Well, well, well!

Well, well, well, well, well. Well.

Well. This post is about wells, continuing my recent theme of 1/72 fantasy terrain and scenery. Wells are great for fantasy terrain. They exist pretty much anywhere there are people, they are usually centrally located, they are distinctive, and they're central to all kinds of myths and tales. All that, and they're pretty small, so they have a lot of character for such a little item.

Here's a well I just painted up.

It's a kit found in Italeri's 1/72 scale "Desert Tents" set. I like it, as it's pretty close to my classic impression of what a well should look like. It being a desert well, it has a skin instead of a bucket, and it doesn't have the protective gable covering you might find in more wooded areas. But it's round, loose stone, with wood supports and a rope. That largely says "well" to me.

The kit was pretty easy to put together. Everything fit together very nicely, even the rope and waterskin, which could have been obnoxiously fiddly. As you can see, the base was originally quite a bit bigger, more so than I thought it needed to be. With no undue effort I was able to cut it down to what was barely essential, then glue it to a 1.5" washer, as is my wont. I had to do another simple mod when I was scrubbing the kit before painting and snapped the waterskin off by accident. With my pin vise, pin, and glue, I was able to reattach it. Yes, the rope that hangs the skin from the crosspost is a smidgeon of metal pushpin, with a bit of woodglue dribbled on. It's certainly a more durable model this way, so I'm actually glad my accident occurred when it did.

Here are some other wells I have.

To the right of the Italeri well are a Mines of Moria well from Games Workshop and a Bones "Chaos Well" from Reaper Miniatures. These larger scale bits actually compare favorably to the Italeri well in terms of scale. On the right is a sort of watering hole from Imex's "Southwestern Alamo Accessories" set, which has a great many interesting bits. This will be good for more hardscrabble or remote communities. Another in-scale well kit I'm aware of is made by Green Line. It's got the winch and gabled roof that are probably what most people expect from a well, but is fairly expensive for my taste.

I'm pleased with the little Italeri well. I'm sure I kind find a number of uses for it.

Sven gets more than he counted on when he seeks to quench his thirst