Grand Archway - part III

Where we left things...

With both sides completed it was looking great, but definitely missing some panache. There were a lot of gaps between my non-perfect cuts of foam that needed filling, and the top needed some detailing. Wanting to consolidate the work I’d already done, before braving more foam, I grabbed some spackle and started slapping it into all the gaps.

Gap Filling

I had been using this pink spackle for some other foamy bricky projects and found it needed a little bit of water to help spread it evenly, but not too much otherwise it is hard to control. Nonetheless, I applied some spackly to the top. I’m not sure why everything on this project before painting was pink and white but there you go.

This stuff starts pink but dries white.

Another huge benefit of applying spackle to your builds is the added weight - it really improves the overall sturdiness and helps everything stay solid. Hot glue does the same! Generally, more weight the better as it won’t shift around as much on the gaming board.

The top before sanding.

I was careful not to go overboard as to ruin all the hard word I’d already done. On the corners, I let the spackle dry a little before scoring the brickline back in with a ballpoint pen. The hard part was leaving it alone to properly dry after this step, as it’s easy to keep fussing with it - usually this way lies madness. Leave it alone!

Before and after scoring the bricklines.

Inside the angled archway required quite a lot of spackle to get the different layers of card and foam to blend smoothly. I only took photos it seems while it was wet, but everything looked much smoother after sanding.

Heavy coat of spackle insdie the arch

The Roof

I wasn’t really sure where to start on the top of the arch, but it felt like it needed more depth - something protruding at least as far as the archways. The problem was there wasn’t enough room left to simply add to what was there so I needed to extend the height. I realise this made the gap-filling done on top redundant, but we at least gained some extra weight.

I started out really simple wih a thick slab of 1” pink insulaion foam and marked out 1” from each corner. I then cut strips of thinner foam-board and glued these in the center, leaving the 1” ‘square’ at each corner. I was winging it at this point, so there are no drawings of an intended design.

A satisfying foam slab.

I felt really good glueing this slab onto the top of the build. If I had more hands I’d have taken a photo of the amount of hot glue I used as it was plentiful. I applied the glue to the upside-down slab and then pressed the upside down arch onto it. I found this way gave me more visibility for aligning things evenly - and I ensured I applied it quickly so I had a little bit of time to move the two pieces perfectly into place before the glue set. Insulation foam (as the name might suggest) actually does keep your glue hotter for a little bit longer which made this step a bit easier.

Kind of feels like a cake at this stage.

I then started adding definition to the strips of foam on the edges, giving them impression they were great slabs. After making a pig’s ear of the first one, I measured out the marks on the other sides. Fortunately, mistakes are somewhat easily covered up at this stage with more grout.

Sometimes eyeballing isn't the best approach! Easily fixed though.

The next step was to start building some decorative corner pieces to hang down, slightly framing the arches. Without a solid plan for this I just tried a few configurations and though some simple variation in height would make for an interesting design. A further layer with some thinner ‘L’ shaped bits completed the look. A little bit of tin-foil texturing and these additions really added a depth to the piece that I was very pleased with.

Simple, but effective.

To complete the look I added a further thin strip, a lip, around the whole edge of the roof. The idea here was that I could then build up a rim allowing me to place four of my dungeon tiles on the top - with a snug fit I could then swap them out at any point for different tiles¹, if I so wished.

When it comes to (pseudo)gothic architecture, one can never have enough layers

Measuring out with my existing tiles

I decided that it would be best to cut out a square shape from a single sheet rather than trying to line up 4 seperate pieces - the thought process being that the corners would look cleaner. This also meant the height was the thickness of the foam sheet - which means the tiles will stand slightly proud, whilst being held securely in place. A nice aesthetic touch in my opinion.

Could I have been more accurate? I suppose so.

I decided to cut a tighter 1/2” grid on the tiles and added a circle, which felt a little bit wizardy without going overboard. Although I do have plans for various tile sets with glyphs and summoning circles in the future!

Four removable 3 inch tiles with a 1/2 inch grid

And with that, the build was complete! At this point the thing had already grown far beyond my wildest expectations for a simple archway. A thoroughly rewarding project. Now to get some paint on that thing!

The completed build, ready for paint