Super-Robot Sculpt (Scratchbuild Really)

~150mm tall

I finished this guy back almost eight months ago but I'm just now getting around to showing him.

Sometimes I just want to make things with no relation to gaming, just craft for craft's sake. Actually, this guy did have a purpose, as I was trying to draw some robots and realized I didn't have a good grasp on the light and shadows. So, I decided to make a maquette, to help me understand how the light falls on a robot from various angles.

The figure was also an experiment to answer a couple of questions: 1) can I make a robot purely out of polymer clay, without kit-bashing any plastic refuse into it; and 2) can I make a figure without an armature? The project answered those questions definitively: Yes to the first, a loud and clear NO to the second.

The sculpture is purely polymer clay, but calling it a sculpture is a bit pretentious; it's more of a scratchbuild. I wanted to ape the super-robot style of Go-Nagai, so I started making simple polymer clay shapes, individual spheres, cylinders, cones, etc. After joining them all together with CA glue, I wrapped it all with thin sheets of polymer clay and styled it to shape the outer body. I did sculpt the head and face "traditionally" and am happy with how that turned out.

The lack of armature means the robot now lies in pieces on my hobby desk. He's served his purpose though. Not only did I get a number of good photos from a variety of lighting angles, I also learned some valuable lessons for the next robot I make.

Creative Pallet-Cleanse (New Scratchbuild Spaceship)

I've got a lot of creative energy recently, but I've stalled out on each of my projects.

A creative pallet-cleansing should help me refocus my hobby-brain. And that means going back to my old favorite and making a spaceship.

Back to my old techniques: pasta for the master shape, impression molding, then dental plaster casting.

I'll clean it up with files tomorrow, then plan to add some extra details/fix air bubble blemishes with epoxy putty. The ultimate goal is to get back to pewter drop-casting. 

Pasta Bot Activate!

125mm tall

I finally finished my unsanctioned “fan-fic” entry for the 2025 Big Bot Bash. The deadline for the real participants was a month ago, so talking about it now I kind of feel like Jim Gaffigan doing his bit about bringing up old movies around the water-cooler: “I just saw Heat!” 

I made a lot of mistakes on this build and picked up some good experience. For every genuine lesson-learned I had two or three lessons-already-known-but-not-heeded-because-I’m-too-cheap/impatient. 

First off, the fragility of the build made me glue it to a base early in the process. I then proceeded to finish the robot before going back to work on the base. Not only was texturing and painting the base around the completed figure a pain, the glue bond on his feet seemed inadequate. So, lesson-relearned: spend as much effort designing and building the base, including a solid mounting plan for the figure, and get it maybe 95% done before joining the two.

Secondly, and stupidly for someone trying to meet a self-imposed deadline, I decided to try two different paint techniques I’ve never done before, namely the hairspray chipping method and an oil wash for weathering. The fact I no longer have an airbrush made the hairspray weathering decision extra silly. More on that in a second.

I primed the based figure in black, as shown last post. The rattle-can of Vallejo primer cost €12 but delivered beyond my expectations. I would’ve just got the cheapest black spray paint at the hardware store but I’m now living without a car and “popping down to the hardware store” is no longer the trivial activity it was.

The universe works in mysterious ways. I did a quick internet search for places with spray paint and discovered a plastic model kit store within 150 meters of my new apartment. I walk over there and I swear I could hear the angels sing… hands down it’s probably the best model shop I’ve ever been in, anywhere I’ve traveled in the world. It’s quaint and packed into like a 10 meter square space but the nice owner has everything I could need. Seemingly every color of acrylic paint from multiple brands, every variation of tool, etc. Amazing.

Anyways, the Vallejo primer went on incredibly smooth; like buttah. Zenithal highlights followed via dry brushing Vallejo Bone White from the top down. I brush-painted the entire build with a Gunmetal glaze mix, trying to preserve the highlights, and at this point, it looked pretty good. I hit it with a light coat of hairspray and let that dry for a few hours.

The plan was to paint it all bright red (Vallejo Blood Red), like a Kubota tractor, and then use the hairspray chipping method to make the metallic base coat show through at dings and dents. Missing my airbrush, I took a makeup brush normally used for dry brushing, and did the “overbrush” technique with slightly damp bristles and very little paint. While I’d rather have my airbrush back, this still worked surprisingly well to coat the robot in red; the coat was even but thin enough to let the metallic sheen through.

I rubbed off a little test patch of red paint with a wet toothpick, and the Gunmetal showed through. Perfect! Then, real-life intruded and I set the project aside for days, maybe a week.

I finally got back to the project and wet the toothpick to start weathering. Sadly, all the acrylic paint rubbed right off, all the way down to the black primer. Apparently, the long wait between the hairspray application and the weathering attempt allowed the hairspray to somehow integrate with the acrylic paint, instead of remaining a barrier between the Gunmetal and Red.

The inability to do the chipping took the wind out of my sails. I was already behind schedule so I skipped most of the planned detail paint work: insignia, bands, hazard stripes, etc.

The penultimate step before finishing the base, the oil wash, was also new to me so of course I made some mistakes. I slathered the wash, a thinned mix of black and burnt umber oil paints, all over the build and let it sit. I seem to remember different guidance depending on what internet resource one consults: some say wipe off the excess immediately, some say wait 24 hours and wipe. I let the wash sit for about 40 minutes before getting nervous and attempting to wipe it down. A little oil wash wiped off but the staining seemed permanent. Tips from the Discord group indicate that I could just use more white spirit thinner and reactivate the wash, in order to clean it up more.

I plan to leave the bot as it appears in the pictures. Yes, it turned out much darker than I imagined and the paint job lost its metallic sheen but I like the griminess. 

Half-ass attempts at insignia

I enjoyed this build immensely, even though I miss not having many of my tools.  I'm really looking forward to starting something new.

Making something just for the sake of making it, and not intending it for gaming, was refreshing.  I'm contemplating making a spaceship next, but not a ~60mm gaming piece like I normally do.  I'm thinking a vessel at least the size of this bot, maybe more.

Then again, making robots is just plain fun, and I'm really tempted to make something 50-80mm tall that I can use in a Mighty Monsters game.

What to do? 

Handy Hobby Tip: The Secret to Glue-free Hands…

…is to not use your hands.

Of course you have to use your hands when crafting. So, take the advice of one of my favorite YouTube crafters, the Crafsman, and “wear you some gloves”. We’ll come back to this.

Great glue!  But not on my hands

I bought 16 oz of Starbond Heavy Thin CA Glue‡ back in November. It’s great stuff but quite runny (by design). The glue arrived in a large shipping bottle, accompanied by four 2 oz refillable applicator bottles and a pack of micro-tip applicator attachments. I quickly found that bottle-to-bottle glue transfers and poorly seated applicator tips meant a crunked-up, gooey bottle. 

So, the post title may be click-baity, but I mean it when I say don’t use your hands when using super glue. More accurately, make a DIY, disposable glue brush.

Take a piece of thin steel wire and pinch it into a tight loop maybe 20mm long. Insert the wire into an Exacto-knife handle and form the “bristles” by wrapping the loop with masking tape. The masking tape extends about double the length of the wire, with its tip shaped by a couple of snips from some scissors. 

DIY Glue Brush

Once I’m ready to start bonding stuff with CA glue, I’ll put a couple of drops on a piece of non-porous scrap and then dab it with my DIY glue brush. The flexible masking tape tip makes it easy to apply tiny amounts of CA glue just where I want it, without the frustration of gluing pieces of the build to my fingers. I’ll make two or three of these masking tape brushes at the same time, and when the tip of one gets gunked up with glue, I’ll swap it for a new one. By the time I’m on the last brush tip, the CA glue on the first one is cured, and I’ll snip off the fouled area and be back to a fresh, if slightly shorter, glue brush.

Using this little glue brush I’m able to keep 90% of the super glue off my fingers. Repositioning a freshly glued piece, or handling a leaky glue bottle means I’m still going to get sticky fingers though, so it’s back to the gloves discussion, nitrile gloves specifically.

Pasta Bot says "half gloves still count."

I’m probably not alone in feeling that I lose some dexterity when wearing even thin nitrile gloves. My technique to preserving some dexterity is to leave a couple of fingers ungloved, preferably a non-dominant finger I don’t use reflexively, like the pinky or ring-finger. I find I don’t need to cut up my nitrile gloves to customize them; the poor quality control in their manufacture means that a glove is almost guaranteed to tear on the first doffing. Instead of tossing a torn glove, I’ll salvage the finger tips and reuse them repeatedly.

‡I don't get any kickbacks from Starbond, I just want to give praise where its deserved.  Great glue.

Big Bot Bash for Amateurs (Pasta Bot WIP)

A few years ago the YouTube Algorithm fed me the Bill Making Stuff channel when I was looking for terrain-building ideas.  The BMS channel introduced me to a number of other wargame-adjacent crafters, most notably Bill’s twin brother Dan, who runs the Dan Does channel.‡

Bill introduced the Big Bot Bash last March, and brought it back this year.  The BBB showcases a number of invited YouTubers, who each contribute their own unique take on the “Junkbot” concept exemplified by Bill Making Stuff.  As the name implies, a junkbot is a robot model scratchbuilt from “junk”, i.e. generally unrelated and repurposed objects.

The BBB challenge introduces a random element, by having the participants roll a d20 six times on the “Junkbot Generator”, found on Bill’s website for his own sci-fi setting, the Gutterlands.  Each roll on the Junkbot Generator assigns a specific aspect to the five different body areas and an overall robot “flavour”, with each die result vague enough to allow wide interpretation while still providing enough constraints and inspiration to prompt the scratchbuilder to start gluing.   

As a Patreon patron of the Dan Does channel (sorry Bill, money’s tight!), I have access to that channel’s Discord server, which hosts a slew of creative and lovely people.  A number of us patrons decided we’d unofficially join the BBB; while none of us run our own YouTube channel, we tried to stick to the same 28 March deadline that the pros were bound to.

***As an aside, you don’t need to be patron of either the Dan Does or Bill Making Stuff channels in order to join their respective Discord servers (Dan Does; Bill Making Stuff).  If you do toss them a few quid via Patreon however, you can get access to each server’s members-only section.  Either way, it’s a great way to meet like-minded crafters and I recommend it.***

A couple of the other Discord members made the deadline and their creations look awesome!  I’m truly blown away by the creativity and totally different perspectives and techniques everyone brought.  Obviously, based on the date of this post and its “Work-in-Progress” title, I’m way behind and still not finished with mine.  The build is done though and only the painting remains, so I feel safe enough to talk about it.  Posting now should hopefully give me some accountability to fully complete the build.

Anyways, let’s get on talking about my build.  I don’t feel too bad about missing the deadline, as I didn’t commit to making a junkbot and download the generator until around 15 March.  

OK, so anyone who’s seen this blog knows I like to build little spaceships out of pasta.  I’ve wanted to make other mechanical constructs from pasta for years and figured the Big Bot Bash was as good a time as any to try.  That meant, in addition to the constraints from the Junkbot Generator, I also forced myself to use pasta for a majority of the build.

Here’s my list of six rolls, followed by my initial thoughts/interpretations:

Section	D20 Roll	Result
Body	7	Heavy Smoker
Head	5	Hole
Arms	13	Fancypants
Hands	14	Two-handed
Legs	14	Centipede
Flavour	4	Beaten

I wasn’t exactly in love with a lot of the rolls but knowing the various pasta shapes I had on hand, coupled with Bill’s guidance to “Interpret the results how you like”, a few rough ideas immediately sprang to mind.

A “heavy smoker” body seemed easy enough, with all the tubular pasta shapes readily standing in for exhaust pipes.  I wasn’t sure what to do with “hole” for the head, so decided to come back to it.  I immediately decided that “fancypants” arms just meant overly complex, instead of frilly or ornate.  Hmmm, “two-handed” most obviously meant the robot bore some kind of two-handed weapon, but I rejected that.  Instead, I planned on each wrist ending in two hands.  I did not like “centipede” legs because it sounded like so much more work, a real pain.  I also didn’t like the idea of a long lower body with a lot of legs.  Turns out I went with the multiple legs configuration anyways.  Rolling “beaten” for flavour made me smile though, as that meant I could treat construction and painting mistakes as blemishes.

An idea formed quickly and I started gluing together pasta and wire in a vaguely humanoid shape.  I decided to make the overly-complex arms using three separate tentacles (each) that joined at a wrist unit.  The same wires for the arm tentacles passed through the body and splayed out into six separate tentacular legs.

The robot started to take shape and it screamed “mining bot”, like some piece of titanic but mundane equipment in a Chris Foss painting.  The “hole” result for the head could be the robot’s gaping maw, occupying its entire face (making for an easier build).  And a mining robot doesn’t need delicate hands, so the wrist units could feature claws.

Other than the wire armature and much baking soda accelerant, the entire build was, so far, various pastas held together with CA glue.  I started bulking it out using standard office paper and some vinyl sheeting, creating flat and smooth surfaces for later greebling.

The nature of those greebles caused me a bit of consternation.  I feel using anything other than found objects violates the pure spirit of a junkbot build.  The junkbot generator even states “no 3D prints”.  If you know me and my feelings toward 3D printing, you know there is no danger of printed parts showing up here.  Yet, I had to trash all the contents of my bits boxes in our recent move.

My second most favorite scratchbuilding technique, after gluing pasta, is casting my own greebles and nurnies in homemade, often single-use, impression molds.  I even took up valuable luggage space and weight during our move to hand carry my mold clay and casting plaster.  Still, I was reticent to use this technique, as it seems like an analog version of 3D printing.  I made peace with myself though, as I was doing all the mold creation from simple found-object shapes.

Keen-eyed readers will note that I strayed from the Junkbot Generator prompts in a few areas, most obviously the hands.  I wanted desperately to meet the (non-existent) deadline, and started cutting corners.  The first thing to go was the two claws per wrist idea. 

So, here’s the bot now, covered in greebles, secured to a base, primed, and waiting for paint.  Unfortunately, my airbrush set-up also stayed behind with our big move, so this guy will be purely brush painted.

‡All ideas from the Dan Does and Bill Making Stuff channels are the copyrights of their respective creators, used without permission, and with no intent to challenge.  I hope by featuring links to their channels/websites here, I can convince the reader to go check them out and maybe even support them on Patreon.  Thanks!

Handy Hobby Tip: Silicone Muffin Cups

I’m no expert crafter but I’ve been messing about with various media for the better part of two decades now. A series of short posts I have planned will share some of the handy tips and tricks, “hacks” as the kids say, I’ve discovered over this time.

I haven’t scrubbed YouTube or the entire blogosphere, so it’s likely others have previously come up with similar techniques and tools. Still, I find that even obviously useful items like binder clips become even more essential in the workshop when used in some non-obvious way. I hope that maybe these posts will make someone’s crafting experience just a little more efficient, a little less frustrating, or maybe just more fun.

OK, on to the first tip: keep a number of silicone muffin baking cups around your hobby space.

I saved four or five of these little individual silicone muffin cups that my wife added to the charity shop donation pile. Both crafters and bakers know that almost nothing sticks to silicone, but I’ve found craft-specific silicone mixing cups a bit pricey. Silicone baking cups seem cheap and plentiful however, at least in my experience. I think we paid maybe $5 US (in 2015...) for a pack of 16.

Use one of these cups to mix your acrylic paint; when you’re done with your brushwork, turn the cup inside out to pop the dried paint right into the garbage. Do the same trick when mixing up putties, waxes, or resins.

Glues like PVA also come off the muffin cups with no effort, once cured.  Super glue supposedly comes off silicone easily, according to various references, but my silicone/CA glue experience is mixed. I recently spilled a few drops of CA glue in a silicone cup and then tried to remove them once cured. One blob of cured CA glue popped right off, but the other blob refused to let go, tearing away a small chunk of the cup when I pulled. So, with CA glue, who knows? I recommend against using a cup like this with super glue, or at least using a barrier like aluminum foil. 

The malleability of these cups make them great for controlled pouring of liquids or powders, like the baking soda shown here.

Finally, after an easy clean-up the cups nest together for compact storage.

Man O' War Proxy Ship WIP

I've been trying to revive this blog, however the recent uptick in activity leans heavily into nostalgia and introspection.  I enjoy doing those posts and will continue recounting my Hobby Origins, but I figure it's time to talk actual hobby.  

I recently purchased the Man O' War boxed set, Games Workshop's 1993 rules for sea battles amongst the nations of the Warhammer Fantasy setting.  Despite the absurd prices for old MoW miniatures, I also secured two partial fleets.  Unfortunately limited luggage-space meant I had to leave the models back in the US for later retrieval.  The silver lining to this situation is now I have motivation to get me back into scratchbuilding: I decided to make a proxy MoW vessel.     

Polymer clay probably serves as the best medium for something inorganic yet curved like a sailing vessel.     I still need to build a new dedicated clay oven though (and refuse to put polymer clay in the food oven), so I went with epoxy putties instead.

I didn't want to waste expensive epoxy, so I made the innards of the ship out of cereal packet card, cyanoacrylate glue, and baking soda.

Top-down views, both of the upper deck and the waterline, as well as a planform view, were first drawn on thin paper; folding the paper twice and only drawing one quarter of the top-down templates ensured lateral and longitudinal symmetries.

I then transferred the paper templates to cereal packet, cut these out, and assembled them as shown here.  Baking soda then filled the gaps between the waterline and upper decks, with CA glue liberally applied to cure the mixture into a solid mass.  Defining the hull shape required only minimal sanding.  

I next coated the basic ship form with epoxy (a mix of Knead-a-tite, Milliput Standard, and Sculpey Firm), providing a smooth, sticky base onto which I could apply the "beauty layer", which would feature the sculpted details.

Actually manipulating the detail layer onto the form proved a lot harder than just typing it here.  Unlike pure polymer clay, getting a very thin but uniform sheet of the epoxy mix was frustratingly difficult, as the squashed putty would stick to the non-porous kneading surface, no matter how much water I used.  I can't underestimate the amount of respect I already had for the commercial sculptors of the 80s and 90s, but if the Citadel/GW folks used epoxies to make 1/1200 ships for Man O' War, and similarly small units for Space Marine (Epic), hats doubly off to them. 

I probably could've spent a lot more time with file and sanding block to create crisper edges, but I just decided to throw the masts on.  My old standby, pasta, makes perfect masts, with small strips of masking tape giving the structures a little more character.  Attaching the yardarms (also pasta) gave me no end of frustration.

I still need to add crows' nests and pennant staffs to the masts (as well as another yardarm to the main mast), then paint up the ship.  Finally, I'll throw some sails and pennants on, just to finish the project.

Is this the first ship of a fleet?  Nah, really just a proof of concept to try out different techniques and reacquaint myself with epoxy putties.

Will I make more ships? Yeah, it was fun!  I'll probably use polymer clay though, which hopefully will give me tighter details.  It's motivation to reconstruct my putty oven!       

Micro Crafting Station (Idea)

My last post commemorated my former hobby space, now defunct as the Missus and I downsize and set out on a new domestic adventure. The lessons-learned from this experience made me ponder ways to keep my hoarding habits at bay and confining my hobby area to a smaller space seems like one reasonable solution.

How small a space is the question and a reasonably challenging answer is: whatever I can fit on a small table. I’ve therefore sketched a custom crafting station design, to help me keep everything tidy and near to hand. I won’t know until I buy all the pieces and put it together but the to-scale model below, built from online research, suggests it should work.

 Three silicone muffin pans (of the type pictured here) form the foundation of the crafting station. The pans can nest inside each other for easy storage when not in use. The muffin cups on each pan serve as obvious mixing containers, with the silicone construction making for easy clean-up. The cups offer temporary storage for scratch building bits, or receptacles for more permanent tool-holders.

The stacking nature of the muffin pans should allow interlocking them, Lego-style, as shown in the mockup plan view below. A cheap wooden cutting board with four added plaster “feet” will complete the station and provide the main working surface. Casting the feet directly in the silicone muffin cups ensures a perfect interlocking fit for the cutting board, itself attached to the feet via two-part epoxy.

Assembling the crafting station leaves eight open cups on the left side of the cutting board, four to the right, and five more across the top. I estimate all eight of the left cups plus one along the top will house various tools. I’ll likely squish a plug of silicone putty into the bottom of each cup, into which I’ll imbed a short length of PVC pipe. A thin layer of dish soap should prevent the silicone putty from sticking to the inside of the silicone cup permanently, but the silicone-on-silicone interface should be sufficiently “grabby”. Alternatively, I can just imbed the PVC pipes in plaster. The PVC tool holders serve to organize the different tools by categories.

The remaining cups will remain open for use as temporary bits receptacles and mixing cups. Sponges, cut into muffin shapes, will occupy two of the cups to act as wet palettes.

The entire assembly sits at only 54 cm wide, with the cutting board spanning only 30 cm; definitely a micro work area. At the scales I like to work, it should be plenty though. I can’t wait to build it!

Spaghetti Spaceships WIP 2024

Always looking for the cheapest, easiest, fastest ways to make convincing spaceships, last winter I experimented with a new technique, where I start with a piece of cereal packet.  The thin cardboard is cut to provide a symmetrical outline and solid foundation on which to glue various pasta shapes to bulk out the hulls.  Tiny (1-3mm long) regular shapes, also made from cereal packet, provided the final details.

I really liked how the sample ships turned out but I promptly forgot about them as I shifted on to other hobbies.

Cleaning up the hobby room and throwing things away, I came across these cereal packet spaceships and was about to pitch them in the garbage.  I'm supposed to be tidying and decluttering but I couldn't help thinking "why not just give them a couple of coats of spray paint, just to see".

I grabbed green because it was the closest thing to hand down in the basement.  The color turned out looking good and the paint pulls all the disparate components together into convincing (to my overactive imagination) illusions of massive spacecraft.

  Unfortunately I didn't get a "before" pic of the smaller ship, the design of which I prefer of the two.

I did a very aggressive drybrush, intentionally sloppy, just to pick out the edges.  I plan to use ink to make the edge-to-recess contrast even higher, then do some fine brush work to further pick out the edges with bone white.  All of this will then be covered with a thin coat of Russian Uniform Green via airbrush.

Then they'll still probably go in the trash.

Tabletop Wargame Building Scale: Figure or Ground?

Subtitle: 

...or neither?

FASA's Battletech wins the honor of being my first tabletop wargame but we only played with paper markers (were they stand-ups or chits? I honestly don't remember). My junior-high chums and I soon discovered proper miniatures wargaming with Rogue Trader and with it the curious difference between ground and figure scales.

Despite our dutiful reading of Mr. Priestly's every word, we accepted that the ground scale compressed greatly compared to the (back-then) 28mm figures, but we failed to similarly compress the dimensions of our terrain features. Of course, those were the days of seemingly limitless free-time and negligible responsibilities, giving us ample opportunity to construct 3 to 4 meter (!) game boards that wouldn't be dominated by our figure-scale buildings.

Returning to wargaming in my time- and space-poor adult days I discovered that figure-scale buildings seemed massively bloated on my typical meter-square battle mat. I chalked this up to the 28mm scale; in fact, avoiding this apparent "parking-lot battle" spurred me to explore 10mm and 6mm figure scales.

Looks great but too big???

Preparing for a 10mm campaign saw me scratchbuild some 10mm buildings, true to figure dimensions, which I've only now started painting. Looking for a paint scheme, I popped on over to the Pendraken site, since I'm using their figures and hoped to find some in-progress game pictures featuring both buildings and troopers. Instead of those I found the dimensions of their buildings, immediately noticing their two-story layout measures maybe 2/3 of my two-story farmhouse, proportionally.

I double-checked my math and found no errors, leading me to look to the internet for answers. Mel, the Terrain Tutor, came through like he always does. In the linked video he explains how most commercial wargaming buildings are scaled down proportionally to the figures, except for the doors and windows which remain figure-scale to produce the illusion of matched size. The doors and windows, of course, brilliant!

Further internet rabbit-holes, mainly discussion boards, suggested that many wargamers match their scratchbuilt structure proportions to the ground scale. That left me wandering: do the commercial manufacturers use an intermediate building scale, between ground and figure? Perhaps 2/3 of figure scale for the buildings and trees, and 1/3 figure scale for board size?

I'm not sure of the answer but I've decided to try it out for myself. In the coming months, when I finally get all my terrain done and figures painted, I plan to repeat a platoon vs. platoon 10mm game (one figure = one trooper), playing it once with my figure-scale scratchbuild farmhouse, and then again with another scratchbuild sized to Pendraken's offerings.

Figure scale (left) and "commercial scale" (right) scratch builds

I'm not done with the smaller farmhouse yet but I've blocked out the basic shape in polymer clay and included a comparison pic with my (primed but unpainted) figure-scale farmhouse. It'll take a full game with other terrain and figures to determine exactly which one "feels" right. 

DIY Trees and Flock

Covered with DIY Flock

I still have my moon table set up for playtesting my future tank game (last post) but most of my wargaming effort right now lies in getting a 10mm Cold War-gone-hot scenario going.

Years ago I bought some beautiful Pendraken 10mm figures, specifically Argentinians from the Falklands War range, to represent late 1950s-early 1960s U.S. Army.  The project stalled however because I couldn't find a suitable proxy for Soviet forces of the same era.  Pendraken suddenly revived my project by recently producing a range of Cold War Soviets, which of course I snapped up.

I plan on using Ganesha Games' Flying Lead rules, with a fire team (represented by two bases) activating in the place of a single figure (as the assumed scale is 28mm).

Still need to paint and flock bases

I needed terrain, specifically trees, for the 10mm game so over the last months I've been twisting up wire and coming up with a way to make my own flock.  Like nearly all of my methods it's super time-consuming and requires some dedicated (but common) tools.  The results have blown me away however and the best part is the raw material (recycled paper) is totally free and abundant.

FREE!!! (Except for the time...)

 

Table-Top Terrain: Warp-free Bases

Looking to revitalize the old blog, as I haven't posted in over 9 months. I'm on the final push to finish a late in life (and unnecessary) master's degree so I haven't had much time for anything except school and work, let alone gaming. I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel though and perhaps that's why I've felt a resurgance of hobby interest recently.


I've also been contemplating on the fact that I'm not the only busy person out there, and plenty of folks seem to do a fair amount of hobbying despite adult-life commitments. I've been wondering if hobbies, like most pursuits, exist in a feedback loop, and that maybe I can keep the hobby interest up by dabbling in a small amount of constant exposure instead of focusing on large but infrequent events. To that end, I've been making terrain for 10mm games and thought I'd share a bit here.


OK, on to the topic of the post. Since I plan to play some games at the smaller scales, I've been making terrain with thin bases. Listening to wargaming podcasts and reading blogs, it seems a common complaint are terrain bases, especially thin ones, that warp. The picture above shows one of my very thin bases, free of warping. 

  

Replicating this result requires five items: Durham's Rock Hard Water Putty, wood glue, fiberglass wall repair tape, wax paper, and scrap plastic food packaging. The wood glue should not be water resistant but water soluable so it can be thinned; Elmers Interior Wood Glue is the best and any form of TiteBond or Gorilla Glue are absolute no-gos. Any sort of moisture-proof substrate (aluminum foil for example) can be substituted for the scrap plastic but I find the plastic easy to work with and plentiful, with PETE plastic (#1) my preferred variety.

Tools required are scissors, a Sharpee or similar alcohol marker, spreading utensils (I use disposable cutlery from the office kitchen), and a spray-bottle or similar method of adding controlled amounts of water. Masking tape, push-pins, or staples help for step four below.




Step one: cut your plastic into the desired shape for the terrain footprint, making sure it's big enough for whatever trees or buildings or whatnot you plan to mount on it. I find an old pair of normal stationary scissors cuts through thin PETE packaging just fine.

Step two: rough-up the surface of one side of each plastic base with some 60-grit sandpaper, giving it enough tooth for the fiberglass tape and putty that comes later.

Step three: use the Sharpee to write some sort of key marker on the base, like a number or letter with an arrow associated with one edge.

Repeat steps one through three for as many terrain pieces required.

***EDIT (27 May 2023): See my reply to Shaun's comment below for adjustments I've already made to the process.  I'm preserving the original post as written but it turns out one can neglect the scrap plastic and skip steps one through three, starting on step four and free-handing the outlines.  This also prevents a lot of the fiberglass tape waste and eliminates the need to label the outlines.***

Step four: Tape down (or otherwise secure) a few pieces of wax paper, giving sufficient area to accomodate all your plastic bases. One by one, trace the outline of each terrain base on the wax paper with the Sharpee, ensuring to duplicate the respective key marker on the wax paper, in the proper orientation.

Step five: apply the fiberglass tape to the wax paper, covering each terrain base outline. Since the wall repair tape is probably the most expensive material, draw the outlines in step four to minimize waste due to excess space, but ensure enough room to work on the sheet.

Step six: cut out each terrain shape from the wax paper, cutting the fibreglass tape along with it. Ensure you cut 1 mm to 2 mm inside the marker outline, so as to create a slightly smaller shape than the original plastic base. You have now essentially created peel-off fiberglass tape stickers corresponding to each of your plastic bases.

Step seven: peel and apply each fiberglass tape sticker to the rough side of its respective matching plastic base. Utilize the marker keys to ensure correct orientation.

Step eight: mix up a small amount of putty, sufficient for one terrain base. Roughly estimate the amount of wood glue required to completely coat your terrain piece in a thin (~0.5 mm) layer, add this to your mixing container to start. Sprinkle in the Durham's, mixing until the consistency goes from honey (i.e. the wood glue alone), to a thick, chalky peanut-butter like texture. Next, add small amounts of water until the honey-like consistency returns. You should be able to pour the mixture but just barely.

Step nine: Spread this mixture evenly over your terrain base. Ideally the fibreglass tape should not show through but as this is only the structural foundation layer, in most cases this is OK, as more material will be added later.

Repeat steps eight and nine for all the terrain pieces, leaving them at least 8 but preferably 24 hours to cure before continuing.

Step ten: decorate each base as desired.

The great thing about this technique is that fresh wood glue clings instantly to the cured putty mixture making up the base. In the example picture to the left, the top beauty layer consisted of a mix of old housepaint, acrylic craft paint, wood glue, flour, sand, bentonite clay, and water to improve spreadability. I slathered this goop onto the base and in maybe 2-4 hours it was plastic-like and hard, free of warping yet easily paintable with another layer of housepaint.

I could just cut thin MDF pieces like everyone else but I enjoy this method for the ease of decorating noted above, as well as the ability to use simple scissors to cut complex terrain footprints.