Building a portable gaming board, part 3

This is part three, here is part two.

I was not entirely happy with the resulting texture of my sand+glue mix, so I started to experiment a bit with plaster, glue and dry sand. In short I added some spots of filler to make the board a bit more even, and also to create a greater variation in the texture of the surface. I then applied watered down PVA glue over the board and added dry sand to improve the texture.

PVA glue/water mix + dry sand = love?

Satisfied with the texture I moved on to painting the boards. Starting with a base coat of black acrylic paint.

Three boards require lots of paint...

All three boards base colored.

Texture close-up

As the watered down black paint didn't cover exactly as well as I have hoped for, I might add a second layer of black before moving on to dry brushing.

Building a portable gaming board, part 2

This is part two, here is part one.

After some texture experiments I decided to apply a mix of sand and glue to my portable gaming board.

1 part PVA glue and 5 parts (wet) sand were mixed and applied to the surface of each gaming board. If the sand would have been dry, adding water would have been necessary. 

I used approximately 7-8 dl glue for all three boards.

I used a large brush to apply the mix onto the surface, and a roller to even the mixture on the board. 

Yummy!

One board done.

One improvement I came to think of during the work process is that I probably should have placed all three boards side by side when applying sand, to get a more seamless appearance. Although, it should be quite easy to fix with a thin second layer of sand on the edges.

Caution! Brushes and rollers involved in this process will not be usable for painting afterwards. 

Building a portable gaming board, part 1

Tonight I started building a portable gaming board, inspired by painter dad's approach. Instead of a gaming mat I'm using 4mm mdf to make it slightly more sturdy.
The styrofoam boards (3x 120x60cm) will be will be slightly smaller than the mdf boards, so I let the friendly guys at the lumberyard saw three pieces of mdf (1x 122x60cm and 2x 122x61,5cm). The 122x60 will be the center board, with no mdf outside the styrofoam on the longsides.

Applying glue

Gluing the styrofoam board to the mdf board

All three boards glued, applying some pressure ;)

At this point I haven't decided on a ground texture. Xenos world or jungle theme?

Magnetizing War Walker Weapons

I have started magnetizing weapons for my war walker and falcon.

I bought these nifty rectangular (5 x 1.5 x 1mm) magnets from first4magnets.com for the war walker.

Eldar Missile Launcher before magnetizing

Using a scalpel, the protruding part that fits in the socket is removed

Make the new surface flat using a file

Attaching the magnet with super glue (I used the end of a drill to apply the magnet)

Leave i to dry

Voila!

The socket on the weapon mount had to be expanded a little to make it possible to fit the magnet. I used 2mm drill and a scalpel to accomplish this.

Make sure you get the polarity correct on all magnets you attach. If not, you might (as I did) need to remove some magnet to flip it.