Bone Wheel WIP part 1

I hope you enjoyed my teaser pics – now all is revealed!

Alongside the shipwrecks of the Battle on the River scenario, the eponymous Bone Wheel is perhaps one of the most contentious pieces of scenario-specific scenery in the whole Thaw of the Lich Lord supplement.

I’ve seen some great versions on the web, plus some good improvisation (the 6” circle surrounding a tree in a Magic Murder Mice video batrep springs to mind), but I’ve been wracking my brains for ages to come up with a solution that not only functions as per the scenario, but also looks good and most importantly doesn’t cost me anything!

Seeing as I dislike spending money on scenery that I’ll probably only use in one or two games, I started to poke around the bins to see what I could find…

Strips of balsa wood, donated by Giles

Empty Rendera bases sprue

2” base hacked off a D&D Pathfinder model

Nylon bolt, nuts and washers found in the bin at work

Some string

MDF offcuts from my Dark Ops cemetery set

Bits from various plastic mini sprues

The plastic ring-pull thing found inside Ribena bottles

Lots of No More Nails glue (henceforth abbreviated to NMN) and Superglue!

I started off by making the hub and spokes of the wheel by gluing lengths of sprue onto a nylon washer (using a 6-sided nut as a guide for the angles). I then glued another washer on top and filled in the gaps with NMN.

I then threaded a nylon nut onto the bolt, got it to the height I wanted and then fixed it with Superglue. Once this had dried I worked out how high I wanted the wheel to stand and sawed off the remainder of the bolt. It was then glued onto the base, upon which I also glued the MDF offcuts. Once all was dry I then smeared NMN onto the base and bottom half of the bolt.

Back to the wheel. I stuck some balsa wood strips onto the flat side of the spokes and, once the glue had dried, snipped the long edges to make them look more worn. I then tied string around the edge to act as a rim, and also tied bits around each spoke to hopefully make it look like they were lashed on. Each knot was held in place with Superglue if necessary and soaked in PVA to help them stay on. I then glued a hand onto the end of each spoke. More NMN was dabbed on to rough it all up a bit.

Again reaching for spare plastic sprues I hacked up some heads and glued them on the flats of the other nut, once more dabbing liberally with NMN to add texture.

The whole thing goes together like this:

The wheel sits, and spins freely, on the bottom nut. The second nut screws on above the wheel to hold it in place. When I’ve finished this nut will be glued on, leaving just enough room for the wheel to spin. The plastic ring-pull thing will be glued upside-down (making it a conical ‘coolie hat’ shape) to cap off the top.

What I decide to do with it next will be the subject of another post, so stay tuned.

Now on to the victims…