Dancing Dragon Inn - Week One

Dancing Dragon Inn - Week One
Originally uploaded by Alennka

First off, a quick note on the progress of the Regency Drawing Room. Basically, there wasn't any. I put a couple of coats of varnish on the floor and used air drying clay and a mould to create some cornicing/coving for around the top of the walls. This shrank something wicked as it dried and had to be removed from the room. The Spinet piano I ordered for the room has arrived and it bigger than I'd imagined. Now I'm worried that it's going to be too dominating in the room. As usual I've barely started and I need more space! Hopefully the fireplace will arrive this week (but most likely it won't until next week) then I can finish the walls.

Now on to the Inn . . .

I started with a piece of MDF. I glued some 0.75cm thick foamboard over most of this leaving only an off centre channel which will form a stream bed. Over this I added a thin layer of air-dry clay. I used a clay impress mould by Malcom's Miniatures to make a herringbone brick pattern in the clay where the road and buildings will be, leaving the stream bed and surround 'natural'. The mould works really well and I was pleased with the result. The only complaint I can make about them is their size. When you're trying to cover a large area like I was, the small size of the mould means you have to make a lot of impressions with it and that means there are lots of chances for you to make a mistake and go off square. The trouble with getting off square is that one row of bricks doesn't quite line up with the next. I started in the back corner and worked forward, so all the bits where I ended up off square were at the front. My tip for anyone wanting to use this type of mould is to start at the front and work back, that way if you do gradually get out of line, it will be at the back where it will be less noticable.

Next I started work on the back wall which is made of a piece of Tough Foamboard. I'm pleased that the shop has started to keep this tougher foamboard as it doesn't warp as easily as the usual stuff. I just made one mistake with it. I read the label that said "Easy to cut foam core" and thought it meant the whole thing was easy to cut. When I tried to cut it I soon realised it meant exactly what it said, the foam core in the middle is easy to cut, the tough coating on either side of that core is most definately not easy to cut. I'm thinking I should lift the embargo on power tools and borrow my mum's Dremel to see if that has a blade that can cut it. Or failing that perhaps the circular saw. Making two cuts with my craft knife took most of an afternoon but at least I have no fear of the stuff warping or collapsing when a cat jumps on it. When I had managed to cut through the board for the back wall plus three smaller walls for the "shop" on ground level, I again got out the clay and coated the back wall and used an impress mould to 'brick' the entire wall, leaving one clear archway to give the impression of a street behind the wall and a smaller arch through with the stream emerges. I added a two inch high strip of clay "bircks" arond the bottom of the walls for the shop.

Once the clay was just dry enough to handle I started to assemble the walls. I drilled down into the MDF base and inserted cut off toothpicks into the holes to act as dowels. The foamboard walls were then lowered over the toothpicks, the toothpicks piercing the soft foam core and locking both pieces together with the help of a little glue of course. The exception to this was the side wall of the shop space which has a single toothpick in it's bottom allowing it to pivot open for access.

This was all then left to dry thoroughly. By the next morning all the air dry clay was horribly cracked, the result of shrinking as it dried. All air clays do this a little, but this was a great deal worse than I had allowed for. The only thing that stopped me from tearing off all the clay and starting again was the fact that the next lot of clay could crack just as badly (although as I said earlier, the Drawing Room project's cornicing didn't survive and will need a second attempt). At this point I've been considering what to do about this for a couple of days and have decided to leave the clay bricks cracked and go with a "rustic" look. Some of the cracks will be covered by wooden posts and battons while others will hopefully look like old, cracked bricks.