Then there were gadgets...

I met Roman Schelling through the Custom Batman forum where he was showcasing a beautiful Wayne Manor he had modeled for a film. I approached him about possibly modeling some peices for the batcave and he was enthusiastic and offered his very gracious help. He made these pieces by hand using balsa wood, cardboard, and Sculpy polymer clay. When they arrived, we were very excited. The plan is to modify a few of them and add to them.Believe it or not, though he made a TON of pieces, we still don't have all the familiar batcave props. What a great head start though! Thanks Roman!

It started out innocently enough.

For years I had mused about building a full-on TV Batcave in my favorite 1:25 scale. It seemed like a great way to display and showcase my various handbuilt 1:25 Bat-models and it would be a chance to do something nobody had done yet - model the TV Batcave.


But it also always seemed like a huge project that would take forever and so I never got around to starting it. Years later, I thought it would be a great project for me and my son Alexander to do together. We had already built a few mini dioramas together and this seemed like a nice big multi-weekend project to tackle. But we kept putting it off.














Then in 2004 I saw this model on eBay. I thought it looked great and was amazed to find an atomic pile already existing in 1:25 scale.

I won the auction over a holiday weekend when everyone must have been traveling and I got it really affordably. When it arrived, I was amazed at the build-quality: Welded metal struts, cast resin pieces, multi-media texturing. It was VERY nice. I then realized that this was how the big batcave could possibly get built - by supplementing our own modeling with other pieces by other craftspeople. It would still be a huge, time-consuming folly, but it just might happen.

I decided I wanted to get one that wasn't anchored already to a diorama so I contacted the builder - Jim Graham and he told me he could make me another, freestanding Atomic Pile.


And so, a Batcave - That's it. It's an omen. We shall model - a Batcave!