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| my homemade gaming mat | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 20 2010, 09:04 PM (1,283 Views) | |
| Hyperbunny | Mar 20 2010, 09:04 PM Post #1 |
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Vault Dweller
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Here are some rather poor quality shots of my gaming mat I just made. Also there are some of the "terrain CDs" tossed on the mat. Turns out that I didn't make the dozen I thought I did. More like seventeen.... though four of them need to have a couple plants reattached. I moved them before they were completely dry. http://www.flickr.com/photos/48551174@N03/ |
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| tinker | Mar 21 2010, 04:54 AM Post #2 |
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CEO of "Rat-on-a-Stick" Industries
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Hyperbunny, Your mat looks attractive aan very playable! |
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| mattblackgod | Mar 21 2010, 11:13 AM Post #3 |
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Big boss warlord dude!
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Nice mat and terrain. You have to love cheap aquarium plants and models. How did you make the mat? What material and flock did you use? |
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| Hyperbunny | Mar 21 2010, 03:55 PM Post #4 |
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Vault Dweller
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The mat is a 4'x3' cut of felt. It started out as a 6'x6' piece of felt for my garage table. But I live in the AZ desert and summer heat (daily 110-120 degree heat in the garage) is coming, so I needed to move my gaming into the house. So I needed a smaller size cut. The flock is Desert Lizard Sand blend I bought at PetSmart. It is a mix of ground walnut shells I guess. I had never tried anything like this before so I tried to stick to lower cost materials. I got a huge bag of this stuff for $15.00. But if I had to do it over again, I would spend the extra money and get Woodland Scenics or some other model company flock. This pet shop stuff just clumps too much. Also to add a little color and such, I tossed a few pinches of static grass. I used some 3M spray glue, the stuff thats $9.99 at Jo-Anns. I should have used something else as this is where almost all my struggles with this project stem from. At the tail end I went down to the hardware shop and bought some cheap matte sealer. This was something I didn't plan on needing... but without the whole project would have failed (and still might). Okay, 1) I cut the felt to pretty close to the 4'x3' that I wanted with some over hang on the edges (I should have just cut it to the exact size but I was worried that it might shrink a bit with all the sprays and such) 2) Sprayed the felt in roughly 6" sections, then covered the section with the flock. Then sprayed another section and then flocked, etc. (Here was problem number one. The glue spray would catch the top layers of the flock from the sections next to and create clumping bits flying around. These were small enough at first for me to not really notice, but before long some got to be pretty bad. Most of these could just be picked up and tossed away, but some went all the way through to the felt and created bald spots. I went back and sprayed the bald spots so I could reflock them and that of course created more blowing bits to clump. If I ever do this again, I think I will look into some sort of roll-on or brush on glue.) 3) After leaving to dry for a hour or so (should have waited much much much longer) I shook all the extra flock off and went for a second coat. (This needed to be done and there was lots of "thin" spots. But this resulted in even more clumping and in areas when the flocking was so thick that it would later crack and flake off.) 4) I gave the whole thing another light spray of glue and added the grass flocking. (Now for a bit of a side track. When I am flocking the bases of my minis I use a watered down white tacky glue as a sealer, both for the bases and as an over all clear coat on the painted mini. This has worked extremely well for me. Once it dries the mini has a nice very light gloss sheen and is pretty well resistant to my dropping it. This coat also locks the flock into place. Well I mixed up a small bit of this stuff and tried it on a corner of the mat. Well suffice it to say, the walnut sand just drank it all up. This made a little more clumping, but not too bad as it was a section that would get trimmed off anyways.) 5) So my homemade sealer was not going to work. So i went down to the hardware store and bought a couple cans of spray sealer. This again caused more clumping (the bane of this whole project). It took several (SEVERAL) coats of this sealer to hold the flock in place, and this was suppose to be "quality" sealer. 6) I took a very sharp pair of scissors and trimmed the edges to fit my 4'x3' wood planks. 7) I am now comtemplating attaching the mat to the planks permanently after putting hinges on the planks so that it can fold down to 2'x3' for storage. But I think the crease were it folds might cause more problems like flakeing. Right now I am not sure if I can even roll the mat up without causing problems.... So over all, it was a learning experiance. The final cost to make my own mat was about $10 more (not counting the cost gas as I went running all over town for supplies) then it would have cost to order AND ship a 4'x4' pre-made mat. But I now know what NOT to use and could probably do another one a bit cheaper, but I am not sure about easier. Oh and I still have a ton of this ground walnut sand for terrain (see the terrain CDs?) and for flocking minis to match the table. Even enough to flock another mat if I do decide this one just isn't working out and want to try to make a more improved version using my lessons learned. |
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| mattblackgod | Mar 21 2010, 04:45 PM Post #5 |
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Big boss warlord dude!
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Despite all the woes it looks good. I was going to ask how it folds/rolls. I have experimented with cloth and flock before and found it turns into a board or something unsuitable for gaming. I made my mat from a old sheet and sprayed it loads with car primers and chucking on dirt as I went. I have also been attacking it with cheap paint samples from a local DIY store. I find my mat rolls okay. It is starting to suffer. I left it out most of last summer as I doing a lot of gaming and my cats have damaged it.
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| Hyperbunny | Mar 21 2010, 05:14 PM Post #6 |
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Vault Dweller
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Thanks for the praise guys. I do like how it looks in the end, if not the actual quality of the end product. I think my next mat will be an urban style one. Will probably follow pretty close to the steps layed out on the Skankgame.com site. I think I am going to continue to stick with 4'x3' mats and boards for any more homemade attemps. With the effort it takes to make these things, I don't want anything I could only use in the garage for 6 or 7 months out of the year. |
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| RavenFeast | Mar 21 2010, 05:30 PM Post #7 |
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Mutant Hunter
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Thank you for the how-to AND the how-not-to! It does look good. I've been contemplating making the leap from plain felt to textured game mat. |
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| Hyperbunny | Mar 21 2010, 06:23 PM Post #8 |
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Vault Dweller
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Oh, speaking of texture. I think that hitting the felt with a thin coat of that textured spray paint might have been a good idea. It would have given the spray glue (or roll on/brush on glue) something a little more solid to "grab on" to. Plus it would help with the "stringys" from the felt that liked to get trapped in the clumping flock. |
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| Hyperbunny | Mar 24 2010, 10:48 PM Post #9 |
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Vault Dweller
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Well the "CD forests" I made did not stay together very well. Seems like each night since I made them, at least one piece of the plant would come undone and fall down. So I have gone back and removed all of them from the CDs. I have this time, glue each of them to a penny. Now I will flock the pennies and flock over the gaps on the CDs where the plants had been. Now I will just use the CDs as the base and set the plants on top. This will also allow the plants to be moved around on the base if needed. |
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