Middle Earth Mega Project

Definitely a First-World Problem and not perhaps the most search engine friendly title.

I love this model which which I cast in resin from an original metal Dwarf Hero, heavily converted and weathered with the now extinct Forge World Weathering Powders.

The idea was to produce a Dwarf King statue for my subterranean games in Middle Earth which would represent one of the Dwarf Ring Bearers, now in a deserted corner of Moria or an abandoned Dwarf hold lost to Goblins or worse, it has become rusted by lack of care during the passing of the ages.

On recent close examination the I am more than happy with the main model and it’s corroded look, and that it is starting to fall apart (spot the axe?) and has started to erode with rusted fragments being re-absorbed into the rock in which it was originally mined.

The only thing that bothered me was the smallest detail, the Magic Ring held aloft by the Dwarf, which looks more like a medium sized donut than a ring. This became all I could see with this model, so I decided to make a smaller ring. I tried unsuccessfully to model a smaller one in green-stuff, like I did before but this just did not go well. So in the end I cut a minute link from the smallest non precious metal jewellery chain that I could find.

I am now much happier with the size of my Dwarfs ring and look forward to getting the wee chap on the table top to be the splendid centrepiece and battlefield objective that I intended him to be.

This was a particularly fiddly job, and my patience and my language were at times put to the test. At one point the Dwarf’s thumb and forefinger snapped shut firing the ring a meter and an half away into the carpet, which then took me half an hour to find. So I spent a wasted half hour on all fours searching Gollum like for the ring.

I am now happy with the far smaller ring and the end result, which is a touch exaggerated, but any smaller and you won’t see it.

The ring can be seen in it’s original for on the plyers bottom left image, with a commemorative 50 pence piece for size.