Any open terrain projects?

[Mulsiphix]

The molds require you provide the casting material though right? That alone can get quite pricey, especially if you don't want to mix it yourself . Why does terrain have to be so awesome?!

[tesral]

I won a bridge made with Hirst Arts molds. Nice piece, plenty of work. Not finished yet (need to paint it).

Hirst still fall into heavy and fraigle. If you have a permanent place to game and time on your hands, I would jump on them.

[tesral]

The molds require you provide the casting material though right? That alone can get quite pricey, especially if you don't want to mix it yourself . Why does terrain have to be so awesome?!

You can use plaster of Paris or hydrocal, both are dirt cheap. I wouldn't use resin, too pricy and it eats rubber molds for lunch.

[ffclubhero]

GW does hold it down with terrain projects. They have TONS of articles for beginners and advanced. I'd highly recommend their site, even for just the average browser. Blue Table Terrain (pretty vids on youtube, by the way) does some nice work, but mostly for GW aficionados.

[Mulsiphix]

I read an article recently about a Chainmail game that was held in 2005 or 2006. Gygax was there along with some of the other fathers of the PnP industry. They had the terrain created especially for that match. I can't seem to find it anywhere though . Any chance anybody else knows what I'm talking about and has a link?

[Skunkape]

Well my resin of choice would come from this company, Alumilite. You can get it in quite a few hobby shops or model train stores if there are any in your area. Or you can buy directly from the manufacturer. What I would do, until you get used to using the stuff is buy a sampler kit to give you enough of it to experiment with, but not so much that if you don't go with that method, you haven't spent a lot of money.

What will help save your molds using resins is to coat the molds first with a mold release compound. While the molds will wear out faster with resin than say plaster, the mold release will help keep them in good shape longer.

Now, for my Hirst molds and even for the one I made myself, I use a dental type plaster. Yes it is somewhat more expensive than hydrocal, which by the way, I've used as well, dental plaster dries a lot harder, about 3 to 5 times harder plus, it dries a lot faster, I can demold in about 30 minutes, while hydrocal would take hours to set enough. Yeah, the dental plaster is more expensive, but since I have yet to break a piece cast in dental plaster, my hydrocal pieces actually start crumbling after a few uses and I don't play rough with my pieces!

The place I purchase the plaster from is Clint Sales. The one I've decided to use is called Merlin's Magic and comes in a few different colors. There are two other plasters which are stronger, but I haven't tried them, they are Excalibur and Die-Keen.

One last thing you can try, search on the net for dental plaster and you will probably find places that will send you samples. The samples are usually just enough to cast from half to a full casting of Bruce's molds.

That's about all I can think of now.

Oh yeah, I haven't seen the Chainmail terrain you're talking about, but I'll see if I can find it on the net.

[Mulsiphix]

Thank you very much Skunkape. This kind of feedback is exactly what I'm looking for. I'd like to put a few instructional guides together, including links (lets save that for another thread), for those interested in trying their hand at creating custom terrain, molds, mini's, etc... Thank you very much for going into detail. Much appreciated

[ffclubhero]

Anyone got anymore terrain projects?

[tesral]

Well my resin of choice would come from this company, Alumilite.

Might I suggest you look into smooth-on. I have found it surperior to alumilite. The finished product is not as brittle. Prices are comparable and you can get longer pot times.

[Skunkape]

Thanks for the product link tersal, I'll have to check it out!

[ffclubhero]

Sssoooo, I'd like to see pics of open terrain projects.... come one, people! Surely someone of the pen and paper bloodline has pics of a current project!!

[tesral]

Sssoooo, I'd like to see pics of open terrain projects.... come one, people! Surely someone of the pen and paper bloodline has pics of a current project!!

Have, look at the Ship Yard thread.

[ffclubhero]

That's a great tip about the styrofoam and grey primer. Is he watering it down or anything?

[mrken]

Ok, you guys are looking for projects we are working on; I just started a new project for my game. The characters will one day end up in the court of the Duke, when they do I would like for this thing to be finished, if not, then at least the great room.

My inspiration came from the A Harn Kingdom Module called Kaldor . This one is Kaban . It is a three level castle with an inner harbor. I will be building mine without the harbor as this is an inland area. http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...enis/Plans.jpg

The idea to build this out of Styrofoam rather than my customary cardboard and spackling came from watching a UTube made by a guy in Canada who goes by the name Kamloopian http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...enis/Plans.jpg

He uses foam in some of his pieces. I find it to be fairly easy to work with, with the potential for a high degree of detail, but extremely time consuming. <a href="http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c365/mrkenis/?action=view&current=Dungeonroughcut.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c365/mrkenis/Dungeonroughcut.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

As you can see, the detail is beginning to become apparent.

[Skunkape]

Looking good so far, I can already see the detail in the walls, even without paint on them!