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Hello guys

So heres the deal, after years and years of dreaming of my own board, myself and a friend have finally set some time aside to create our own gaming board. We have got to the point of being so fed up with gaming tables with green sheets thrown over them that we have decided to have a go at making our own.

Our initial idea has been to get a couple of boards and lining them with 1.5cm thick polystrene and painting these with generous amounts of PVA as a selant (This is mainly done to stop the spray cans melting the polystrene when we later go to start undercoatin the boards). Once this is dry we are thinking of doing another coat of pva and adding sand to the mix to give it some texture. Again once dry, a final watered down coat of PVA to give a nice smooth finish ready for painting.

This is where you guys can give ur hints, tips or tricks. Has anybody embarked down this road before and or what advice would you give us before we commit to much to our little campaign. Any hints or pointers will be appreciated. Once we got the intial parts down, we will start to post some pics up on here but maybe depending on how it goes it will be under a new post. Anyways guys please feel free to comment on what you think would be better or help with the task ahead.

Its on like donkey kong!!!!!!

Sounds fun.

Although, I would warn that there is a good chance that there might be a little bit of melting, unless you add insane amounts of glue. You would be surprised. But if it is an earth board then that won't be much of a problem.

ye thats been my concern about the melting. I done projects before where that happened. So i have indeed used uber amount of glue, im sat waiting for the 3rd coat to dry right now hahaha

Ye its an earthy look we goin for, cos it seems to be more versatile in the long run....we recon. its just a simple flat board with deail etc added by the other bits of scenery that we have and are working on.

Interesting, all the best with making your gaming board with your friend, maybe you could post some picks of how you built it soon??

you can use emulsion with sand mixed in to basecoat the boards.
Some of my friends do display boards for wargames shows and thats generally how they start the process.

I started a thread like this a long tiem ago, got soem useful advice. Never got around to making the table, though.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/290660.page

Are you going to make it modular or static?

Nice one Hedwerx, got plenty of that layin around the house. Just one question though. Do you know if they add water to the mix of emulsion and sand?

Alkasyn, much appricated. Iv looked for a thread or post that had any pointer but didnt come up with much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Snord: i take by that you mean, Static jus plain with now real detail and modular you mean with things actually built into it??

If thats correct, we're just going to do it static. Mainly follow something that may fit into the Rhynn's world saga betwen the Orks and Crimson Fists, thats simply cos their the two forces me and my friend have. If possible it will be a mix between sand/gravel with the odd pacth of small flagstone/road surface. This is to make it urban but can also be an outcrop village setting or some other gumpth!

How long will it take to build?

So far its not actually taken that long. We 4x4 ft board cut in 2. 2 large sheets of polystrene cut down to same size of boards, tacked n glued to the boards. Edges taped with black tape to protect the seems and from chips. 3 coats of pva dryed. so far about 2hrs of work and jus the drying times of the PVA. going to try and do a bit 2nite. its coming along quite quickly, espcially as i dont really have much time these days.

I don't believe they do, I think its just plain paint and sand.

great, thanks Hedwerx

Glue the Foam to some 1/4" plywood. Brush wood glue onto the foam coat with sand. Allow to dry. Hit the whole thing with Scenic Cement and allow to dry. Paint the color of your choice.

Thats all there is to it, unless you use spray paint you won't melt the foam. The paint doesn't actually melt the foam, its the propellant used in Spray Paint that does.

I went to Wickes and got some of this.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/tongued-and-grooved-insulation-board/invt/210030/

total price for 4 sheets about £16, It works out to 4x6

As they are tongue and groove, you can modular them too. One of them I have cut and painted as a river. You can set it up where ever in the board you like.

I painted it up with watered down PVA building adhesive mixed with brown acrylic and sand with a wide brush. I wouldn't bother with spray cans.

Being 50mm thick, it is plenty thick enough to hold itself together, I haven't bothered to stick it to wood/mdf. A bonus of this is that it is light and strong - easy to pack away.

I have dabbled with homemade tables myself, Iv always found it quite fun. Infact me and my fellow gamers created our own forts for our armies, then took turns assulating each one
Try it out

Worth a look

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/398329.page

so as promised a few images of how we have got on so far, a short warning these pics are taken at night on a phone camera but here goes!!!!

That is some preeeeety handy work!!

Ha, well thats one comment we got, hows it looking in the light of day?

Here are the updated boards. They have been coated in a mix of white emulsion paint mixed with sand and gravel to give a rough earthy textured affect. Then it was base coated in some kids black paint that i picked up from the local shop. Nothing special. The next step and probably the hardest step, choosing what colour to dry brush the boards. I was thinking starting with codex blue....i think thats the name of the base coat used for Space Wolves. However using this may cost alot, as we all know the GW pots of paint are tiny. If anybody has any suggestions on alternative paints or colour schemes please please Please feel free to give some advice or pointers on what we could do.

Yes especially large quantities of the paint as well, as it will probably cost bucks to do in any thing else.

G

Looking good!

jonkofi wrote: If anybody has any suggestions on alternative paints or colour schemes please please Please feel free to give some advice or pointers on what we could do.

Take your bottle of codex blue (or a swatch of paint on a piece of paper) to the hardware, paint, or home improvement store and have them mix up a can of that color in whatever paint brand is cheapest. They do this sort of paint matching all the time. I did this when paint was on sale, and I got a gallon of brown (my preferred color for miniature and terrain basing) for less than 10 bucks. Even at full price, the you can get the paint you need for less than a 10th of the price of model paint.

Absolutely no reason to use expensive model paint for a terrain board.

Ok long time coming, nbut its finally here. We have had time to spend a little time on and im glad to say that progress has been slow but good.

After undercoating both boards in black, we set about finding a good base colour to dry brush over the black. As i was painting GW stuff around 15yrs ago the only real reference i had for painting stone and dirt was from back then. This was a basic undercoat of black, followed by a dry brush of Shadow Grey. So I set about doing that with the paints.....Then ran out of the 15yr old pot. Went to the GW store to get a new one and stupidly reconned that they would be the same colour.........NOPE. The older pot was the perfect colour and was exactly bringing up the required results i was looking for. So instead i took a sample of it to B&Q and got a very close colour match. Plus got another shade slightly lighter still to do the next stage of highlighting. Both tester pots together cost £4 which beats the hell out buying that from GW.

So the stage we have got to now is base dry brush done, and next lighter shade dry brushed in patches to create more realistic uneven battle surface. When we have more time, the next stage will be to further highlight to a near white/grey to look like rockcrete. Anyways take a look and please gives us your feed back or ideas. Unfortunatly the pics arnt the greatest of quality, but we thought you can see enough of what we got so far.