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I can't easily get hold of MDF etc for board/table purposes, so I've been using a roll out mat. It's okay but bland.

This week though, my local giant German supermarket chain has in a bunch of artist style canvasses, both the familiar frame of wood with canvas stretched over it, and another flat rigid board with canvas backed onto it.

It strikes me that either of these could be fairly ideal and cheap for use as gameboard panels, either folding or modular, but I haven't encountered them being used like this.

So I'm wondering if anybody has experience with using them as such?

I actually have tried this before, it didn't go well :/

with the "canvas over wooden frame" kind, that's not at all designed to be laid flat horizontally, with any kind of weight placed on it...the canvas has a lot of give to it, and if there's a handful of models or whatever on there, and you drop something on the canvas, everything bounces around like crazy.

with the "flat rigid board" kind...are we talking about 3mm thick or something?...thick, hard cardboard, with canvas glued to it?...I've tried that too, not nearly as rigid as I'd hoped...and basically, if you paint it, it will warp. (that's my experience with the ~3mm thick board ones anyway...if the ones you're looking at are substantially thicker, you might have a shot?)

They're exactly the types I was talking about, that's a huge help, thanks a million. The mat will see a few more battles yet so!

I saw a tutorial on how to make detailed rolling mat with canvas and silicone. I can search for it if you are interested.

I'm using mdf painting panels as Kill Team boards. They work well but they warped significantly after I textured and painted them. After it all dried they became flat again.

Found it anyway
http://tobispaintpot.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-horizon-tutorial-for-flexible.html?m=1

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm using mdf painting panels as Kill Team boards. They work well but they warped significantly after I textured and painted them. After it all dried they became flat again.

You gotta put a coat of Minwax on MDF before you use anything water based on it.

Oshii wrote:
I saw a tutorial on how to make detailed rolling mat with canvas and silicone. I can search for it if you are interested.

This is very useful, I'm surprised the pasted surface doesn't crack when rolled up.

I may look into this in future, thanks.

Curious about the results of using a plastic-backed cotton painters drop cloth, so I think I'll be using that.

Dunno if anyone's likely to see this, but what I ended up getting was this, from B&Q-

https://www.diy.com/departments/diall-cotton-polyethylene-pe-backed-dust-sheet-l-3-67m-w-2-74-m/1650663_BQ.prd

And I'm very pleased, because apart from being both cheap and conveniently plastic-backed, I just opened it up to start working on it, and rather than being 9ft wide, it's two 4.5 foot wide cloths roughly stitched together in the middle. Just find the seam and cut/pop apart the threads and you've got two sheets with no raggedy edges and a nice little plastic border. Awesome. I probably won't use all that space as I work on it but I'd rather have more space to work with than less in case something goes wrong and it means the resulting mat is potentially more flexible to different table sizes.

oh nice, looks like you could even make 4 6x4 mats out of that if you wanted.

'course, it's not gonna be as good as one of the premade thick foam/rubber mats you can buy...it won't have a smooth surface you can slide models around on, it probably won't reduce dice-roll noise, and it'll probably get creased/wrinkled, etc...

...but at that bloody price? and a bit of crafty painting, it's hard to argue!...kinda tempted to give that a try myself...

True about the slidier printed mats, but I have to say I really love the textured effect even if it isn't wildly practical lol. I've been experimenting on small cloth pieces and a mix of petshop sand - 2.99! - with some PVA and black gesso, scraped fairly thin, produces a result a lot like tiny tiny tarmac. I destroyed my camera's phone a while back or I'd show it off, but I'm happy enough with the results to try a full mat.

I'm planning to mix it through caulk instead of PVA because I feel like it will be a bit hardier over time. I use a lot more sand than any of the tutorials I've seen to get that asphalty look though, so I might throw a little PVA through the mixture too in the hope it'll keep the looser grains together and give it just that hint of sheen.

So in theory - not reality, because I did also have to buy a new caulking gun and a canvas I wasn't happy with etc - one mat will cost -

A quarter of €18 for the canvas
About €8 for four tubes of cheapo white label B&Q caulk
About €4 worth of leftover black gesso
€2.99 for PVA
3/4s of a €2.99 bag of bird sand.

How does the sand+pva+gesso/caulk layer handle being folded/rolled?...like for storing the mat?...that's one thing that's always made me shy away from trying to make a thin textured mat like that, being worried about the texture all crumbling off...

 ZoBo wrote:
How does the sand+pva+gesso/caulk layer handle being folded/rolled?...like for storing the mat?...that's one thing that's always made me shy away from trying to make a thin textured mat like that, being worried about the texture all crumbling off...

Me too. Mine are still curing, but I'll get back to you and let you know, that was a concern of mine also. Anecdotally I've heard the thinner a layer you put on the better - I ended up doing two mats, one is supposed to look like industrial concrete and the other like tarmac, the second one is very thin but has more sand in the mix, so we'll see.

Terrain tutor on youtube had done one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB0NglVVtCc

he goes into a lot of experimental detail on making it work using a cotton drop cloth and 100% acrylic caulking
including texturing, flocking, and sand with rolling tests. i think he had a few vids but i cant really search em all up right now at work.
seems very promising.

Just to follow up - I left these to cure for a few days before rolling them up, and have left them loosely rolled up for a few days since. No cracking, although the sandier tarmac mix shed a few particles when unrolled, which I expected because to be fair I hadn't really sealed it or anything. I plan on spraying with a PVA/water mix to keep it tidy as soon as I can, I just haven't decided if I want to drybrush it or anything yet.

All in all, hugely impressed and really enjoyed making it. Only downside is how much space and mess it took to do, but I'd still very enthusiastically recommend it. I had to step on one of the mats a few times and it was no worse for wear.

nice, sounds like it's worked out pretty well then!...might have to give it a go myself sometime I think