Terrain Tutorial - Sectional Mountains, part 1

 What does a gaming geek do on a rainy spring day - make terrain, of course!  I need some mountain ranges to break up the playing area for my Historicon game and finally figured a way to build them with the materials on hand.  Actually the core of idea is shamelessly stolen from Eric the Shed - take a look at his magnificent terrain builds here.

Ok I had two 2x4 ft luan plywood sheets lying around and that will be just enough to make the 6, 2 ft long sections I need (12 feet in total).  The mountains will be used to create a "hidden valley" in the center of the table.  I went with making 24 inch x 8 inch wide pieces.  The first picture show the plywood cut to length.

 While I was cutting the strips to length I decide to make 2 sections with an end that's 22.5 degree (together they'l make a 45 degree angle just to break up the monotony.  Making some ends angled will impact the width and shape of the end caps.

 I I then cut some of the remaining stock to create the end caps.  Since these sections will need to line up the end caps need to be exact matches.  A great reason to get out my dremel mini band saw!

 Hmmm, what I am going to do with these scraps?

 As there are six sections, there will be 12 end caps, 10 at a 8 inch length and 2 at 8.5 inches for the angled ends.  I grouped the band saw cut end caps by type and then sanded them to be exact matches.  Well exacts matches.

 Here's the frame for the first section - both end caps are at 90 degree angles and a support frame is built into place.  I'll fill the interior in with Extruded Polystyrene (EPS) (pink foam) and then carve the rock faces.

 The excess material from cutting the end caps was trimmed to be cross supports.  Waste not .....

 A close up of the bracing - this should be rigid enough to resist warping.

 I managed to get three frames finished today and will do the other 3 tomorrow.

This section will have a twisty mountain pass.  Others will have caves and other items of interest.