Forge World Hobbit-Hole Upgrade Set review and build - Scouring of the Shire

Forge World sells this kit as an Upgrade set, but it basically it consists of a very thick Hobbit Hole front (double sided so you can choose which side to use) along with two dormer type windows, and two chimneys. You need to supply your own foam and basing material, They are all very well detailed with no major flashing, and just the usual type blobs of resin you'd expect from pressure or vacuum casting. Here is the link for the kit https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/Hobbit-Hole-Terrain-Set-2019-FW

As you can see from this picture the front is very thick, i measured approx 10mm. It lead me to thick whether it is possible to cut this in half to get two fronts. I did set about this with a razor saw, and did manage to cut this in half, but i will cover this in my next post.

For now I've decided to make a Hobbit Hole using this front, with the two chimneys and windows.

I'd cut some 3mm MDF for the base and some high density foam. This was actually an off cut of Kingspan, a high density foam used in the building trade with silver foil on each side for insulation. Peeling the foil off both sides gave me a nice size chunk to use in this project. In this picture I've roughly shaped it to suit the MDF and stuck it down

I use Gorilla Glue to stick foam to MDF, it pretty much sticks anything, but you need to dampen one side before you put the two parts together. It then expands as it sets so you need to use some weights or clamps to stop parts lifting away from each other. You have to be careful not to allow moisture to get near the nozzle or it will get inside the bottle and set the remaining glue.

As you can see I tried to be conservative with how much glue I used near the edges so only a little bit squeezed out. The bond was very good after a couple of hours

A slight over-sight in that I should have cut the resin front into the foam first before i stuck i down.  So with a knife and a few minutes later, the eventual resin front sat inside the two edges of the foam, and wrapped around it nicely.

Before gluing the resin front in place i shaped the block of foam a little better and worked out where the other features were going to be. This picture shows the finished placement of everything along with a bit of plasticard to simulate some paving in front. 

One thing i found handy before gluing the windows and chimneys in place was to pin them much in the same way you do when pinning miniatures. This also stopped the bits from sliding around as the glue expanded and set.

Some more strategically placed pins helped to keep everything in place as the glue set up.

Next job was to cover the foam with filler, blending in any gaps... 

Then cover the filler with sand, blending in the plasticard, and seal it all in with some watered down PVA. Here it is ready for paint..

Here it is painted, flocked and sealed for durability. I used a variety of lengths and colours of static grass, with a few bits of flock in places to give it a more natural look...

I'm really pleased with how it turned out, the detail in the resin parts made it a pleasure to paint. The resin barrel is one of my own sculpts, the miniature bucket i picked up on the internet somewhere. This will go up in my Ebay shop very soon....