Secret Doors and Floors

I managed to return to my secret door project, since I wanted a break from the hallway archway and such.  Halloween is a busy season for me and my family and it is the best time of the year to stock up on spooky things that can be used in making dungeons and castle related terrain.  Anyway, I didn't promise on writing blogs every day.  However, I always look forward in sharing my passion for creativity.

What challenged me with the secret door at this point was the flooring.  In the design of the secret door module I decided to have a section of the wall break away as the secret door. Without getting into the mechanics too much, the flooring for that wall section would slide inside the room.  Pictured here is the floor untouched with the wall sitting on it.

After determining the size of the secret wall/door section I had to measure and mark the flooring for the top layer.  This section of foamcore would then be cut to allow the middle section to slide inward.   Dry fitting, gluing and waiting took priority in making sure the flooring would work the way I intended.  The outer sections were glued on first and were measured to fit the base of the archway section.  This is how I envisioned the door would move into the room.

With the glue dry I measured out the middle flooring to see how much room I would need for the secret door to slide inward and allow a figure to pass through the opening.  Pictured here you can see from a top down view of the figure having space to move in and around the door slid inward.  I drew some simple lines to start the tile pattern of the flooring as well.

Even though I cut the middle floor section I plan to keep the unneeded floor part for the module in case I want to cover the track below.  Pictured also is how far the door will slide into the room and how the flooring looks with the carved tile pattern.







Like the other floor tiles I carved the foam with a similar tile pattern, although the floor gaps are still an indicator of inconsistencies of the flooring.

Inside painting, Fitting and a Gate Corridor Section

Ever try to assemble something and you realize there are parts that are hard to reach when you paint it?  Dealing with the Gate Corridor Section of my modular dungeon has shown me that issue.

The gate section for a corridor was going to be a simple archway as pictured.  Then it dawned on me for this piece to be two sided and have a gap between the to archways in order to allow something to slide down and create a barrier.  My first thought was a simple gate that would slide down, like to a portcullis.

I decided to use foam core as pictured to give a sturdy spacer and it is thick enough to let cardboard and skewer sticks to pass through it.  Of course I used a template to know how wide to make the spacers and such.

Cardboard is great for holding skewer sticks together and gives a good uniform spacing for them to represent metal bars.

After placing the two sides together for a dry fit test and where I was going to glue it to the floor tile, I realized the inner part on the flooring as well as the inner part of the archway was going to be difficult to paint when glued together.

This reminds me of my Gate Tower Project that I did a while back for a stronghold I was building.  In both cases you have to paint and detail the inner part before you can finish assembling the piece and painting the outside as well,

After gluing the foam core sections down, I test fitted the skewers and cut them to size to see how they would slide in the archway.  I kept the brackets simple and will paint them after the gate is assembled.    

Base coated with black as pictured.

The neutral gray really brought out the details as pictured from the carving of the foam.

Personally, I prefer to assemble everything in a build and paint later.  This is how it looked on the floor tile as pictured and the flooring was going to be the next challenge in covering the hard to reach areas.

After tracing the outline of the archway on the floor tile I noted where to paint the floor and knew it only needed a base coat to cover up the white area under the slot section.

Seams, Archways, and Secret Doors

Over the weekend I had a chance to expand on a couple of ideas to add to my dungeon diorama tiles.  With all of my current flooring tiles taken up with walls I decided to make more regular floor tiles.  As soon as I did that I thought of a corridor archway and a secret door tile.  I was even more happy to try and find a way to creatively hide the seams of the walls as they stood together from different tiles.



Pictured here are three different tiles with the sections added to help hide the seams of the walls.  Notice how I cut them higher to allow space for joining floor tiles.







At first I thought of adding a stud or pillar like section to an edge of a wall, so when it would butt up against another wall you would not see the seam between them.  I used foam core again to achieve this, however, I realized that it will be more of obscuring than covering, since any protruding edge is liable for breaking or chipping off.  With this section added it will help reinforce the corridor side of the wall on a tile.




With measuring and lining things up the pieces effectively fit together.  A 28 mm figure stands near the doorway for scale.  








The archway tile was an idea that hit me as far as creating an obstacle for a corridor.  It's function would help reinforce the dungeon ceiling and have other options at its opening.  So far I have thought of adding a gate, portcullis, and some other sliding door to the opening to give this piece some versatility as well.

This is still in its experimental stage as the indented doorways will face out on both directions of the corridor.  I plan to separate the two with a piece of foam core for spacing.







While all this was going on, I came up with an idea for a secret door that would be accessed from the corridor of the dungeon.  So far I cut a piece similar to how the stone would look from the inside of a room.  It is still in the works yet I think I am on the right track.  I am thinking the door will be unlocked from either side of the wall, but the secret door can only be pushed into the room from the corridor.  This will require a custom floor tile for this piece.

Pictured here is the wall with how it would look from the room side of the dungeon, similar to a basic wall tile.  The main difference is the inner part will move away from the archway as a separate piece after the door is unlocked and pushed inside the room.