Over the weekend it occurred to me that I need to find a way of storing this, as even a 2×2 board could be awkward to fit in a wardrobe if it has too much detail on it. Then I remembered about Back 2 Base-ix and their modular terrain boards.
I still want to glue most sections together so I can have a seamless stretch of water at the front, but I like the idea of potentially adding other pieces over time – so having magnets built into the frame is a great idea. If I get really tricky, I could even magnetise some pieces of bevelled picture framing timber… that way the board could have a “finished” edge on it, removable when expansion is needed.
Being a nerd who never really used that Geology degree for much, I started drawing cross sections of elevation across the board…
I think I’ll use 16mm boards for the front of the table, keeping the water level as low as possible. Then, I want to use a few 63mm boards at the back of the table. That will really lift up the higher road, and give me an excuse to make some stairs for the centre of the table…
I mucked around with graph paper trying to sort out 300×300, 300×100 and 150×150 shapes – the basic plan is to have two sections, each made of four boards glued together.
The front section (water, dock and low ground) will be 600mm x 400mm, built up from the 16mm base boards. The rear section will be 600mm x 200mm, built from a 63mm base. This will have an overhang at the front: both for the stone texture on that large retaining wall (shown above), and for the stairwell. The whole piece should sit neatly on the flat docks, and it’s narrow enough to fit on a high bookshelf without too much overhang.
