Painting The Rocks...

 

Becoming A Castle....

Some of you may Recall, Dear Readers, that Two years ago I had decided it was necessary to just get the back walls of the Castle painted because the wood was becoming brittle and warped in its unprotected condition. It was a major effort, but Oh My, it gave me a true taste of the future view of the Castle when it would be complete! Those Rocks! That forbidding fortress feeling! It was so exciting to finally see my imaginings coming to reality.... but it was only the Back walls of the Castle that were completed. And they were turned back to wall where they are never seen. And life moved on and it surely took me longer than I expected to complete the Side wall of the Tower so it could finally be painted too! The buttress has been glued and screwed to the side of the Tower and the wires are all buried inside and the electrical box is built and the Stairs are attached... all that remained was gluing the stairs wall in place and painting the rocks! So you can see above, I began by carefully aligning the "rocks" for the buttress addition with the already painted rocks of the back wall of the Tower. It is essential that I continue the "courses" all the way around the Castle at the same spacing so they will eventually all meet at the front wall of the castle in the proper alignment! So I measure and carefully space the same way I had begun, keeping a sense of how the rocks "really" would be aligned and spaced. It is a little complicated, but I had already established a really good pattern on the back side and just need to keep it consistent. 

 It needed to go around the buttress and continue along

the Tower Side wall, with the rocks all aligning

 as they would in a real wall.

  

Because the door was right beside the buttress, 

I needed to start the pattern for the rocks

 by starting at the top of the buttress

 (where there was just the Tower corner)

 and set the pattern from there.

 Once I had the courses established at the corner, 

I could work down and up from there.

(I can't seem to make blogger give me single spacing here.... grrrr)

 

I couldn't go much further without gluing the front of the stairs wall in place .

  

Covering all those screws with spackle!

 

In the light of morning you can see the spackle has been

 painted over with the light gray base paint.

I needed to continue the "rocks" around the Stable entry...

The setting sun lights up this corner for a minute or two!

And the following day I began to fill in the "rocks" texture.

This does not take very long once the rock shapes are all laid out.

I know, the flash is a bit strong... 

but this room is dark on a too hot day

 with the blinds closed...

Finally, starting to paint the grout lines!

Slow going.... rock by rock....

Step by step....

And once again.... 

the Evening sunlight comes to play...

I still have a long way to go with the grout...

And this is just the Side wall of the Castle, Dear Readers,

But I do believe it is Finally 

Becoming a Castle!

Plan B....

 

Build It Better....

I am Happy to Report, Dear Readers, that I was wrong on at least two occasions in my recent posts! I had mentioned that the only light in The Tower no longer working was the Stable's lantern which would need to be entirely re-built. So I was very pleasantly surprised, as I was fidgeting with the lantern trying to decide how best to re-build it, to discover that the only thing wrong with it was a very loose light bulb! Once it was properly screwed in, I plugged in the cord and It worked! No need for a major re-design. My initial wiring did leave me room to access the socket and tighten the bulb. And you can see in the above picture, However dimly lit, that I had also patched over all those screws that were used to attach the exterior stairs. It was a simple matter to re-paint the rocks....

Can you see any screw heads in this picture?

All that remained to fix were the grout lines....

 

As you can see in this shot....

 pretty difficult to tell the screws are there!

But the second place where I was mistaken, 

Dear Readers, required a little more work to fix.

My lovely Stables "door bar" which seemed to work so easily

 with just the screw to turn the bar.... stopped working.

I was going to have to re-design the method 

for raising and lowering the bar from outside the Castle.

This took some serious thought!

But I came up with a solution!

 

I reasoned that the bar would need to be attached firmly to the pivot,

 and that would need to be attached to a lever from the outside.

Since the metal screw became loose in the wood after only a little use,

 I decided the whole structure needed to be made of wood.

I needed to use a wooden dowel, of sufficient diameter to be sturdy, 

(in this case 1/4 inch) and I would need to "square it up

 where it attached to the bar so it could not easily slip when turned.

The hole in the bar needed to be squared too,

 so it fit snugly like a tenon in old fashioned post and beam construction.

Like so.

The hole through the wall needed to be enlarged to take the dowel width...

I needed to be very careful that I left enough "wall" beside the hole..... 

(this might be a weak spot, but it doesn't get stressed by the turning)

 

This is the bar in place.....

And in the "up" position. It works, it fits.... 

but I need to build the "lever" for the outside.

The other end of the dowel would need to 

be "squared" to fit into the lever bar....

And I needed to start the "rocks" which surround the door on the outside

 so that the lever could be positioned at the right depth

 to be able to turn and not catch on the rocks.

The new "lever" basically sits on top of the rock surrounding the door.

When the "lever" is down, it means the bar is in

 the "up" position and the doors can open.

When the "lever" is pointed up, the bar is down.... 

here you can see it because the doors are still open.

If they were closed, the bar would grab into the holds!

See?  

The lever and the bar are both securely tenoned on the dowel!

It works!

And you might have noticed, Dear Readers, 

that while I have been wrestling with this complicated little lever,

 I have also begun painting the rocks on the Tower walls!

Well, first the primer coat....

Then the base coat of light gray....

Then the darker detailing of the "stonework" surrounding the door...

 

 Still in the just "roughing" it in stage....

Gradually trying to define the "rocks"......

And with the magic "grout lines" added....

Wow.... what a difference they make!

So you can see what a difference

 Plan B makes, Dear Readers,

Building it Better is always worth the effort!

Wiring Upgrades....

 

 Progress....

It had been a Very Long time, Dear Readers, since I had actually made any new "torches" for my castle! I had to research the methods I used when I first constructed them twelve years ago, digging back into my ancient blog posts. And I dug around in my boxes for all the likely jewelry findings to see which ones would fit together the best. The sculpey was still in good condition and didn't take long to bake up into a couple of "sticks" with a good hole down the middle to run the wire through. (This was made by wrapping the sculpey around a piece of coat hanger wire to shape it, then carefully sliding it off being careful not to collapse the central hole while baking.) Then the "sticks" got a coat of paint and the base jewelry finding "caps" glued in place. The bulb and socket piece needed to be threaded through the "torch" piece and into the "stick" before the "torch was glued in place without getting glue on the wire.

 

This is so the wire can be slid through the torch when needed to change bulbs.

 

Here it is getting tested in the Lord's Council Chamber. It works!

 

 

And both the new torches!

 

And in case you needed to "see" them... here with the flash...

 

Meanwhile, Dear Readers, the inside of the entry to the stables needed

 to be painted to resemble "rocks".

 

Sorry, I have to use the flash or you can't see much!

It is drearily dark here on a cloudy afternoon!

 

If you look carefully you will see all the wires are just temporarily "twisted" together.

 They all needed their joins "shrinktubed" to protect the joins.

 This took an entire day!

 

But it got done!

Notice all those wires with the shrinktubing at the joins!

The only light that is still in need of attention is the lantern in the Stables.

It has problems and will need to be completely dismantled.

 But considering that it was among the first lights in this Castle,

 I'd say that's not too bad!

Progress has been made, Dear Readers,

with the Wiring Upgrade!

The Castle Door Continued....

 

 Chip, Chipping Away....

As I Mentioned last week, Dear Readers, a big part of the complicated Castle Entry Construction has to do with the Electrical wiring box location and the attachment of all the wires for this Castle Tower. As I know I mentioned the last time I was cutting wiring channels into this old plywood... a year or two ago?... the wood has hardened with age and is very difficult to carve! The darker wood grain is harder than the lighter sections, but the irregular nature of the ply layering makes it challenging no matter which way you want to go. You can see on the back side (the painted wall) where I have carved the channels for some of the wires but not yet glued the wires in. There are reasons for this! Many of my "lights" are already "antique" (constructed years ago and a bit beat up in construction!) so they need repairs and or revising. And as I was contemplating actually gluing some of the wires in place, I began to think about the inevitable switch to LED lighting that seems to be overtaking the world, both big and small! What to do? Glue in all my old incandescent fixtures knowing I will eventually have to redo them with LED wiring? Or start over now with an entirely new wiring plan? Or plan to be a "hybrid" castle and gradually replace failed incandescents with battery LED fixtures as time goes on? The questions stumped me for a moment or two! But I reasoned that no matter what, wiring channels needed to be cut and whatever wiring I used would run through the same channels. So I pulled out the exacto knives and chipped away (literally!) at it.

This is a first thing in the morning sunny day shot...

These are the wires from the top Tower room... 

The Lord's Bed Chamber candles and fireplace.

As each wire joins a channel, 

the channel has to be cut wider.

 

Here you can see where the wires for the next room down, 

The Lord's Council Chamber, join the rest.

They are draped over the window frame

 to keep them out of the way of the blade.

These ones are the Hearth lights and the fireplace fire.

The channel has not yet been cut for the lights

 I want to add that will be along the side wall.

And for the torches in the Guard room at the entrance,

 there is no path for the wires but over the door!

Lots and lots of carving needed!

And because it was so challenging to carve,

 I tackled it in little spurts.

And in between, I worked on the stairs framework structure.

Testing the size of the Electrical box to be sure

 I can access all the outlets once the strip is glued in place.

Adding glue to the already "constructed and tested" 

part of the stairs framework. 

And gluing it to the base of the Castle Tower!

And the very next morning deciding

 I had maybe been a tiny bit hasty with the glue...

 because I decided there needed to be

 an additional attachment point for the framework!

Yep, retro fitting already!

Better now than later....

So I drilled glued and screwed that extra framework

 to both the castle and the base from the outside.

It would have been too difficult to get the drill

 into that part of the stables anyway.

Then the stairs were glued and screwed in place as well!

You can see all those counter-sunk screw heads

 which will be spackled over soon!

I know some of this is boring details,

 but if I need to figure out later what I did

 (when those screw holes are all hidden),

 I will have the record here!

The basic frame work is now attached! 

The side wall and the buttress wall are still only temporarily screwed in.

 I need to be sure the wiring part is done before I make those permanent.

But I promised you hinges, Dear Readers!

I know, it doesn't look like much.

These are my favorite 3/4 inch brass hinges.

They are large for dollhouse standards,

 but for crude Medieval construction

 they are not unreasonably large.

They will be altered to resemble iron

 and I will add the usual decorative straps.

The challenging ones were the ones for the Electrical box....

Sorry, my picture is dark... it was a thunder stormy day...

And I neglected to take any pictures of the carved insets

 I had to Chip away at to embed the hinges into the crack....

not the conventional placement for these hinges.

But I wanted them to be mostly invisible..... 

to conceal the box as much as possible.

When I get it all painted, the box will be hardly noticeable.

Meanwhile... the wire channel chipping....

Thank heavens a fair amount of it was working with the grain!

Straight, quick and clean!

These are the Guard Room torches' wires.

It took a lot of patience to cut over the door...

Slowly but surely....

And working on the rest .....

Drilling a ton of screw holes to attach the outer wall to the framework!

Because the doors take up so much of this wall,

 the structural rigidity is compromised, 

so I have compensated with a lot of screws!

You could say it is over-built...

I just call it sturdy!

Here you can see the double layer of doors to the Stables...

I will be constructing a way to bar the doors as well!

And the top slanted section of the buttress has been temporarily attached.

I need to be sure the wires all fit and can travel down behind the buttress.

Thankfully, I will not need to bury them in the wall for this part!

Here you can see the slanted top to the buttress sections.

The wire channels are all cut now too.

But before I can glue them in.... 

I will need to make repairs to all those castle torches and lamps....

some of those wires have been hanging off

 the back of this castle for more than twelve years!

 

Finally, some real progress, Dear Readers,

All from a lot of Chipping away!