Loarre Castle (Spain) by King Derelict - Aedes Ars 1/200

[Old Collingwood]

Really  loving what  you  are  doing  Alan,  all  the  stone work  makes  it an  organic  piece by piece  build,  that  has  your  own  stamp on it  that  you will  remember  for  a  long time.

 

After  the  buildings/lanscaping is  done  she  so  cries  out  for  a  battle  scene  -  if  that  is  what  you  was thinking?  -  you  know  she  will  be  a  True One  off  ans  so  special.

Take  your time  enjoy  what  you  are  doing,  and  if  like my  Waterloo  build  plan a head  for  what  you  want  to create.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

On 7/21/2023 at 11:41 PM, Old Collingwood said:

Really  loving what  you  are  doing  Alan,  all  the  stone work  makes  it an  organic  piece by piece  build,  that  has  your  own  stamp on it  that  you will  remember  for  a  long time.

 

After  the  buildings/lanscaping is  done  she  so  cries  out  for  a  battle  scene  -  if  that  is  what  you  was thinking?  -  you  know  she  will  be  a  True One  off  ans  so  special.

Take  your time  enjoy  what  you  are  doing,  and  if  like my  Waterloo  build  plan a head  for  what  you  want  to create.

 

OC.

Thank you very much OC. Your Waterloo build is an inspiration. The stone look is one of the strong points of the Aedes Ars models even is some of the details are simplified and the blocks are really too big for the scale. Once finished I don't think it will be too obvious and this one doesn't have fiddly battlements which would look out of scale.

I think figures are going to be a must. To add colour and a sense of scale. I have enough figures from Pendraken so a skirmish is definitely possible. I'm looking at a lot of photos trying to get a sense of how it looked in the medieval period.

Alan

[king derelict]

So here we are. A milestone. The last blocks have been added to the outer walls and some preliminary shaping has started. I think I am going to leave a little roughness in the walls rather than sand them to a completely smooth finish. Looking at photos and videos shows some texture to the walls. 

Smoothing the inside of the towers is not easy even with the "Socket Sanders" (tm). Luckily they will not be easy to view once the model is complete.

At this point I think I'm 2/3 of the way through the blocks so that's 5500 blocks shaped and glued onto the formers. I had a full bottle of Weldbond with a broken nozzle that needed using so that was my initial adhesive. That is now exhausted and I'm halfway down the first bottle of the kit adhesive which I like better. It is a thinner consistency and dries faster than the Weldbond. It seemed a bit like Elmers so I made a small trial with a few blocks and it seems to work well so I may move to that when the kit glue runs out. I may be a bit heavy handed with the glue but AA don't really seem to give you enough. I ran out early in the Rochelle Towers build too. The only other flaw (at least to me and I may be missing something) is the concept of building on a cardboard base. Maybe if you don't move it all around during the build then the completed model has enough integral strength to hold itself together but that seems a risky prospect especially with this one where the parts are distributed over a large area. There are few builds out there to reference so I am happier using a sheet of plywood.

I hope to finish the shaping tomorrow and add a coat of matte sealant to bring up the colour a little and seal the block surfaces. I am going to take a short break after that and work on a couple of short plastic builds which means I can move out of the garage and back under air conditioning. I was miserable out there this afternoon. That may be an issue with airbrushing out there too.

Thank you all for teh support and the likes and comments

Alan

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

3 hours ago, king derelict said:

Thank you very much OC. Your Waterloo build is an inspiration. The stone look is one of the strong points of the Aedes Ars models even is some of the details are simplified and the blocks are really too big for the scale. Once finished I don't think it will be too obvious and this one doesn't have fiddly battlements which would look out of scale.

I think figures are going to be a must. To add colour and a sense of scale. I have enough figures from Pendraken so a skirmish is definitely possible. I'm looking at a lot of photos trying to get a sense of how it looked in the medieval period.

Alan

This  sounds great  -  seriously  looking forward  to  that  stage  with  the  figures  as well  as  the  rest  of this.

 

OC.

 

 

 

OC.

[Landlubber Mike]

Looks great Alan.  Way to stick with it!  5500 blocks! 😳

[king derelict]

On 7/26/2023 at 1:01 PM, Landlubber Mike said:

Looks great Alan.  Way to stick with it!  5500 blocks! 😳

Thank you Mike. Its starting to feel like progress. They have kits out there with 13000 blocks compared to the meagre 8600 in this one

Alan

[king derelict]

I brushed on matte craft varnish which seals the blocks and the mortar mix. It also seems to bring out the colours of the blocks and suddenly the whole thing seems rather better than in its raw state. Suddenly I'm quite pleased with it although the camera picks out a few places that need a bit of further attention.

I built up the cardboard piers that the towers will stand on. I've added them to the baseboard but I'm thinking of adding some more support. Aedes Ars have a lot more confidence in the loadbearing capability of cardboard than I do. I might stack a few heavy books on the piers and see how they do for a few days.

I added the cardboard formers for the main towers and the keep to get some idea of what is still to do.

Some way to go but its getting time to plan the lighting and start thinking about the appropriate media for the landscaping. I'm thinking foam blocks roughly shaped and then covered with hydrocal or Sculptamold as a start. Embed some plaster cast rocks to get the cliff faces. 

Thanks for looking in and the likes and comments

Alan

 

 

 

 

 

[king derelict]

This is a nice video of Loarre Castle which illustrates some of the simplifications of the kit. The base should really be sloping over its entirety but I think its a reasonable interpretation.

 

There are a few elements about the castle itself that I'm curious about. The outer wall and turrets don't have battlements of walkways. I wonder if they originally had wooden galleries with ladders and platforms within the towers. The other curiosity is that the outer walls don't fully enclose the towers yet the ground on one side seems to be easy terrain for the enemy to wander around the end of the wall

 

I may have to try modelling the two rock pinnacles as part of the base

 

 

[Jack12477]

27 minutes ago, king derelict said:

I built up the cardboard piers that the towers will stand on. I've added them to the baseboard but I'm thinking of adding some more support. Aedes Ars have a lot more confidence in the loadbearing capability of cardboard than I do. I might stack a few heavy books on the piers and see how they do for a few days.

You could add some 1/16 or 1/8 inch square stock to the inside 4 corners of each tower for extra rigidity.  I can't tell from the photos which size would be suitable. But glue them vertically inside each tower in each corner.  

[Jack12477]

33 minutes ago, king derelict said:

I'm thinking foam blocks roughly shaped and then covered with hydrocal or Sculptamold as a start. Embed some plaster cast rocks to get the cliff faces. 

Crumpled newspaper, covered in vinyl mesh window screen strips, or narrow strips of thin cardstock  woven into a grid, then covered in standard kitchen paper towels [ use the brand with small tear off strips] soaked in very very runny hydrocal to form the base. Let it set up. Then add more hydrocal over that to build up the terrain.  See if you can find any Kalmback publications on model RR scenery, even old issues of Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman magazines.    

[Egilman]

The easiest way is carved foam board like you described, but there are other ways as well...

 

You have a PN brother.......

 

 

Edited July 28, 2023 by Egilman

[Jack12477]

1 minute ago, Egilman said:

You have a PN brother.......

I knew the Librarian would locate copies 😊😇

[Old Collingwood]

Hi there,    Loving it  -  the  blocks  are  really  showing their  detail  now  -  so  coming together,   it looks  like  the outer curtain wall  where  probably  defended by  wooded  platforms  accessed  by  ladders,   same  in the  towers  they would  also  have  some  wood  platforms  again  with  ladders,   the  missing  sections  in the  video  of the  outer  wall  was probably  damaged  over the  years  hence  why  its  missing.

Some  castles  show  a  wider  curtain  wall  built  up  with  stones  and a  walk  way,  but  this  would have come  latter,  earlier  they  where  still  using wood  for  the  fittings  and  defence areas.

 

OC. 

[AJohnson]

22 hours ago, king derelict said:

This is a nice video of Loarre Castle which illustrates some of the simplifications of the kit. The base should really be sloping over its entirety but I think its a reasonable interpretation.

 

There are a few elements about the castle itself that I'm curious about. The outer wall and turrets don't have battlements of walkways. I wonder if they originally had wooden galleries with ladders and platforms within the towers. The other curiosity is that the outer walls don't fully enclose the towers yet the ground on one side seems to be easy terrain for the enemy to wander around the end of the wall

 

I may have to try modelling the two rock pinnacles as part of the base

 

 

Think you are correct Alan, there will have been an entire inner structure made of wood, long gone now.  As for the wall seeming to fizzle out before the cliffs, the possibilities springing to mind (from what I know of my local Knaresborough Castle) are either it has been partially robbed for building stone, much of the centre of old Knaresborough town is built using the Castle masonry from the 17th century onwards.  Either that or they simply didn't finish the castle construction.  These things took decades to build and so maybe over that time the original reason for having the defences at all had gone and they just stopped building?  Other possibilities maybe earthquake damage?

Edited July 28, 2023 by AJohnson

[robert952]

I just had an 'I wonder' thought... How much will this model weigh when it's complete?  (And then the follow up question: Where will it be displayed?

[CDW]

I wonder what type of tools they had in those days to keep everything on line and level. There is a lot of complicated engineering involved on something like this, not to mention logistics. It makes our architecture of today seem uninspired and "ordinary" by comparison. There's a whole lot of character in these magnificent structures which were built in a time when men's primary goals were just simply having the next meal (or so it would seem). There's a whole lot about ancient history that's hard for me to comprehend.

 

I love your model project, Alan. It's inspirational.

[king derelict]

On 7/27/2023 at 8:37 PM, Jack12477 said:

Crumpled newspaper, covered in vinyl mesh window screen strips, or narrow strips of thin cardstock  woven into a grid, then covered in standard kitchen paper towels [ use the brand with small tear off strips] soaked in very very runny hydrocal to form the base. Let it set up. Then add more hydrocal over that to build up the terrain.  See if you can find any Kalmback publications on model RR scenery, even old issues of Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman magazines.    

Thanks Jack

I have some spare screen mesh in the garage. I hadn't thought of using it but thats a great idea

Alan

[king derelict]

On 7/27/2023 at 9:13 PM, Egilman said:

The easiest way is carved foam board like you described, but there are other ways as well...

 

You have a PN brother.......

 

 

Thank you very much EG. There is some great reading material there and a lot of good ideas and techniques. I think this is going to end up as a mix of techniques. I think I will use foam board as the basic structure (and to help out those cardboard piers) and mesh and hydrocal. I think I may invest in a hot wire cutter for the foam board shaping. 

I'm thinking about ground cover too. The green flock provided in the kit will be ditched along with the blue (not even any water in this one). The landscape is more arid and needs to be yellow green anyway. I'm wondering about static grass but would that be too tall for a 1/200 landscape.?

I liked the Woodlands Scenic shaker of grass that I used with the WW1 diorama so I may get another in a yellow colour.

Thanks again

Alan

[king derelict]

On 7/28/2023 at 12:45 AM, Old Collingwood said:

Hi there,    Loving it  -  the  blocks  are  really  showing their  detail  now  -  so  coming together,   it looks  like  the outer curtain wall  where  probably  defended by  wooded  platforms  accessed  by  ladders,   same  in the  towers  they would  also  have  some  wood  platforms  again  with  ladders,   the  missing  sections  in the  video  of the  outer  wall  was probably  damaged  over the  years  hence  why  its  missing.

Some  castles  show  a  wider  curtain  wall  built  up  with  stones  and a  walk  way,  but  this  would have come  latter,  earlier  they  where  still  using wood  for  the  fittings  and  defence areas.

 

OC. 

Thank you very much OC. I think I can see holes in the curtain wall that may have held the inner ends of beams supporting wooden galleries. I had thought about trying to make some up but I'm not sure I can make the detail fine enough for 1/200. Maybe wire ladders painted to look like wood. I'll see how things look as I get to teh finish line.

Alan

[king derelict]

On 7/28/2023 at 3:23 AM, AJohnson said:

Think you are correct Alan, there will have been an entire inner structure made of wood, long gone now.  As for the wall seeming to fizzle out before the cliffs, the possibilities springing to mind (from what I know of my local Knaresborough Castle) are either it has been partially robbed for building stone, much of the centre of old Knaresborough town is built using the Castle masonry from the 17th century onwards.  Either that or they simply didn't finish the castle construction.  These things took decades to build and so maybe over that time the original reason for having the defences at all had gone and they just stopped building?  Other possibilities maybe earthquake damage?

Thanks Andrew. The ends of the curtain wall look nice and square but that might be modern restoration work. at the end near the main towers the ground is distinctly difficult for a major assault which would be squeezed between the wall and the towers. At the other end the ground is easier but a force coming round the wall would find themselves caught between the wall, the keep and the cliffs under the main tower.

It may just have not been finished as you noted. Like Beaumarais castle on Anglesey.

Alan

[king derelict]

8 hours ago, robert952 said:

I just had an 'I wonder' thought... How much will this model weigh when it's complete?  (And then the follow up question: Where will it be displayed?

I had a quick look to see if there was a weight given on the box but unfortunately not. Its going to be heavy though. As for where it will be situated when finished. I'm trying not to think about that. Its too wide to sit on a shelf somewhere. I really have no ides. Its a recurring problem for me. I'm wondering why on earth I bought a 1/48 Lancaster kit too!

 

Alan

[king derelict]

7 hours ago, CDW said:

I wonder what type of tools they had in those days to keep everything on line and level. There is a lot of complicated engineering involved on something like this, not to mention logistics. It makes our architecture of today seem uninspired and "ordinary" by comparison. There's a whole lot of character in these magnificent structures which were built in a time when men's primary goals were just simply having the next meal (or so it would seem). There's a whole lot about ancient history that's hard for me to comprehend.

 

I love your model project, Alan. It's inspirational.

Thank you Craig. Its slow but now it feels like I am making progress and I am enjoying watching it unfold.

 

The medieval builders must have been masters of the basic mechanics of engineering and understood levers, fulcrums and mechanical advantages in things like pulley systems. I suppose they had plumb bobs and maybe some sort of level but they certainly did great things and left us some wonderful buildings to marvel over. The cathedrals of Salisbury, Chartres and Cologne are marvels as are the English Castles of Edward in Wales.

 

Alan

[king derelict]

In spite of planning to take a break I am still enjoying this project so much and with the morale boost of completing the curtail wall I decided to carry on while the spirit is strong. I am adding the blocks to the keep and the causeway to the main towers. 

I then have to stop and think about the lighting. There will be plenty of room to run the wiring under the landscape but I need to work out how many leds will be needed and how to mount them in the towers. I don't think they get hot so maybe i can place them on foam blocks. 

This will be a bit more of an adventure compared with shaping and adding blocks

Thanks for all the support and comments

 

alan

[Egilman]

8 hours ago, king derelict said:

Thank you very much EG. There is some great reading material there and a lot of good ideas and techniques. I think this is going to end up as a mix of techniques. I think I will use foam board as the basic structure (and to help out those cardboard piers) and mesh and hydrocal. I think I may invest in a hot wire cutter for the foam board shaping. 

I'm thinking about ground cover too. The green flock provided in the kit will be ditched along with the blue (not even any water in this one). The landscape is more arid and needs to be yellow green anyway. I'm wondering about static grass but would that be too tall for a 1/200 landscape.?

I liked the Woodlands Scenic shaker of grass that I used with the WW1 diorama so I may get another in a yellow colour.

Thanks again

Alan

My pleasure brother... but a suggestion in understanding climate....

 

That area is not arid, at all... more subalpine... it is dry on that rocky outcropping cause of the wind more than anything else... wind does three times more drying than the sun/heat does.... The grasses will be mid level 18"-30", there will be shrubs growing in clumps but not more than 4-5' high, taller where they are sheltered from the wind.. Very little to no exposed dirt, and what semi level patches will have is short grasses... Lots of exposed greyish/brown basalt type rock with deep cracks from weather exposure....

 

Its a wonderful landscape with lots of action that sets off the monolithic stones of the castle...... I think it will come out wonderful....

[CDW]

23 hours ago, king derelict said:

Thank you Craig. Its slow but now it feels like I am making progress and I am enjoying watching it unfold.

 

The medieval builders must have been masters of the basic mechanics of engineering and understood levers, fulcrums and mechanical advantages in things like pulley systems. I suppose they had plumb bobs and maybe some sort of level but they certainly did great things and left us some wonderful buildings to marvel over. The cathedrals of Salisbury, Chartres and Cologne are marvels as are the English Castles of Edward in Wales.

 

Alan

I have been told that the ancient builders, masons, were the forerunners of what we know today as the Masonic Order. The Blue Lodge. Today the Masonic Order uses symbolism to teach morality whereas the ancient ones used the actual tools in their work. The compass and square are symbols of Free Masonry, but the actual tools have been around for millennia. The masons of old took a solemn oath to never reveal their secrets of construction and nothing was written down. The masters of the craft we would know today as the architects or engineers. All their knowledge of the craft was kept inside their heads, never in writing. It was their way of protecting their craft and keeping themselves in demand.

[Roger Pellett]

There are rules of thumb that are easy to remember if used often; 3-4-5 triangle for 90 degrees, rule of .7 for laying out an octagon, Pi can be approximated by 3, etc.  Water levels are easy to construct if they had some sort of translucent flexible tubing ( animal intestines ?) and of course chalk lines. Calculations could be made with an abacus.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Roger Pellett

[Egilman]

The first levels were used by builders as far back as the Egyptians... (including water levels, although very cumbersome to build and use) Around the same time, builders used an A-frame level, on which a plumbline was suspended from the vertex of the A...  When the feet of the A were set on the surface to be checked, if the plumb line bisected the crossbar of the A, the surface was horizontal. A variation of the A-frame level also was used. The frame of this instrument is an inverted T with a plumb line suspended from the top of the vertical stem. But in essence, this form of level had no real rival until the 17th century and was still commonly used in Europe until the middle of the 19th century....

 

Tubing and glass lights were first used as a basic water level in the 1600's, but they still never supplanted the frame level in common use until the spirit level was introduced in the late 1600's... Once the spirit level was perfected it was incorporated into the survey equipment of the day and supplanted all other forms of levels (including plumb bobs which the original levels were based off) for the building trades, eventually, by the mid 1800's becoming the common carpenters/builders bar level... In the 80's the water level and surveyer's transit was supplanted in the building trades by the electronic level for measuring level over distances... And today, GPS does the job on most civil engineering projects, establishing level by bouncing radar signals off a satellite in space...

 

Although understood for over a millenium, waterlevels didn't become really practical until the mid 1600's... They didn't need clear flexible tubing to work... Besides, clear flexible tubing didn't appear until the early 1900's...

[king derelict]

On 7/30/2023 at 4:49 AM, Egilman said:

My pleasure brother... but a suggestion in understanding climate....

 

That area is not arid, at all... more subalpine... it is dry on that rocky outcropping cause of the wind more than anything else... wind does three times more drying than the sun/heat does.... The grasses will be mid level 18"-30", there will be shrubs growing in clumps but not more than 4-5' high, taller where they are sheltered from the wind.. Very little to no exposed dirt, and what semi level patches will have is short grasses... Lots of exposed greyish/brown basalt type rock with deep cracks from weather exposure....

 

Its a wonderful landscape with lots of action that sets off the monolithic stones of the castle...... I think it will come out wonderful....

Thank you very much EG. That is really helpful. 18 inches is less than 0.1 inches at scale so I think I will use the Woodland Scenics yellow turf. and some bushes. The landscaping is going to be a fun part of the build and I appreciate your help.

Alan

[king derelict]

23 hours ago, CDW said:

I have been told that the ancient builders, masons, were the forerunners of what we know today as the Masonic Order. The Blue Lodge. Today the Masonic Order uses symbolism to teach morality whereas the ancient ones used the actual tools in their work. The compass and square are symbols of Free Masonry, but the actual tools have been around for millennia. The masons of old took a solemn oath to never reveal their secrets of construction and nothing was written down. The masters of the craft we would know today as the architects or engineers. All their knowledge of the craft was kept inside their heads, never in writing. It was their way of protecting their craft and keeping themselves in demand.

Interesting stuff Craig

It sort of reminds me of many, many years ago when I worked construction out in the Arabian Gulf. The engineer on site was the only person who could read a drawing and he gave the dimensions to the foreman who was the only other person who could read a tape measure. He would then hunt around for a stick of the right length and the gang would be told "that deep"

Alan

[king derelict]

7 hours ago, Egilman said:

The first levels were used by builders as far back as the Egyptians... (including water levels, although very cumbersome to build and use) Around the same time, builders used an A-frame level, on which a plumbline was suspended from the vertex of the A...  When the feet of the A were set on the surface to be checked, if the plumb line bisected the crossbar of the A, the surface was horizontal. A variation of the A-frame level also was used. The frame of this instrument is an inverted T with a plumb line suspended from the top of the vertical stem. But in essence, this form of level had no real rival until the 17th century and was still commonly used in Europe until the middle of the 19th century....

 

Tubing and glass lights were first used as a basic water level in the 1600's, but they still never supplanted the frame level in common use until the spirit level was introduced in the late 1600's... Once the spirit level was perfected it was incorporated into the survey equipment of the day and supplanted all other forms of levels (including plumb bobs which the original levels were based off) for the building trades, eventually, by the mid 1800's becoming the common carpenters/builders bar level... In the 80's the water level and surveyer's transit was supplanted in the building trades by the electronic level for measuring level over distances... And today, GPS does the job on most civil engineering projects, establishing level by bouncing radar signals off a satellite in space...

 

Although understood for over a millenium, waterlevels didn't become really practical until the mid 1600's... They didn't need clear flexible tubing to work... Besides, clear flexible tubing didn't appear until the early 1900's...

 

22 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

There are rules of thumb that are easy to remember if used often; 3-4-5 triangle for 90 degrees, rule of .7 for laying out an octagon, Pi can be approximated by 3, etc.  Water levels are easy to construct if they had some sort of translucent flexible tubing ( animal intestines ?) and of course chalk lines. Calculations could be made with an abacus.

Very interesting stuff and it is probably pertinent to remember that Pythagoras and Euclid were around a long time ago too

Alan