Catacombs Printer Friendly Version   By DNDOPMAN - Dec. 31, 1969 Catacombs Molds Used: Small Brick Mold #250 Basic Block Mold #40 Cracked Floor Tiles Mold #203 Floor Tiles Mold #201 Fieldstone Wall Mold #270 Turret Mold #61 Tomb Mold #56 Prison Tower Mold #60 4" Circular Tower Mold #52 Gothic Graveyard Mold #46 Gothic Dungeon Builder #45 Gothic Panel Accessories Mold #43 Homemade mold with skulls Homemade mold for arches Dimensions: Height: 4 1/2" Width: 21" Depth: 42" Blocks Used: Roughly 1500-1600 Blocks Materials Used: Dryer Sheet Acrylic Paints (Apple Barrel, Anita's, Americana, and GW) Color Place Acrylic Latex Exterior House paint Doc O'Brien's Weathering Powders Woodland Scenics Hob-E-Tac Adhesive Woodland Scenics Fine Green Turf Woodland Scenics Static Grass Summer Mix Woodland Scenics Water Effects Enviro-Tex Lite 5 Minute Epoxy Aleene's Tacky Glue Elmer's Wood Glue 2" DOW "Blueboard" Foam Board 1/2" DOW "Blueboard Foam Board Testor's Dull Cote All Purpose Adhesive Caulk (white, paintable) Homemade PVA mix Excalibur plaster Tomb Stone statue from BigLots 1/4" MDF Acousti-Tex Roll On Ceiling Texture American Traditions Interior Acrylic Wall Paint Thin sheet of clear plastic Root from a plant I ripped out of the ground Tools Used: Hot Wire Foam Factory scroll table, hand tool, and scribe tool Professional Model Maker's 10-inch Disk Sander (http://www.ares-server.com/Ares/Ares.asp?MerchantID=RET01229&Action=Catalog&Type=Product&ID=80849) Multiple Paint Brushs Needle Files X-Acto Knife X-Acto Razor Saw Scissors Tweezers Empty Hair Spray Pump Bottle Sand Paper Ruler T-Square Skil Saw Popsicle Sticks Plastic Medicine Measuring Cups The Idea: I first got the idea when I was surfing the internet and came across a picture of an old abandoned abbey. I thought, this is what I want to build next. At the time, there was a discussion on the Hirst Arts forums about people copying a design and people coming up with original designs. Well apparently this stuck with me because I immediately thought to myself I had to make it different. Around the same time I had been toying with the idea of making an arched ceiling. There has always been discussions about the arched ceilings and putting detail on the inside of roofs (rooves? you get the idea). Well, I had an idea about how to achieve that look and so I naturally merged the two ideas and came up with a Catacomb design. Imagine, if you will, a ruined church sitting alone on a hillside. Years of neglect have led to the roof being completely decayed and missing. Grass has over-taken the floor of the once grand place and the wind whips through the now missing window panes. Nothing but the bones of a church long forgotten. Tucked away in one corner are steps leading downward. Almost hidden by fallen stones and foliage, a set of steps descends into darkness. Spiraling downward, the steps lead to an arched opening. The damp air, smelling faintly of earth, drifts softly to your senses. The Catacombs now before you, stand solid beneath a crumbling exterior. The ancient remains of forgotten ancestors, hidden away in a place time has long abandoned, lay strewn about the floor. You make your way across the dusty expanse, brushing cobwebs aside as you move. The faint sound of water trickles in the distance. You finally reach another arched doorway and peer inside. "A shrine...to one most important" dances across your mind as the weeping beauty fills the pool before you. You begin to move toward the fountain, careful not to trip over the roots of an invading tree. As you reach the pool and lean forward, you notice the reflection is not of you....but of a golden haired maiden, running with someone in a meadow of flowers.....or is it running from someone? This is the lower section of that build. I have plans to eventually build the ruined church on the upper level, but for now this is what I have done. I hope you all enjoy looking at it as much as I enjoyed putting it together. Please leave any and all criticisms and comments as I want them all. I wanna get better and sometimes it takes someone other than yourself to point out things you didn't see. Thanks in advance and good luck to all who enter!! The Arches: I made the arches using pieces from the Tomb Mold #56. I made a mold that comprised a bunch of the arches from the tomb mold to help speed up casting. I took 6 pairs of arch halves and glued them together. I then glues a 1/2" X 1/2" block in the upper corner to complete the "squared" off arch. Once the glue was dry, I sanded the shorter of the 2 sides of the arches on a 60 degree angle using my handy dandy "Professional Model Maker's 10-inch Disk Sander". That's the best tool I have ever purchased by the way! I then glued all the arches together back to back to form a complete circle of arches. I then used the column pieces from the Tomb Mold to form the columns. I repeated this process 13 times to form all of the inner arches. The 10 outside arches were formed using the same method but I basically only buiilt half of the column. Same goes for the 4 end arches. I tried to make it so that you could remove all of the arches and see the entire floor area to reveal the cross design. It became painfully clear that the arches would not hold up their own weight just being glued by the ends of the arches. (It was either that or my glue wasn't strong enough.) I opted to glue all of the arches in place except for the middle 3 arches that run the length of the model. I found that this still allows for a playable model, as I can get my hands in there rather easily, so I wasn't entirely dissatisfied with glueing them down. The Floor: The floor was made using the Cracked Floor Tiles Mold #203. Since I have intentions of building an upper level with a ruined church on top, I thought I would reflect that idea down into the Catacombs to sort of help tie in the design. I used a butt load of the smaller Cracked Floor Tiles to form a large cross design on the floor of the catacombs that was in scale with the larger church design that would be on top. I then painted the whole thing brown using Bruce's technique and color scheme as seen on his website. I added a couple of different highlight colors (raw sienna,ochre yellow, and khaki) for the floor tiles that form the cross pattern. The Fountain Room: The fountain was built using a Tomb Stone statue of a weeping woman I acquired at BigLots. The fountain bowl was made using the Turret Mold #61. I started by making a complete dome using the Turret Mold. I then cut the top portion of the dome off with a combination of my X-Acto Razor Knife and the 10inch sander and then turned it upside down so it would sit flat on the ground. Once I was satisfied with the way it looked I glued a thin piece of clear pastic over the opening where I had cut the top off. I then painted the newly formed bowl shape using the overall color scheme mentioned previously. Once the paint was dry I mixed up some 5 minute epoxy and sealed the inside of the bowl. I built up the floor tiles around where I wanted the fountain base to sit. I knew I wanted to have the weeping statue positioned in such a way as to make it seem the statue woman's tears were filling the fountain. Once the base was formed around the fountain I glued the fountain bowl down. I then glued the "crying" statue in place. Once everything was in place I took a mixture of PVA and water and began to paint the surfaces around the base of the fountain and generally spreading out from around the fountain. I took Woodland Scenics Green Fine Turf and sprinkled over the wet PVA mixture. Once I was satisfied with the results I took a section of root from a plant i ripped up otu of the ground and began to run it down the wall and around the floor and also into the fountain. I used Woodland Scenics Hob-E-Tac adhesive to get the root to stay in place. (*Note- I have found that I don't like this glue very much and may not use it again. It is extremely tacky but it takes FOREVER to set up.) Once I finally got the root in position and where I wanted it, I mixed up a small batch of EnviroTex Lite to use as the water in the fountain. I took a popsicle stick and smeared some of the liquid down the face of the statue and down the front section of the statue. I also filled the little bowl in front and ran some down into the fountain base. The EnviroTex worked great but i couldnt get it to form a satisfactory flow from the base of the statue into the fountain base. I took a thin plastic sheet and used Woodland Scenics Water Effects to form a very thin line about an inch long. Once it dried, I peeled it from the plastic sheet and positioned it between the statue base and the fountain water surface using a very small amount of 5 minute epoxy. The benches were a basic build and paint job. I wanted them to look like they had been there for a while so I took more of the PVA mixture and used a paintbrush to paint on the glue. I again sprinkled some green fine turf to achieve a mossy feel. I assumed that at one time there would have been a need for lighting in this room so I added some wall torch stands. Basic paint job here using the previously mentioned scheme. I finished it up with a good dose of Doc O'Brien's Weathering Powder (black) to resemble soot as if the torches had been burnt in the past. I used a sheet of fabric softener (dryer sheet) to form the cobwebs strewn about the entire model. I tried to pull the sheet apart making sure there were no straight edges and then liberally coated the pieces I would use in the PVA mixture. I then placed the pieces with a pair of long handle tweezers and coaxed them into the desired positions. The Stairs: The stairs were built using the 4" Circular Tower Mold #52. I just built a basic spiral staircase design. I painted it using the same color scheme as the rest of the model. I flocked the upper stairs and part of the central column with Woodland Scenics Static Grass Summer Mix. Since the upper level will be a ruined church, I wanted it to have the feel that grass was now growing inside the church (since the roof will be long gone) and some of that grass had spread down the steps in any places where the sun and rain would allow it to grow. I was not terribly pleased with the results I achieved with the static grass. I will be purchasing a static grass gun soon I hope. I wanted to make the stairs in such a way as I could get a ground view walking into the Catacomb area. With this in mind, I made the stairs and the rest of the model in two (2) seperate pieces. You can now slide the stairs back to get a "mini's perspective" as they would walk into this area. The Tombs: When I was trying to think of what I wanted to do for the tombs, I had envisioned a very old abandoned place. I started by using the coffins from the Gothic Graveyard Mold #46. I painted them using a watered down Apple Barrel Earth Brown. I then highlighted using watered down Americana Burnt Umber and Americana Khaki. I took a couple of skulls from a homemade mold and painted them up to look really old and rotted. I then placed them inside two of the coffins and glued the lids in a position where you could see part of the skull. I had hoped this would elude to skeletal remains inside the coffins without having to place a full corpse inside. I placed several coffins strewn out onto the floor area with hopes of conveying the feeling that someone had looted these in the past and left the coffins just laying about. I added cobwebs to these as well and in various places about the room. I also wanted the coffins that were still inside their tomb areas to be visible as well so I cut a hole in the foam surrounding the entire piece so you could look down into the tomb area and see the contents. Again, the whole I dea is to make it somewhat playable and if I needed to stash some goodies in there at some point I would be able to do so without much trouble. The Walls: The walls were built using the Small Brick Mold #250. I painted all the walls using the color scheme and technique listed on Bruce's website. It took FOREVER to cast enough bricks to make that much wall surface. I had to glue the upper half inch of blocks using single blocks. One...by one...by one...by one... Good thing I am bald already. I think the outcome was well worth the trouble. The Foam: The whole piece was surrounded by DOW "Blueboard". As stated above I wanted the whole thing to look as though you were looking at a cross-section of the Catacombs area and someone had just plucked up a slice of the earth that contained the whole thing. I took my Hot Wire Foam Factory tools and began to work like the devil to get the effect I wanted. The ground floor pieces of foam were a super pain in the butt to make, but as HA is a labor of love in general, I took it with a grain of salt and persevered. You should be able to tell from some of the pictures that the foam was cut to form fit the entire outside of the model. Had I taken into account the amount of labor involved in making it "form fitting", I would have probably built the entire model differently. Hindsight is defintiely 20/20. Once all of the pieces were cut, I sat them aside and began to place my model where I wanted it on the 1/4" MDF. I cut the MDF to the desired specs and positioned my model accordingly. I then glued all of the foam pieces down, including the model itself, using Elmer's Wood Glue. I gave the glue a fair amount of time to dry and began to use the All Purpose Adhesive Caulk to seal up all of the cracks. After 2 hours drying time, it was time to paint. I went to Lowe's and found the perfect shade of doo-doo brown on the "Mis-Tint" paint table. I then mixed that paint with Acousti-Tex Roll On Ceiling Texture and begain to roll it on the outside of the model. I did not expect it to take as long as it did to dry but half a day later I was ready to do some final paint touch ups. I finalized everything with a few passes of Testor's Dull Cote. (**NOTE: This was my first go around with Testor’s Dull Cote….WOW…this stuff will choke a horse…literally. The fumes from the spray made all of my kids leave the house. Now some might not think that’s a bad thing but me and the wife had to go with them. We all stayed outside on the porch with a fan running inside for maybe 20 minutes and it was still horrible when we went back in.) **Please try and look over the time stamp in the photos. It's annoying as hell but I don't know as of this posting how to remove it yet.   0 Ratings     12345      Public Comments Please log in to post a comment    You must be a registered member to post comments. You may sign-in Here.

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