Anyways, I started these as a three part board with 2'x4' sections. But due to future shipping concerns, and being able to easily fit these in my Mustang to transport them to work on it during the week; I had to cut them into 2'x2' sections. First I did a ruff sketch on my new iPad using an app called Bamboo Paper (free & a paid version), included here is the screen print from the iPad of that sketch.
So I started with 1/2" Owens Corning Foamular Insulating Sheathing (from Home Depot) as the base level of the board. This is the town section of the picture and everything leading up to the first level, and what the first level is glued to for the other board sections. Then taking into consideration the size of FoW mini's I went with 3/4" Foamular for the other levels. With only a few FoW tanks built at the moment, and no troops built yet I really didn't have too much to go off of at the moment. I've used 1" Foamular as terrain for my 40K boards before, and I figured 1" was going to be to much for FoW board I wanted to make. I'll hopefully get some good FoW models to use for a size comparison, and Jon's opinion of the board here in a few weeks when he is in Ohio for work.
I started by cutting the 1/2" board into 2'x4' sections, and peeled the plastic film off the front and back of the pieces. As I believe you will get a better bond on the glue if you go foam to foam instead of to the plastic that could peel apart down the road. Then I cut down the 3/4" board into 2'x4' sections, using a 54" drywall square that I have and a good utility knife. The blade doesn't always score all the way through the board, but you can easily snap the cut lines to complete the cut. And as a bonus you can cut the pieces and snap the boards into the sections, and then peel the film off a lot easier.
Then using a cut off piece of the 3/4", I made the first level to the right of the town in the picture above. Then added the 2'x4' 3/4" piece for the second section above the town and, and started laying out the topo of the first level on those two pieces with a marker. Then going about an inch or two outside the lines I cut the boards down with a utility knife, that way there is not a lot of waste to handle while using the hotwire cutter. Then I start in with the hotwire cutter cutting to the layout line to give the basic outline of the first level. Then I come back with the hotwire cutter and on a bevel start cutting a slope to the edge of the level, and in some sections I left the vertical face to give a look of a stone outcrop. On the Gorge section of the level I sloped the hotwire cutter a little more to give more definition to the area, I still need to go back with one of the bigger foam cutters that I have to make the gorge even better (that is for this week). Then repeat the same process for the second & third level from the sketch above.
At this stage I start gluing the sections together making sure to line up each sections as I go, gluing one board section at a time & one level at a time before the next. On the glue subject, I've found some glue that I thought would work fairly well last week. It's the newer Gorilla Glue that dries white and 2x faster, I'm not really impressed with it for gluing the foam sections together. I tried it on a piece of 1/2" & 3/4" foam to form a section last week before I started this. I was able to easily peel the pieces apart without to much trouble, not sure if it didn't have enough moisture to cure or what. But the glue didn't expand every much if at all once I had it apart to look at it today, so that was a week for it to set up and it was still not bonded very well. So I switched to regular Gorilla Glue and used a little more water on the pieces, they are super bonded together now. With some foam out around the edges of the level sections to let you know that they bonded really good.
And as you can see in the below pics I've got the sections all glued up, but I was missing the 1/2" 2'x4' foam for the third section at the time of these pics. I've since added it (after I took the previous glued up piece apart), and now I'm just waiting to use my larger foam cutter to melt the gorge into the pieces tomorrow after work. Also another thing to add on cleaning up the aftermath of the hotwire cutter, get a semi stiff plastic bristle cleaning brush and use it to go over your cuts. This will clean off the hairs & slag left from the cutter, and will smooth out some of the cut too. I've also cut down the first & second section pieces in the pics below to the 2'x2' sections, and left the third as a 2'x4' for glue up to the 1/2" foam here tonite. The 2'x2' sections made it way more easy to fit into the back of the Mustang, the 2'x4' was a massive pain in the butt and made noise all the way down the road due to the way I had to position it in the car to fit along with all my other stuff for the week.
Next up will be to finish the molding of the gorge and clean up of glue expansion. Then start painting with the stone texture paint I've found that doesn't destroy the foam, even though you can get some good effects with normal rattle can paint and the way it breaks down the foam a little bit. I'll go over that a little later with a few more trial pieces to see what happens, but so far the effect on the Foamular with that paint is not as extreme as with regular Styrofoam.
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