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I'm in the process of making a modular 6 X 4 board using 1 x 1 MDF tiles. I want to give the board a little more personality then a flocked flat space and was thinking about using some kind of spackle/wood putty to give the more open areas some texture. I also want to use sand (the stuff you get at a hardware store) as my flocking material.

1) What kind of spackle/wood putty works best? It needs to take paint (hardware store primer and craft paint) and be relatively durable.
2) With hardware store sand do you need to heat it in the oven to kill any mold/mites that might be living in the stuff?

Sand prep depends on the grade, how it's stored, etc. Sometimes, heating is actually just a measure to remove residual moisture - construction crews mixing concrete don't care if their filler is a bit damp and clumpy. A wargamer looking to texture his board might,

For the undulating areas, are you looking for your material to be the final finish or will it be covered in sand, as well? Some materials are great for contouring, but garbage for finishing. Lightweight spackle is great for filling large gaps, blending large fillets, and building small mounds... if it will be covered. On its own, the texture is crap and it's less than intricately sculptable. Durham's Water Putty is like plaster on steroids - it dries rock hard and grips like you wouldn't believe, but flows too much to build really high relief. If you want a significant rise, you're usually better off building the core with foam, skinning it with plaster/spackle/whatever, then throwing texture over the top.

I'm planning on covering it with sand/flock and static grass plus paint. I also want to use it to bland the building foundations onto the tile. Sounds like a light weight pleaser is the way to go.

Does it take paint well?

i use the lightweight spackle a bit. it takes paint fine but i would give it a good 2 or 3 days to dries . It also can flake off a bit with some wear but nothing too bad.

- steve

Can you just use textured paint and drybrush it to save a lot of effort? It'll probably look more 'sandy' than actual sand too, which you'd have to paint anyway.

Actually, the easiest way is to make your own textured paint - mix a handful of sand into whatever paint you're using for a base coat.

I find that the grains in textured paint tend to clump, so you end up with some really rough bits and an awful lot of smoother patches. That might actually be a good thing; scaled down, a sandy area like a beach or sand desert would look smooth, so a sandy texture wouldn't be right. You could drybrush the rougher areas to look like areas of gravel or larger stones.

This guy has some good ideas!

You do need to heat the sand but you need to dry it out completely. When i did mine I put it out in a big container in the sun, and a hot day. and mix the sand often to make sure all of the sand dries out. you can also spread it along a tarp to make the process faster, but make sure its not windy outside.

I would use regular spackle not lightweight. Light weight cracks easier, but dries faster.
Heres a link of a good brand:
http://www.truevalue.com/product/DAP-1-2-Pint-Vinyl-Spackling-Paste/5933.uts?keyword=spackle


Automatically Appended Next Post:

steve2112 wrote:
i use the lightweight spackle a bit. it takes paint fine but i would give it a good 2 or 3 days to dries . It also can flake off a bit with some wear but nothing too bad.

- steve

2-3 days to dry? One of the points of using lightweight spackle is the super fast dry time.............