In approaching the build I have layered the foam, cut to the contours as laid out in my map (see previous TABLE-TOP post) and after basic construction I will sculpt the slopes back from the edges of each sheet. In approaching this particular build the first thing I needed to do was determine what thicknesses of foam to deal with. Whilst the contours represent...