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We have decided to spend some time to build a new gaming board while waiting the new edition. Our old board was made from styrofoam with fishtank sand on top, glued with 15 euro can of spray glue. It just doesn't glue it enough, so it's tons of sand in the house everytime we play, have to say, my wife isn't very fond of that.

Now we are thinking getting two 5cm thick 60x250cm slices and cut them in to half to get 4 pieces of 50x600x1250mm styrofoam.

My real guestion is that can I after cutting the four pieces, just use a liquid-gas blow torch to make a rough surface as it would be close that you can achieve with glue & water mixture and sand? Blow torch costs about 45€ so don't want to do a hit or miss thing. I'm hoping that just "touching" the whole surface throughoutly would give me some grain effect on the surface and even I could make couple explosion crates staying a bit longer with the torch. After this operation I would use house paint to make it brown and then use some dry brushing methods.

Does this sound like a solid plan or should I just use the sand and glue.. I couldn't find any videos or threads about this technic, only vids with blowtorchy rivers and such, which gave me the idea actually.

Will I get a happy wife and happy result?

1) This should go into P&M general not tutorials
2) blow torching styrofoam would probably make the surface more like the barren surface of mercury rather than a general sand table. it would be better for you to try and stick the sand better. after you glue down the sand, go over it again with watered down glue. train modelers use a technique where they spray the area with isoproponal alcohol first then spray over that while wet with watered down pva to really get the glue in there.

3) blow torch outside. the fumes off foam is toxic.

I noticed the wrong thread forum too late and couldn't find a way to move this to the corresponding thread. I got atleast two options, ask someone to move this to right place? Make this thread a step-by-step instruction what I will be trying to do?

Anyway barren surface of a mercury doesn't sound that bad, but we have done most of our bases with Agrellan earth and Middenland tufts so don't know if barren mercury surface would work..

So like the new title says, is heat gun enough for sealing styrofoam or should I mix PVA with water for sealing before priming?

Xirax wrote:
So like the new title says, is heat gun enough for sealing styrofoam or should I mix PVA with water for sealing before priming?

Heat gun is not a good idea for sealing foam. Use glue. You can always take your current sandy board and cover it with glue over the sand, so seal the sand in place

You might take a piece of fine grit sandpaper to the surface of your foam to rough it up and remove the shiny top layer for better glue adhesion.

Hmm, what about spackle, which would you do first. Spackle the gaps and mountain cracks before sealing or seal and then spackling? Don't know if spackle needs it's own sealing.

At this moment I've glued couple mountains on the gaming table. Seems that even that I used pressure weight while glueing styrofoam seems to bend, but that's what the spackle is for, smoothen things up. Will use some bark aswell before spackling for more detailed rocky cliffs.