Building my first terrain table, need advice

Hey folks, a little stumped and need some guidance. I came into the possession of a 6x2.5 foot styrofoam slab with some really cool details. It housed some glass for a desk/shelf, and has a huge diagonal line down the centre (a perfect gutter/river feature!). I want to build up the table with some modular terrain from here.

Now, the crux: how to seal this thing? It's a massive piece of styrofoam, and I know that spray undercoats may eat it. I'd like to coat it in something that would smooth the bubbly texture.

Any and all suggestions, recommendations or even good tutorials you've seen would help me greatly. It was like Christmas 2 when I found the board, and now I need to bring out its natural awesomeness. In a month or two I want to show some photos to The Boss and say, "here's what I did with that garbage I took home".

You got a picture how it looks right now? Would love to see this piece!

As you say, spray will eat it all, we used some cheap black paint when we did some big terrain. As long as it was cheap it was good was our idé and it worked fine.
Don't remember what type of color though.

You can buy a sample of a color, test it on a little bit and see how it works. A sample should not cost more than 2 dollars and you get pretty much for it (at least to for undercoating terrain)

Hope it helps.

Correct, any spray will eat the foam. You will need to paint manually.

What variety of paint? Latex, acrylic?

I will take some pics on Sunday or Monday, heading away for the weekend. It's a beautiful beast and can't wait to start adding to it.

Look in Your hardware store. I'm using acrylic "for elevation" paints for my terrains. Alternatively You can seal Styrofoam with pva/woodworking glue tined little with water than paint it with sprays for some custom effects but sprays aren't the cheapest way to paint large surfaces flat.

Spray CAN be cheap if you are using the same stuff as the graffitiheads.
way much better to cover areas than spray for cars or the ones for minitures but it eat it just like other sprays.

I think we used some form of acrylic. this was at least 5 years ago so i do not remember.

Acrylics definitely the way to go - no reaction with the foam and it's reasonably flexible (if thin enough) so that you don't get much cracking.

Laney

Which side of the Atlantic/Pacific is "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin"? Location helps when directing you to shops, manufactures, et al.

If you need to fill gaps or smooth the surface, get some Woodlands Scenis Foam Putty...once it's dried it works like the foam itself.
As a covering either acrylic or latex paint work fine. Once you have the Beasty TOTALLY covered it safe to use a spray...sprays made for floral items are the safest.

Excellent, I will look for some paint this weekend, particularly that "for elevation" kind. Painting the whole thing will take some time but I will press-gang my dad (repayment for decades of shovelling the driveway).

My gal works in a paint store, I'll pick her brain and find out some other solutions too. Solutions where I can exploit the 50% employee discount! (que diabolical laughter)

The 36th Chamber is presently in Canada, but it's a shifting location! (google that puppy, it's an old kung-fu meme).

Dread_Kennedy wrote:

The 36th Chamber is presently in Canada, but it's a shifting location! (google that puppy, it's an old kung-fu meme).

Cool...suggesting picking stuff up at Michael's isn't helpful if you live in Australia/Eurpe/ the Andes/etc.

Best advice on the foam is to take about a half a bottle of elmer's glue and mix with equal parts water in a bucket then paint the whole thing with it. After that you can spray it with primer or whatever you want.

I would use your standard house paint (acrylics only not enamel) preferably an offwhite color or the base color of the table. The best thing is that it can be prepurchased with various textures (i prefer a fine sand texture but there are plenty of options so take a look). Many of the texture paints use resin or cement for the texture. This is great as it increases the boards durability. One thing to keep in mind is that if you dont use a base of MDF/ Masonite that the board may warp when painted due to shrinkage. This can also be minimized by painting in small sections or sometimes by painting both sides. Ill post some pics of a board made this way later tonight.

OK here are a few pics of a board I made a couple of years ago for our Sci Fi skirmish games. Sadly I didnt take any pics of the finished product before I sold it . The board was built out of 1" and 2" pink foam attached to 1/2" MDF for stability. Each section is 2x4 foot.






More pics and many WIP photos can be seen here:
https://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v238/DoomOnYou72/Damocales%20WIP/?start=all

Ive built four terrain tables now and have learned alot doing it and would be glad to share and answer any questions I can.

Arg! This is a work of art.

Are you around Atlanta?

Savannah. Used to go up to Atlanta for Warfair until they had it down on that Ghetto the one time . Usually make it up to Siege of Augusta each year though with the local store.

That board looks amazing - great work!

Laney

DoomOnYou72 wrote:

Sadly I didnt take any pics of the finished product before I sold it .

I can identify...somewhere out there are hordes of Thingies I've done that will forever remain unphotographed. The better you get as a painter/modeler the more unlikely it becomes that you will get to keep what you paint/make, but after awhile the creating becomes more important than the keeping.
At any rate, that is a BEAUTIFULLY DONE gaming board...whoever wound up with it must be delighted.

Holy shit! That i sjust great! Love that board!

I would have expected nothing less from you, Doom. Awesome!

DeafNala wrote:

I can identify...somewhere out there are hordes of Thingies I've done that will forever remain unphotographed. The better you get as a painter/modeler the more unlikely it becomes that you will get to keep what you paint/make, but after awhile the creating becomes more important than the keeping.
At any rate, that is a BEAUTIFULLY DONE gaming board...whoever wound up with it must be delighted.

You got that right Deaf. Nearly everything I work on nowadys is for someone else or when Im done someone says Ill give $$$ (which is either a good offer that the money grubbing capitalist in me cant so no too or is so off base the reply is WTF! are you high ) My hobby time is seriously limited due to work and real world obligations but I have been pretty good about making an hour or two each day for hobby related stuff for the last month or so. Even if its not productive I make myself attempt to do something.

I usually make Terrain Boards in the summer when the weather is good as its easier to do alot of it outside. If I make one this year and there is interest Ill make a thread and do walk thrus and tutorials as I go.

Keep us posted on up coming work as you have a great talent.

Dread, I think everyone has made the standard offers - hand paint or wash with glue. Good luck with this - it'd be great to see the end product.

Very nice work Doom, might have to pick your brains at some point. Hopefully you'll be able to provide the community with some expertise.

DoomOnYou72 wrote:

I usually make Terrain Boards in the summer when the weather is good as its easier to do alot of it outside. If I make one this year and there is interest Ill make a thread and do walk thrus and tutorials as I go.

Oh, yes please!

That would be superb - I want to make a board for my shed this Summer (It'll never happen though, with another little one appearing next month).

Cheers Laney

Laney wrote:

That would be superb - I want to make a board for my shed this Summer (It'll never happen though, with another little one appearing next month).

Cheers Laney

A man's gotta have some time to himself, dude. Make it happen!