In the last post about this gate, which was well over four and half years ago, I wrote a big list of ideas for how to adorn the gates, and built a basic structure that I started to detail. At some point between then and now, I did a lot more work on it, but didn’t finish it. I recently rediscovered the work in progress gate while setting up for a game of Gaslands with my kids and left it out after the game (which the youngest comfortably won with a performance car) to see if I would get inspired to finish it. And evidently that worked.
I have only got a single WIP photo of how it looked between 2021 and now, so I’ll mainly just show off the final piece, and write a bit about what
The most obvious change has been the addition of concrete base pillars – with the actual gate structure being cut down further and mounted on the pillars. I think I decided to do this to bring a bit more surface and structural variety to the piece, plus make it stand up on it’s own a bit better. I generally speaking also can’t get enough of making concrete from weathered plaster – it’s so easy to get a good finish. The mould for the pillars (not shown) has been made with lego bricks and plasticard and then they are cast and weathered in the same way as with the machine gun turrets and barriers.
If I recall correctly I then painted most of the girder structure in a worn out black finish (painting this after details would be awkward) and after that it was a case of adding more and more layers of metal sheeting made from bits of plasticard and plastic window shims until it started to look right. For many of these, I used printed signs which are mounted on thin card and then weathered. Corner struts as jury rigged reinforcements also look good.
A few more details have been added, notably the red cabling which brings the piece to life a bit – all those cameras and weapons controlled remotely by the race organisers need power after all.
I still have the option of mounting this on a base, but don’t think I will – this is easy to store and I can always surround it with barrels and the like to make it look more grounded in the terrain.
