And the Hits Keep Coming

Back in the 1950s folks were pretty sharp.  That's why my small town has a power substation protected by a massive fifteen foot high dike between it and the local river. And it's no simple earthen berm, but a fully reinforced bulwark used as the foundation of a state highway.   The river can get a little rambunctious so they prudently planned on keeping the power on even if the river should top it's previous high water mark during flooding.

What they didn't plan on is the water coming from the other direction. 

Early Friday morning a freak storm dumped about four inches of rainfall on the area between midnight and 6 AM.  That, unfortunately, followed a week of steady showers that had already saturated the ground.  Around 5 AM three small creeks that run through town, and drain roughly 24 square miles of hill country above the valley, jumped their banks and went for a bit of a morning walkabout. The water came roaring through the streets, overwhelming the storm drains and flooding roughly half the town.  Including that wonderfully well protected power substation, surrounded by a protective wall that would keep it safe and dry during even the worst river flooding.  Except the wall only covered three sides and the water wasn't coming from the direction of the river.  It was rollin' down Main Street and right into the "protected" dike area.

From all accounts the results were quite spectacular, particularly when six feet of water flowed into the massive transformers.  Nothing big blew up, which we should probably be thankful for considering the largest ones are ten feet high.  But a transformer the size of a hefty microwave can sure make a bang when it goes.

So the entire town has been without power since Friday morning.  Our house didn't suffer any flood damage, but not having electricity has been a major hassle.  Hopefully we'll have some juice later today, but for now I'm sponging off the WiFi at Denny's to explain why things might be a bit light for a while.

Upstate New York is supposed to be a bucolic enclave where nothing every really happens.  Having two disasters in one year is seriously harshing our mellow. 

Eowyn's Shield

"Buffalo Bill" brings us this detailed recreation of Eowyn's shield from "The Lord of the Rings". It's crafted from real wood with a resin boss and metal edging.

The Horde

Copper Centipede has been busy calling up an army of Cthulhus.  It's interesting to see all the variations on a basic theme, including the effects of different surface finishes.

Building R'lyeh

Rev. Marx returns with a tutorial on using cold porcelain. He's using it to sculpt a custom "Settlers of Catan" board featuring the sunken city of R'lyeh.

"I read on one of the recipes that using 3/4 cups of white glue would make it less sticky to work with, so I cut back on the white glue by just a bit after my first batch. Just mix all these ingredients together in a pan and stir with a wooden spoon until smooth. I also added a few drops of black food coloring so that the finished product would not come out white. That way if something chips or breaks the base color will be grey, which is less obvious. Some sites call for mixing this concoction over a low flame on the stove, which is what I did for my fist batch, but that requires you to stir it constantly and it takes about ten minutes to congeal. Also, clean up of the pan and spoon between batches was rough."

Polymer Clay Casting

Jason Rippetoe sent over a link to this handy tutorial on Board Game Geek. "Sunshiny" demonstrates how to use polymer clay molds to cast prop coins and medallions.

Dagon

Shaun Gentry was kind enough to share this work in progress shot of his latest project, a bust of Dagon. There's a lot to be learned from seeing something like this, from how to layer on detail to the effects of different tooling techniques.

Numenor Map

Tóbal took a break from his usual sculptural work to bring us this well done map of Numenor from Tolkien's writings. As usual his presentation is wonderful.