Over the Hills...A Couple of Christmas Eve Projects

For many years now I have made a habit of not leaving the property on Christmas Eve. It's just too crazy out there. It was bad enough doing the food shop yesterday - we went out as early as we could, but it was chaotically busy and as usual the price of the great New Zealand Christmas standards of strawberries, raspberries and cherries were through the roof. Thankfully we planted some raspberry canes a couple of years back and we will be feasting on homegrown raspberries and blueberries tomorrow. Most of my chores and tasks were sorted on Saturday and this had left me time to revisit some long neglected projects.

Towards the end of January 2022 I completed the larger part of my terrain tile project. Since then the last five frames have sat unassembled on my desk while I tried to figure out what feature to put into them. In the last few weeks I have thought that I need to have an area of coastline for naval landings. The five frames will be: an estuary linking to existing river sections, three straight beach sections and one end piece.

The basic frame required a unique profile to go from ground level to sea level.

Above are the first two tiles: the estuary on the left and a straight on the right. In this state they will have to remain for a while until the glue has set and some more time is available.

Also on the work plan is a series of hills that will sit on top of the tiles. I decided on this because creating  tiles with hills on them would create too great an inventory and at any rate placing the hill on top of the surface had the added advantage of concealing the joint between the tiles, helping to remove the checkerboard appearance. I had made a sample hill a couple of years ago (below) and that convinced me that this was the way to go.

I had purchased a piece of 4.75mm MDF for the hill bases some time ago and it has been sitting idle ever since, so I marked up an array of sizes and shapes - with one 600mm ridge, a couple 450mm long some at 300mm and some at 200mm. One or two of them are destined to become steep hills.

The pieces were then cut from the sheet with the jigsaw.

Then using the forms as templates the polystyrene was marked out.

Next I rough cut the polystyrene with the wire cutter.

I then angled the edge of one of the bases with a rasp to around 30 degrees, deliberately leaving the edge rough - this roughness will hold the glue better when the felt is fastened at a later stage.

The polystyrene was then glued on to the base and shaped with the wire cutter.

There the project will pause for a few days over Christmas.

These are the first of several terrain oriented projects over summer.

So, as I sit here with the rain pouring down and the Christmas lights blinking in the evening gloom I raise my glass of Pinot Gris and say Merry Christmas to all!