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BUILDING THE BLACK GATE

Supplement: The Land of Shadow
© Lotrscenerybuilder 2009

Step 23:

"Two sheer hills, black-boned and bare..."

More 6mm MDF was used to build some sheet piling at the back & sides of both corner plates. We shaped these panels into the silhouettes of mountain ridges although there was no need to do so as they would become entirely covered by foam. But it's nice to use their shape for reference when you're cutting the foam into crags.

Note that there's a GW miniature and a 'Mines of Moria Dice Set' in the picture to give you an idea of the scale.

In order to determine the exact positions of all gate segments we put the Morannon board segments back together. The Gateway & Gatehouse elements were placed with their backs standing against the horizontal B-guideline, with the hinge-towers positioned in between; both gate-doors were meeting each other at the central A-guideline. Only when all six elements were perfectly aligned did we glue both Gatehouse structures onto the board.

Now if you are going to employ the 'skewer-tape' hinge-system you'll have to attach the hinge-towers first to the Gatehouse buildings by installing the skewer-pegs. Once the Gatehouse is glued to the board it becomes impossible to establish the connection.

Next we made a 3.6cm mark measured from the east and west ends of the Gatehouse frames; these marks we used, together with the C-rectangles, to fix the position of both Witch-king walls (please study the Morannon Board template as the pictures tell a different tale ...).

The Witch-king walls were glued onto the board...

... as were the Towers of the Teeth. We used some filler to mask the joint between the tower and the wall. A few 'teeth' were added to the Carchost rib, just above the Witch-king parapet.

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