Project Red Rover P4: Getting Your Glue On

D&D, Egyptian, Hirst Arts, Home Brew, Terrain No Comments »

You would think gluing your terrain to the appropriate base would be a cake walk, right? After all, this is a life skill you learned in kindergarten. Well, Padawans – think again. Glue in haste and your terrain will almost certainly warp and all that hard work thus far is for naught. Glue with pre-calculated planning and techniques and your 3D game board will flourish…let’s explore further.

First off, you can base your newly cast bricks on a variety of materials including:

Certainly you want to go with what you’re most comfortable with but Ben’s biggest concern is always the bend probability. There’s great heartbreak in a finished piece having an upward slope like a troll bridge. For that reason, Ben recommends Elmer’s Foam Board (specifically the 20” x 30” x 3/16”) but get it in black if you can. You can readily purchase a sheet at Michaels, Staples or Wal-mart for about $7.

A hot knife or (really sharp) Xacto blade allows you to manually cut your bases to the proper dimensions but that does take some skill for some of us. So, Ben got the assistance of his father-in-law and one of his a big manly woodshop machines. His mighty electric saw cutting method was a huge timesaver (a mere 2 hours for a ton of perfectly cut pieces). And before you say you don’t have a saw, you can always take your stuff over to Home Depot and they’ll charge ya mere pennies to make the appropriate cuts.

Ben keeps some sandpaper handy post-cast so that his terrain glues on as level as possible (especially important when doing custom mold casts). This extra TLC makes a huge difference and is an overlooked step.

Two types of glue get the most love in a Hirst Arts terrain world: Titebond II Premium Wood Glue ($6.49) and Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue ($7.83). Ben actually prefers Wood Glue for your bricks as the plaster seems to adhere better to the foam core. Tacky Glue seems to have better sticking power for basing plastic minis (like MageKnight or Dreamblade).

When applying the glue, Ben likes the medium wood glue bottle nozzle. He also keeps a jar of sturdy toothpicks on hand to apply glue to smaller areas. He keeps a “glue rag” (fancy name for a folded up paper towel) to wipe away the excess.

To ensure your pieces are glued on straight/even, you can get your MacGyver helm on and make your own straight edge. Ben’s dad made him two versions: one for day-to-day and another for higher walls. Large Megabloks also do a fine job but sometimes a few rectangles from the Lego Duplo Brick Set are nice to have within arm’s reach too. The bummer with Legos is they can slide around on ya where as a larger straight edge with rubber stoppers on the bottom keeps everything stationary.

Once glued, some of the smaller pieces will typically turn out better if you immediately drop them into a hobby vice or clamp. That extra pressure just seems to end in a better final product (and helps those ugly seams).

When gluing floors, Ben tries to counteract the dreaded warp monster with a brick press. It sounds silly but it really has made a difference. Tiles are first glued to the foam core using all the techniques above and after about 5 minutes, Ben places them on two wood boards with a large garden brick on top. He leaves this in place for about 24 hours. Just don’t go from glue to brick too soon as the tiles might accidentally shift on you.

So you see there’s much more to this glue step than there appears. While these suggestions seem trite, they really do make a difference. Give ‘em a try and keep those chaotic warp devils away from all your hard blood, sweat and tears.

Questions to Ponder: Do you agree with Ben’s suggestions? What else have you done to ensure this glue step doesn’t ultimately ruin your terrain?

Project Red Rover P3: Casting Tips & Tricks

D&D, Egyptian, Hirst Arts, Home Brew, Terrain No Comments »

Now that we’ve got our project inspiration and custom molds in hand, let’s get physical with an actual casting or two. Roll up your sleeves with Ben as he shares several tricks of the trade so that you too, can behold the power of the brick.

Read the rest of this entry »

Project Red Rover P2: Making Custom Molds

D&D, Egyptian, Hirst Arts, Home Brew, Terrain 6 Comments »

The foundation of every new terrain environment starts with the selection of your molds. The Pile begins that process with the Industry’s best – Hirst Arts and then created custom molds from those original casts to ultimately support the high-volume pieces of the set. Join Co-Piler Enygma as he shows us how he made these unique works of art.

Read the rest of this entry »

Project Red Rover P1: Getting Inspiration

D&D, Egyptian, Hirst Arts, Wizards of the Coast 2 Comments »

Let’s ring in the New Year with a brand new terrain-building blog series. Code named, Project Red Rover (Red Rover), Ben will provide step-by-step posts for his next D&D game environment – 4e’s the Pyramid of Shadows. Our first blog post will talk all about the inspiration for this amazing new terrain. Ben can’t build anything unless he’s got the itch. So what were his motivations exactly?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben is Thankful for…

D&D Miniatures, Paizo, Wizards of the Coast 2 Comments »

Let’s take the very last blog entry of this wonderful year and share with you all the things Ben’s thankful for in 2011. Hopefully you’ll unwrap a few more D&D items, bookmarks and Twitter followers to add your own RPG Pile.

Read the rest of this entry »

D&D A to Z: Zombies

D&D Miniatures, Mage Knight miniatures, Reaper, hand-painted 1 Comment »

Sweet sassy molassey! Are we actually on the letter Z?! Johnny and the Moondogs were right. This RPG letter series has been a long and winding road that led to your door (for fun-filled 26 weeks). So let’s close out in style with an American cult icon – Zombies!

Read the rest of this entry »

D&D A to Z: YouTube

D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Home Brew, Wizards of the Coast 1 Comment »

What a glorious digital age us gamers live in these days! We can play actual D&D games in real-time with friends all over the country, build our D&D characters online (be gone errata supplements) in minutes, and download RPG eBooks in a seconds. But most of all – we have YouTube. An ever-growing video library filled with terrain inspiration and game enhancing ideas.

Read the rest of this entry »

D&D A to Z: Xtra

D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, IDW, Yansolo Minis No Comments »

Great Mordenkainen’s ghost – the letter “x” is no easy RPG word! Let’s put a playful spin on this week’s entry and go with “extra” but lose the “e” so we can stay classy. This way we can answer the question, “What xtra stuff does Ben have on the Pile that he can share with y’all?”

Read the rest of this entry »

D&D A to Z: Wells

D&D, D&D Miniatures, Hirst Arts, Miniature Building Authority 2 Comments »

Well, well, well – we’re nearly to the end of our letter-laden journey and what a ride it’s been. Sure we had some obvious choices with this week’s entry but we kinda already did walls and water. So, time to dig deeper and see what actual D&D-style wells are resting in the Pile.

Read the rest of this entry »

D&D A to Z: Vile

D&D, D&D Miniatures, Dungeons & Dragons, Home Brew, Reaper 1 Comment »

Truth be told certain monstrosities in one’s D&D game often come down to a single descriptive term…vile. And it’s fair to say many a gamer could point to some clear commonalities. Read along as Ben pulls a few examples off the Pile to illustrate the point.

Read the rest of this entry »

Home | About | Articles | Characters | Current Mod | Downloads | Forum Fun | Game Store
Powered by WordPress Entries RSS