by Shipbrook

This is the Elder Scroll from Skyrim, modeled from scratch using measurements taken from the game asset. It's scaled at 30 inches long, but because it's been broken down into segments for ease of printing without supports, you should be able to scale it larger on many printers. It can also be scaled smaller; I've printed a mini-scroll at 16" long without the walls getting too thin to be structurally sound.

In addition to the printed parts, you'll want:

• Two steel rods, 21.6 cm (8.5 inches) long and 2 mm diameter

• A wooden dowel, 70 cm (27.5 inches) and 9.75 mm (3/8") diameter

• Real vellum or parchment, pergamenata, or other paper substitute, 21 cm x 45 cm (8.25 by 17¾ inches)

(Be sure to change the sizes appropriately if you scale the printed model up or down.)

Actual vellum (calf skin prepared for writing) or parchment (other animal skins) is fairly expensive at calligraphy supply stores, but a goat skin drum head of the appropriate diameter, and then cut down to size, is an inexpensive way to get real parchment. You may need to buy pounce (which is fairly inexpensive) to prepare the surface.

Drafting vellum and baking parchment are NOT the right stuff.

To print the "pull bar" pieces (which the free end of the scroll is attached to, to help unroll it out of the case), I put blue tape on the print bed and wiped it down with isopropyl alcohol (which makes the bottom layer adhere extremely well), and printed both halves simultaneously, with a brim. I printed slowly, with a minimum layer time of 10 seconds with "cool head lift", and they came out very nicely even though they're extremely tall with a tiny footprint.

Print Settings

Printer Brand:                          

Ultimaker

Printer:                          

Ultimaker 2

Rafts:                          

No

Supports:                          

No

Resolution:                          

0.1mm

Infill:                          

20%

Filament:                                            colorFabb PLA                                        White

Post-Printing

After printing, I smoothed it with XTC-3D, epoxied the parts together (except the handles), then airbrushed with Alclad II lacquers. Pale Gold overall; the gems were done in Candy Violet over Bright Silver Candy Base. The brown "leather" on the handles was done with a brush, using Testors brown enamel.

Haven't gotten around to inking the actual scroll part yet, but once that's done I'll glue it to the center of the dowel, roll it up, pull the end out through the slot, and glue that around the plain pull bar. Then I'll epoxy the handles onto the dowel.

The wall brackets were designed to be used with 3M Command Strips to attach to the wall without putting holes in anything.

How I Designed This

I exported the low-poly game asset for the Elder Scroll and imported it into Blender, then used measurements of that to build a high-poly base model.

I then replicated the surface features based on screenshots taken from various angles in-game.