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“Designing the harbour doors:”
Now that the straight and curved sections of the docks are done it is time for a first expansion.
Docks are not complete without a set of harbour doors. I call them harbour doors although the dictionary translation for “havensluis” is
“lock-gate”, “sluice-gate” and “flood-gate”. I stick to harbour doors.
I made quite some sketches of these dock elements starting from the size of a basic straight dock element.
I planned on making a corner section of these harbour doors which mend that I had to cut the elements twice for the fact that the
2 elements are mirrored.
The front side of this dock section got a round finish. I liked this better then a straight finish although this means that you can not extend the docks
from this point. I might make a straight finish version in the end but for now I did not see any use for it.
The doors themselves are also cut twice since the texture of the wooden planks on both doors differ as well.
The thickness of the doors is not solid enough to keep them standing on a surface without tumbling over.
This is the reason why I added vertical support beams to a certain height at the rear of the doors. On these support beams I made a narrow walkway
out of planks again so miniatures can cross over on the doors from one side to another.
Having these support beams added to the doors, another adjustment automatically followed. Opening the doors fully would end up in touching the
support beams to the side of the dock element. I looks much better when the doors themselves would go up against the wall so I made 2 vertical
stone openings where the support beams can move into when the doors are fully opened. Now the door can fully open and the walkway is at a height
where it just overlaps the stone pavement of the dock.
The doors have to be prominent and must look somewhat impressive and strong. I decided to make them higher than the dock element itself.
With the door sticking out it does not look that well and something was missing. I added a small curved wall section where the door rotates from.
To suggest that the doors can be operated I added a capstan. I simply took the capstan I carved earlier for my “buccaneer ship” and also carved a
round wooden hatch in to the pavement where I can put the capstan on if I want to.
In all the dock set contains out of 12 parts and needs to be assembled. As far as the painting is concerned I used the same colours as I did
on the straight and curved dock set.
Next update will be the “Wooden Drawbridge”
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