Thank you for all compliments.
I did modify the design a bit, moving the horizontal items to the top and duplicating part of the portal opening curve in the filler piece behind. I got to glue everything together today and started preparing to put the backing pieces in place. Not having a table saw, it's a bit difficult to rip skinny wood parts. This was the longest pieces that my chop saw could make. I supposed I could use the saber saw which only would give me one true edge on the milled side of the board. I can't use my Skil saw to rip narrow boards into narrower boards. Or...at least I don't know how to do it safely.
I used Aleen's for all this work and it sets fast enough that I could do all four portals with the total number of clamps I had to bring to the operation. While one aspect was curing I glued the next portal. By the time I got to Portal #3, the glue had set enough on #1 so I could than glue on the next piece in the layup. The last pieces to go on are the square detail pieces. Here I either clamped on just put weights on top.
Here are all four portals ready for the backing and filler pieces.
Here's kind of like how the backing pieces will go. This will give some nice surface area to fasten the mountain underlayment, and a way to fasten the portals to the layout from underneath. Accidentally, the portal's width is just about the exact same width as my OSB sub-roadbed.
As I noted in a previous post, I'm going to do something to add some simulated depth to the openings so it looks more substantial. One way would be using green foam. Another would be to line the opening with heavy paper stock. I see which works best.
Tomorrow I'll have these finished up a primed. I will use the same sand paint as I used for the retaining wall. Once it dries it looks pretty good. Again, the paint's going to cost the most for this project.
