Dwarrowdelf Booknook

 Build Summary

The Dwarrowdelf Booknook is a design emulating the vastness of the dwarven hall with the use of an infinity mirror. In my original design, I placed a single dwarven pillar in the center of the mirror box.  I have since updated that design to use a quarter pillar in each corner resulting in a more open hall.

My complaints about the prior design are documented here.  This update is now similar to this nook on YouTube ("How to Build a Mines of Moria Infinity Box Book Nook"), but you will note that the design without the terrain in front means the effect is very poorly behaved in daytime and the glamour shots are all in the dark. This new model takes the best aspects of both designs. 

This post will briefly summarize the build and provide any required information.

Mirror Box Construction

For my mirror box, I ordered some Custom 2-Way 1/8 inch thick Acrylic Mirror pieces from SpeedyOrders.  I had to get a quote for my custom size which was 8"x3.125".  Thinking back on this, I really only needed one two way mirror.  The other three could have been so called "first surface mirrors" instead.  And with these the build might have been better.

Also note that I cannot personally highly recommend Speedy Orders. I feel they overcharged for my custom pieces. However, they are a real company and actually delivered a good product.

2 way mirrors are not great mirrors. And I really only needed one two way mirror.  To improve the performance of the other three mirrors, I identified the "first surface" side of the mirror and spray painted the back side of three of them black.  This will prevent any light behind the nook from leaking through and spoiling the effect.

Then the pieces were taped together with gorilla tape, forming a hinge.  In this configuration, each 1/8" thick mirror edge rest against its neighbor so that 3 inches of each the mirror surface is visible on the inside of the box.

Mirror box showing black backsides and tape hinges

Note: Throughout development you can test your concepts in the mirror box by placing objects inside the box, turning off most of the lights int he room, and shining a flashlight or headlamp into the top of the box. Doing this regularly will also tell you how robust your concept is to exterior environment lighting. 

Mirror Box interior (Dwarven Pillar)

The selection of the dwarven pillar, cutting and 3D printing is already documented here.

To summarize, this model was purchased and cut into a single quarter piece (in Blender) and 4 parts printed.

The next step was filling some gaps (which could have been done digitally).

and painting. 

• Spray paint flat black
• Craftsmart Black to fill any spots
• Craftsmart Dark gray over most surfaces
• Craftsmart Light gray edge highlights (use the side of the brush) Note: DO NOT highlight the edge of the pillar where it was cut in quarters as this will look silly when reflected in the mirror.  

The next step involves adhering the quarter pillars inside the mirror box. I made a small test and found that super glue would hold my pillars in place. There is much risk here as super glue (common CA glue) could have just torn the front surface of the mirror off! luckily we do not need all of the mirror surface and only applying glue towards the edge of the mirror had low risk of ruining the project. After a few seconds the pillars were suck fast.

Unfolding the box, each pillar was aligned with the straight edge, at an offset matching the thickness of my floor foam.

Quarter pillars glued to each mirror

The floor piece is a 3"x3" square piece of foam with 1/2" tiles cut into it and painted in the same style as the pillars (do not use spray paint on foam).  When folding the mirror box back together, I super glued two of the corners together to tightly close some larger gaps.

Final assembly

Illusion test

Mirror Box lighting

The two way mirror appears as a normal mirror when the light on the outside is brighter than the inside and lets the observer see inside when the light levels are similar or brighter on the inside.  The mirror box will need to be recessed and shaded, and the light inside will need to be strong to overpower any bright exterior reflections.  This is going to take a lot of light, so I installed 9 full size LEDs in the ceiling piece of the box.

Each LED is held in place inside a hole (created with a pencil) by hot glue.  Each LED has its own resistor and I have become very quick with the soldiering iron, so this is not much work / a problem and I have found that this configuration has advantages for longevity of the system.

With these LEDs and USB power it looks quite bright.

Nook Terrain

The terrain inside the nook was made in usual way with a dollar store foam core box and scraps of XPS foam. For tutorials on building miniature terrain lookup Black Magic Craft on YouTube and checkout the earliest videos. The stairs were carved out using a hobby knife, the wall texture achieved with latex caulk and small stones and rubble are real sand adhered with PVA glue.  The same color scheme was applied here as well. 
 

The rear of the box is ready to receive the mirror box. 

Box rear (note the lights wired here are not used)

Box and Front Plate

The outer shell is constructed from thin sheets of basswood.  I use wood glue to affix the wood to the foam core and will gently stack a few books or clamp it while drying.  I mounting the top piece first, then the sides and I try not to worry too much about the precision of the fit on the bottom.  The pieces are all over-sized (except the bottom) and I use a small orbital sander to quickly make everything flush.  If you were to measure really well, you could easily sand it flush by hand instead.

The front plate was done in Inkscape (svg or pdf) using a somewhat odd box size frame.  I made my first LOTR nook in this size and must therefore continue. The aspect ratio is pleasing and has worked well so far. Note: To view the SVG or make edits you will need the free fonts (free for personal use) Ringbearer and Cirth-Erebor.

Gandalf

This 1980's 25mm Ral Partha miniature is a great substitute for Gandalf and I happened to already have it. You can still buy this from IronWind as Mage 03-041.  But honestly 1 in 10 mage models is passable for Gandalf and you should be able to make anything work. 

 Return to Dwarrowdelf (Moria)

Like so many fabled trips to Moria, I was never really happy with the outcome of my own adventure there. Specifically the infinite mirror effect on my Dwarrowdelf booknook (redit video) fell a bit short. 

These short comings are:

1. The pillar in the center obstructs much of the view / looks wrong as the door should open to something that looks more like a hallway.
2. Viewing the infinity mirror effect through the corner joints requires a lot of precision that simply isn't there.  After a few iterations the eye gets lost.
3. I used the same front surface 2-way mirror on all four sides, and two way mirrors have significant losses such that each reflection is quite a bit dimmer than the last.  This effect actually works well for Dwarrowdelf/Moria as Gandalf is the light source.  However, a similar effect would have been achieved with better mirrors on the back and sides and the dimming mirror only on the front surface.

Here I will be attempting to fix issues 1 and 2.

The Plan (pass under the mountain undetected)

The plan is to place one quarter section of the pillar in each of the four corners of the mirror box.  By virtue of the mirrors, each of the quarter sections will appear as a complete pillar and we will no longer observe a pillar directly in front of the door (issue 1) and the corner seams in the mirror box will be hidden (issue 2).

My existing pillar is made of foam, detailed with thin cardboard, and glued in place.  So it will not be possible to cut that into quarter sections. Furthermore it will be very tedious and difficult to build four high quality quarter sections.  I'm going to shop around and by a model which I can slice and 3D print.

The model

I found this Moria Pillar model on Cults3D for just a few dollars. I bought it and brought it into Blender and cut out a quarter section.

Printing

I scaled the model down to 15 cm height then printed four of them with my FDM printer. The model reported a bad polygon somewhere (my fault) but it printed just fine.

Results

Originally this was just supposed to be a single prototype and I was going to get my neighbor to print them in resin.  But I set the first one up in the mirror box and it looked great.

There is some damage modeled on the pillar and it looks a bit silly when mirrored and I will fill it before painting.

Also note that the appearance of the gaps will diminish when the pillars are painted dark gray. And the gaps themselves will be smaller when the base and ceiling are installed. 

Next Steps

I will provide full documentation on this modification and the original build when I button it all back up.

The Crystal Shard - Forgotten Realms Booknook

Read this book 30 years ago and it still has a special place on my book shelf. Now a Larry Elmore cover art inspired booknook will keep it company!

Build Process

The build involved sourcing, modifying and painting miniatures, making the foreground hill terrain,  building the box, painting the backdrop, installing the lights, and creating the front image plate.

Miniatures

Drizzt

The source of the Drizzt miniature is Dark Sword Miniatures.

From there there is a significant amount of surgery to achieve the pose from the book cover.

With a jewelry saw, cut away the base, the legs at the knees, and the right shoulder area.  And also separate the hands from the weapons (I used a pair of wire cutters for this as the metal is soft)

Then confirm your new pose with sticky tack.  Looking good so far!

Start learning how to work with green stuff by filling in the major parts of the model.  At this point I learned that "clay shaping tools" size #0 are a must for this kind of work as they allow you to smooth things out.

Then progressively get better at adding fine details.

Prime and paint

not bad!

Wulfgar

I used this miniature from Reaper Miniatures (Human Barbarian Hero) as the base model.

Then I kitbashed a likeness of Aegis Fang starting with a GW chaos warrior hammer.  It probably would have been easier to design it in TinkerCAD and have my neighbor print it, but this was done days before I learned about it.

Nope

better

A bit long, but I like it!

Bruenor

For Bruenor I used a fairly standard GW Dwarf Warrior from the Out of Print (OOP) box with sprues stamped as 2004.

The kit does not come with an empty hand, so this one had an ax trimmed off and I sculpted the thumb. I also mounted a shield on his back because he uses one in the book and it would otherwise cover much of his face.

The picture above shows the various parts, though they are assembled differently.

Terrain

The terrain is small snow and rock covered hill on which the miniatures will be arranged.  To form the hill I stacked several slices of dollar store (Readi-board) foam core. It is important to frequently test-fit the miniatures as shown below.

From this point I glued on some jutting rocks (foam bits) and applied a layer of Sculptamold to create an uneven texture.  I set the Bruenor and Wulfgar miniatures in first and did a first painting because some spots would be very hard to reach.

Finally I set in Drizzt then flocked the base by carefully brushing on PVA glue and applying Woodland Scenics Flake Snow.

Box & Backdrop

The box is formed from dollar store foam core and the left side is typically left open so that the background can be more easily constructed and painted.

 The background was painted with craft paint (white, gray, very small bit of blue) on a flexible sheet of "paper" for a cricut machine.  We had this scrap lying around from some kind of project my son did and it has the feel of a very thin flexible plastic sheet.  I imagine photo paper will work very well here also.

The outer shell is constructed from thin sheets of basswood.  I use wood glue to affix the wood to the foam core and will gently stack a few books or clamp it while drying.  I mounting the top piece first, then the sides and I try not to worry too much about the precision of the fit on the bottom.  The pieces are all over-sized (except the bottom) and I use a small orbital sander to quickly make everything flush.  If you were to measure really well, you could easily sand it flush by hand instead.

Lights & Electrical

For this part of the project I use standard white 3v LEDs with the intent of running the nook via a USB power supply.  I bought a bunch of cheap USB cables, but I'm usually able to find an older type of cable which I have several copies of and no use for so I cut off the odd end and use it.

Since USB is 5v and the LEDs are intended for 3V, you will need to use resistors I have a bunch of 360 Ohm resistors for exactly this purpose.  Because we will use 5 LEDs, you could combine the resistors (using only one larger resistor) and attach all of the LEDs across the same voltage drop (less soldering), however I stopped doing this because I found the variability of the LEDs means that one of them can carry more of the load, weakening it, until the next needs to take the load, and so on...  Until after a few months your LEDs look dim and are warm to the touch.  So I connect individual resistors directly to each LED.

I mounted four LEDs in the top of the box.  The LEDs behave like little spot lights, so I glued parchment paper over top to diffuse the light.

Being lit from the top puts the figures in shadow.  To resolve this I added a single light on the left side.  I cut away a small piece of the foam core side and mounted the LED.  To complete the effect, I added parchment paper to diffuse the light and aluminum foil as a light shield so that it does not glow through the box or the front plate we will be adding.

 Lastly, the USB plug is soldered on to the back. 

Front Plate

The front plate was done in Inkscape (svg or pdf) using my standard Paperback book box size frame, a gradient and images for the logos.  The Forgotten Realm logo can be readily found.  But for the Crystal Shard text I grabbed the highest resolution cover image I could find and used Gimp's select by color feature to pull the crackled title letters.  Then I found a best match serif font for the "RA Salvator."

Unfortunately my printer interpreted these grays as being quite blue.  But it still looks great.