Skyrim Forge (craft project)

 

I asked Charley what I should build next. When he said “the blacksmiths forge from Skyrim”

Looking at the pictures I recognised the stupidity of putting a thatched roof on a blacksmiths forge. Changes will be made! 

I asked him what bits he likes best from it. The raised platform is cute, reminds me of Japanese castles and that town in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy with the dry canals. 

I built the Forge in two sections, the open-air workshop area and the Blacksmiths hut which then got attached to the same 2mm mdf base but not in the same place as originally planned. A second floor balcony became a walkway above a raised wooden platform leading into the workshop, beneath which is the log pile for the forge itself. 

Charley instructed me the forge itself should be exactly like the one in Skyrim, circular and open to the rain. I did research into the necessity of bellows for smelting iron ore at a higher temperature than bronze ore, a discovery which shook the world. 

The base structure is cardboard because I am too cheapskate to make it all from mdf. The surface is covered entirely with XPS foam for bricks. In true Skyrim style I’ve included a lot of chunky logs from twigs gathered from around and about during this spring and last autumn. I used gorilla glue because it sticks faster and stronger than PVA glue. 

The second floor is a 3”x3” Tudor style cabin in top of an assumed stairwell inside the 2”x2” cobblestone tower. Unlike the other medieval fantasy models I have been making this one does not have a detachable roof to access the interior, as the action all takes place in the open-air workshop (and the bridge above). 

NB with the cladding the basic measurements expand. On this topic, my standard method of stairs is similar. Between each 1”x1” step large enough for a 28/32mm miniature base (2.5cm) to fit on, is a 1/4 inch x 1/4 inch decorative step. So a 2.5” stairs has two functional steps and 0.5” non-functional realism. Each step is quarter inch high here - for the Docks project I did it differently. 

The wood will be painted as wood, the exposed cardboard parts painted with PVA sprinkled with baking powder for an authentic wattle&daub texture and then painted GrimDark (TM Games Workshop) white, which is to say faded yellow-brown, dingy, dirty and generally not very white at all really. 

I forgot to take many pictures of the work in progress before it got to the stage of being nearly ready to basecoat in 50/50 PVA/Black Acrylic (Blackrylic). 

I’ve somewhat gone to town on the features here compared with normal. It’s a blacksmiths, so there are weapons racks. Shields, swords and stuff will hang from walls and crates of horseshoes between tables, buckets of water, bellows and tongs. And of course the inevitable anvil.