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Modular Industrial Table WIP **now featuring terrain**


NTaW

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Took a little break from the table to work on terrain for it. Let there be pipes!

 

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8x 8" pieces and 4x 5" pieces that I'll ruin the ends of should be enough to spread across the table. They will run on supports so the tops of them will be ~1" off the table; plenty for cover or to hide behind but not totally LoS blocking per se. Any and all walkways will be 2" off the table and will be just over top of the pipes if they intersect.

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Thanks! I got a bit more work done on the broken sections today but ran out of .5mm styrene before I could finish :furious:

 

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I have enough to lay randomly across a 2"x2" square to this point, there will be almost double that by the time I'm done.

 

Also managed to start grime-ing up the board today. All of the tiles are drying right now, but here's one just after it was hit with the mix:

 

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Looking forward to seeing how it dries! I'll likely go over all the tops of the tiles randomly with what gunk is left diluted with a ton of PVA and fine sand for the 'dirty-but-not-so-nasty' main floor area.

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Thanks a lot! I do indeed plan on going over the sides of each tile...I actually dove into the closet looking for filler and my putty knives and came out completely distracted with PVA and moss :lol:

 

I plan on running spackle/filler around all the edges to smooth it out and recreate some of the edges lost as I learned my techniques applying the foamcore tops. I know this will definitely not be durable in the long run but I am quite comfortable using filler so I figured go with what you know, right? I plan on hitting the whole board with a couple layers of matte finish Mod Podge to actually harden and seal everything in once it's all said and done. That way this beauty can survive the ins and outs of plastic bin storage as well as being bumped on the table during play while people lean over to do stuff.

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Guess who started painting yesterday??

 

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I have to play this stage a bit differently as I can't just have the tiles going in and out of the closet once the sides have been filled (too much possibility of debris or hitting them off something), so I have to paint the edges fairly promptly after they have dried and had the loose bits sanded off to seal them in. Figure, if I'm painting the sides I may as well paint the rest of the tile as well, right? Right. Hopefully I'll get the wood, silver bits, and grime done some time over the weekend and actually see what this is gunna look like finished.

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This is mightily impressive terrain.

 

I have to admit I was very interested in your cost of materials and time spent on the project that you mentioned a few posts back.....it got me thinking.

 

I've always been of the opinion that buying terrain was for mugs and that making it yourself was the way to go. But recently I've seen some very good offerings that arguably are worth buying, despite price tag, when the time spent and the material cost are taken into account.

 

I do include laser cut terrain in the offerings I mention which would still require some assembly and painting but overall I think they guarantee a certain level of quality and consistency that most of us can't achieve....or maybe I lack the imagination so am happy to let someone else do that for me.

 

Did you consider any off the shelf options before plumping for home built? It would be interesting to see your thought process.

 

Cheers

LM

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First off, good comment. I have considered a lot of store bought options for terrain. So many options I feel like I've seen them all (though I know that isn't even possible really). As far as the cost of a home-built table vs. a store bought one I think of what GW sells in their line. A Realm of Battle table costs about $400 CAD before taxes. If I built the exact same thing I could do it for under $100, and it would take me maybe an extra hour or so per tile compared to just painting the plastic. Sure the RoB is durable but a 1/2" sheet of MDF is pretty good to go and you could use plywood just the same if it's a real concern. Lets get crazy and say that it takes me ten more hours to make my own RoB table than it would to buy and paint an official one. If I save $300 and it costs me 10 hours of extra work (which it wouldn't) it's an easy choice what to do.

 

When it comes to a table like what I'm building now I have no real comparison for store bought items. Sure I've spent let's say $200 on this and put a ton of hours in but what would something like this cost from a store? I worry about that answer when I consider that a Zone Mortalis table from FW of the same size would be ~$800 to buy.

 

Flat out though, I love building stuff and do commission terrain work from time to time so I'm all about the DIY styles over store bought items. Some of it looks absolutely stunning but I honestly just like the challenge.

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So I might have assumed you were talking USD not CAD. All of a sudden off the shelf is not such an obvious choice.

 

Do you have much choice available in Canada other than GW?

 

I'm in the UK and there seems to be a glut of companies that do terrain over here. If we take the fw zone mortalis.... You can get that here for 450 quid, alternatively you can got for a laser cut equivalent and get a board for 240 quid (http://www.wargame-model-mods.co.uk/ourshop/cat_1227252-Dungeon-Boards.html).

 

I have been considering that one I linked mainly because I want to play zone mortalis and ship boarding themed battles. Though I may well have to wait to see how your project comes along, you are definitely putting up a strong argument for DIY.

 

Cheers

LM

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I agree NTaW's board looks awesome, but I wonder how much more time and money you would have to invest to make such a board. Do you have an estimate?

 

The linked board is also expensive, but I think you get more variance through the magnets, plus the board is illuminated. that might make it an interesting choice as display board, not just as gaming board.

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I think I've started to hijack NTaWs thread here a little- sorry about that. I will try and conclude with this post and we can go back to your terrain; unless you want to continue discussing.

 

He said so far he's spent 200 Canadian dollars on material and then his own time, very roughly estimated between 30 and 80 hours, who which no value has been assigned to (though I think that would factor into some people's decision). He does also have access to tools etc that would need to be considered if you don't already have them.

 

Personally I'd be more inclined to go for the board I linked. Taking raw material cost and time into account I think buying the board would be cheaper. Not to mention, I don't think I could pull of something similar with anywhere near the level of quality that NTaW has achieved.

 

I did order one section and will put it together to see just how easy it is to build and paint it.

 

All that said NTaW is doing an excellent job with his terrain and clearly likes the DIY approach and is making it look far too easy.

 

Cheers

LM

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I did order one section and will put it together to see just how easy it is to build and paint it.

I'm looking forward to seeing pictures.

 

All that said NTaW is doing an excellent job with his terrain and clearly likes the DIY approach and is making it look far too easy.

QFT
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Well lookit all these comments :)

 

Lamenter, there are no Canadian companies I am aware of that make terrain of the same quality that I find from the US or UK. When I made my ZM table example I just copy/pasted the FW price into Google and it gave me back a number in CAD. FW very likely has free shipping on such a purchase, but the other company that you linked (who I have followed since their kickstarter, I spend a lot of time looking at terrain :P) might not be so willing to free ship their products overseas. I'm very interested in how the tile that you ordered from them works out, please make a thread/comment here/pm me and let me know as their product looks great. As for the table itself and what I think Quixus's question was after is that for $400+ CAD (again Google-ing currency rates) I could definitely build a magnetic table for less, though I wouldn't bother with the lights. It's cool for a display board but it means you have hollow table sections and the durability of that I would question right up until I held it in my hands and tested it myself. Also if I were building a board like that (basically a straight rip of the ZM board but with magnets) I wouldn't bother with 1x1 squares unless the client asked me to because: magnets. I am also very dubious of the look of laser cut once painted. Wood always looks like wood to me and I don't much like that for a ZM board representing a space ship, though a pal of mine out west is sending me some terrain he designed soon so I will be able to test that theory at least. In terms of cost, and assuming that it's only $400 for me to buy here and have shipped overseas, I could easily spend less than half that and end up with a very similar quality. I don't think I could, right now anyway, replicate the details they have put into the floors but it would work nonetheless. The most time consuming aspect would be adding magnets every damn place over the board but even then that would probably take me a day or two to get that done. Setup would be worse than execution; pre-drawing a grid on so you know where to drill would take way longer than drilling. Fun tip, if you're ever doing a ton of magnets and want them all facing the same way stick them all to a sheet of metal (or your fridge) and use a marker to dot the side facing up. Now you can easily tell which way to install them so you don't reverse polarities! I think that if I did a magnetic board like that without the lights it would actually take me far less time than it has to build this board.

 

To comment on why I haven't put a dollar sign on my time for the current board where others would definitely factor it in, I'm mostly building this table for fun and there's been whole weeks where I've done basically nothing since the project's beginning. If I was building this for someone else it would have been done within a month of me starting it because I would have looked at it like work as opposed to my hobby.

 

Finally, thanks for the support guys. It's pretty awesome having people you don't really know at all take an interest like this in what you're working on. Makes me feel like I'm making some good choices with how I spend my time :lol: So far this build has been pretty easy though, but as I've pointed out I've built lots of things in my life and have a lot of stuff worked out already. For example, when I spackled the edges of the tiles it took me a couple minutes a tile to have it to a finish that barely needed sanding and this is all the mess I made:

 

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Ramble over! :tu:

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Chippin' away, chippin' away. Life was quite busy over the weekend but I got a short bit of time to sacrifice the first tile to the "does this work?" gods.

 

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Definitely going to redo the outside edges in black, I think it will look a lot nicer. Hopefully I'll get to adding some depth soon.

 

EDIT: Got a wash down on it today before work, should be able to just drybrush and be done tomorrow. Hopefully anyway...I want to get more tiles on the go!

Edited by NTaW
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I feel your pain, watching glue dry. That's been how I've spent most of the last couple months :lol: Really looking forward to your opinion of the product. 

 

This is where I'm at with the washing. The brush strokes are murdering my eyes but I haven't thought of a way to avoid it yet. Maybe it will be less noticeable with a couple layers of drybrushing on top? hmmm...

 

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Finished tile #1:

 

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I'm not super confident in my painting skills compared to my building skills, but I think this is a pretty good place to stop. If I can manage this level of detail for every tile I think I'll be pretty happy with the overall look.

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Have you thought about investing in an air brush? I imagine that will remove any issue with brush strokes. Alternatively go low tech and use a sponge to apply the paint.

So I finished the base

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I was conscious of how much time I was spending putting this together though wasn't using a stop watch and being strict about it but I would estimate an hour to put this together.

Obviously time was lost on reading instructions etc. which were ok but not perfect and there was some cursing and pulling apart of drying bits at one stage. I could probably do another in about 40 minutes (excluding drying time); though I think building these in batches would stack very well and you could probably end up with about 30 minutes per section when made in bulk. In the end the magnets were really easy to get in - and I got them all the right way round :-). Thanks for the tip but I just used a stack of magnets and kept them all the same orientation.

I know you had concerns re the durability of the board, to be honest I think it's ok. Obviously the wood is on the soft side and would probably dent if it fell off the table etc. but no more so than other/thicker material. Given that I bought this as a tester; it's kind of spare and I wouldn't mind doing a bit of testing. Any ideas on what you would do to gauge durability?

Cheers

LM

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Hey, thanks for posting that up. Glad to hear they're sturdier than expected, hollow things filled with lights don't often have a tendency to be in my experience. For the sake of our conversation, how much was the tile with shipping so that we can add that to the half hour build time? Painting time is something that any piece requires save (seemingly) the most expensive of buys so we can exclude it for the sake of our comparison here I guess. As for painting my stuff..

 

Brushstrokes stopped bothering me when I got rolling with drybrushing. If anything the main layer offered an unexpected layer of texture over what would have otherwise been totally flat. I've never been much a fan of the airbrushed look so I've never gotten into it. Not usually afraid to spray on the first colour or two with cans typically, but this table had a lot of exposed foam and if I'm coating it with another layer or two of glue to seal I may as well just paint it the colours I need, y'know?

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So it was £20 all in for the tile and walls, which I haven't finished yet. Though you can get the tile on its own for £12 all in.

 

Painting should be quick too I hope. I'm thinking it's going to be a spray of black followed by metal with some hazard markings. Have you any experience of spraying mdf with a rattle can? The Internet seems to be divided over the need for a base coat to prevent the wood absorbing water and swelling.

 

Cheers

LM

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Are you going to paint the wooden pallets blue?

 

In the jobs I've had where we got a lot of those, they were almost always either naked wood colored or a kind of Ultramarines Blue.

 

Oh, and everything else is stellar as well.

 

You know, I should paint them blue. Those ones were always the heaviest ones to boot.

 

So it was £20 all in for the tile and walls, which I haven't finished yet. Though you can get the tile on its own for £12 all in.

 

Painting should be quick too I hope. I'm thinking it's going to be a spray of black followed by metal with some hazard markings. Have you any experience of spraying mdf with a rattle can? The Internet seems to be divided over the need for a base coat to prevent the wood absorbing water and swelling.

 

Cheers

LM

 

No tips on painting wood, though it would really depend on what type of rattle can paint you're using as to whether it has the water content to mess with your terrain. I hadn't even thought of that as a concern though I'll have to consider it when I get the stuff my buddy is sending me later on this year. I'd be curious, since I'll be painting some laser cut stuff eventually, in how it goes for you and whether you can shake the wood look through your painting.

 

When I get to the platforms and walkways I have planned for this table I'll be testing some ideas I have for doing various metal floor options, I'll have an idea if I can compete with that convenience once that gets rolling. Heck, if I get some good options I'd likely end up making a mould of a 1x1' section of varied tiles for later use.

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No tips on painting wood, though it would really depend on what type of rattle can paint you're using as to whether it has the water content to mess with your terrain. I hadn't even thought of that as a concern though I'll have to consider it when I get the stuff my buddy is sending me later on this year. I'd be curious, since I'll be painting some laser cut stuff eventually, in how it goes for you and whether you can shake the wood look through your painting.

When I get to the platforms and walkways I have planned for this table I'll be testing some ideas I have for doing various metal floor options, I'll have an idea if I can compete with that convenience once that gets rolling. Heck, if I get some good options I'd likely end up making a mould of a 1x1' section of varied tiles for later use.

I used army painter sprays to paint the board and walls, looks like there wasn't any swelling as a result of this.

Though the board looks exceptionally bland as is so I will have to add in some detail, weathering and hazard stripes in places.

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I think to sum it up:

It was easy and quick to put together.

Quick to paint but will require detailing to prevent it from looking bland.

The walls will need extra work as there are gaps at the joins which will need filling and sanding.

The most important question is, will I be making a board from these? At the moment I am undecided, it will depend on how much time is needed to fill and sand the walls.

Cheers

LM

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  • 5 weeks later...

Well I've managed to pull back around to this project, 8th having stole my attentions away for the last month with all my hobby time going to painting Necrons (check out my plog in the new sub-forum) and playing games. I've got a good clip going now that I want to get gaming and have four tiles completely painted:

 

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In the immortal words of Evil Ash: "Sally forrrrrrr...."

Edited by NTaW
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