I recently did an experiment with dehydrating mushrooms at home. I wanted to see if it was cheaper to buy them already dried or to dry them yourself. I sliced up 250 g of mushrooms and put them in my dehydrator. Once dry, there was only about 16 g left. This was a higher proportion of water weight t...

That is lovely. Glamdring Blue is spot-on.

Since it seems apparent that there is no actual analogue of Mithril, I think the more pertinent question is "What is the best analogue of Mithril for my application? " Coins of Mithril would be...interesting. Let's take Gandalf's assertion that Bilbo's shirt is worth more than the Shire--a...

The next step on this project was to replace the awful faux-leather handle. I decided to go with one of solid wood--it might be a bit slippy for combat use, but for an effectively decorative item it should be fine. I carved it out of a piece of black walnut from my parents' orchard. https://i.imgur....

Will Whitfoot wrote:I'm going to try one of the little Yamaha Venova saxes one day...

You might check out the Xaphoon. Weird little thing, but charming.

https://i.imgur.com/Go0EVx0.jpg?1 Here's my little collection. The stick dulcimer's a fun little instrument--I really want to make my own with four strings and mandolin tuning. The fiddle's materials are inauthentic for any sort of reenactment--even the "Dwarvish technology" excuse doesn'...

Seems like a pack of that size would fit under a cloak quite easily.

Nice design. It seems hard to make a backpack that looks appropriate, but I think you've done a good job.

Holy damn, that scrimshaw...this is gorgeous.

Perhaps something like a subtle York or generic "Northern English" accent could work - or maybe something closer to Scandinavian...? Considering that the Dwarves were taken from Norse/Germanic myth, live primarily in the North, etc. , I believe a Scandinavian accent would be more appropri...

Wow, this looks so good. Very understated.

Thought I'd post a somewhat refined third draft at a higher resolution.

Will Whitfoot wrote:
I have some vintage dies for making some small intricate keys... I always thought they might work for this....

Sounds lovely. I could probably turn something out on my 3D printer to cast in pewter, but have very little experience with that workflow so far.

kleenur wrote:What do you use to render them if not GIMP?

Dedicated mapping programs, primarily QGIS. GIMP is just a image manipulator; it can't do the 3D rendering of the original model.

Ah ha! Well, though I don't understand most of those words, I DO understand that it involves some sort of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Sorcery! I've been looking for an excuse to really try diving into GIMP, and this seems like a good one. I would also guess that is wouldn't take terribly ...

Since this post has been lighting up a bit more, I thought I'd post the second draft of that map. http://i.imgur.com/APNxMGW.png That map looks great! Did you use some kind of software to make it, or did you free hand it? Both of these maps were traced in Gnu Image Manipulation Program. The first on...