Building a Ruined Defensive Wall - Part 2

A couple of weeks ago I started explaining how to build a ruined wall terrain piece, in this post I’ll carry on with my method; sculpting and texturing the base, and painting the finished piece.  Details of the tools and materials I used are included in the first half of this post.

Sculpting the base and finishing the walls
To landscape the areas between the walls and the base, I use expanded polystyrene, sourced from old packing material.  I cut the polystyrene roughly to shape using a hot wire cutter, this was then glued in place using wood glue (PVA works just as well) and plaster was used to fill any gaps.

The next step is to finish off the walls.  As I used blocks to create my wall, there were small gaps between some of the blocks which show up when the model is painted and can ruin the overall effect.  To fill these gaps I mixed some plaster with a lot of water to get a really runny consistency and paint this liberally all over the model.  It runs into the gaps, filling them nicely; a little bit of detail is lost, but overall the look of the wall is significantly improved.

When all the plaster has dried, it’s time to texture the base.  This is really easy (and pretty fun); mix up some plaster along with PVA glue, sand and fine gravel then paint it all over the base up to where the ground meets the walls.  I also painted a bit of this mix onto the floors to represent rubble and dirt from the collapsed walls.

Painting
I primed using grey spray primer, the main reason I use this is that it can be picked up for £1 a can, though it also gives good coverage and I prefer painting over grey than a black primer.

For the main painting, I went for cheap emulsion paints (remember this is a Frugal Gaming blog!) for the base and walls, with cheap acrylic used for drybrushing and painting the floors.  I gave the finished model a quick dusting of light brown with my airbrush to age it a little and bring all the colours together before adding the vegetation.

As this was a big build, I used a couple of different types of flock in patches and even added some long grass in various locations to break up the long walls.  This really added to the final look of the model and was well worth the couple of pounds I spent on different grasses (hey, I saved money on the paints, okay?).

To finish off the model I gave it a good couple of coats of satin varnish to protect the paintwork, seal the flock in place and ‘flatten’ the colours.  Giving a terrain piece like this a coat of dull varnish also stops any cheap paints that were used from shining.


Results
I'm very happy with the finished model; it looks good, it can be played on, it’s hardwearing and most importantly it didn’t cost much to build.

As this is a simple model, you can add as much extra detail as you like depending on your own personal taste, I decided to leave it relatively plain to allow it to be used for fantasy or sci-fi games, plus theres fewer pieces to get knocked off when moving it about!

Once again, thanks to Doctor Merkury for the inspiration and letting me steal his idea.

Building a Ruined Defensive Wall - Part 1

A couple a months ago I saw an incredible terrain piece by Doctor Merkury on his pulp gaming blog; Doctor Merkury’s Lab, a gaming blog I can highly recommend to anyone with an interest in well made terrain, excellent writing or giant robots, so that’s pretty much all of us then... 

The piece in question was a ruined wall section (imagine a heavily damaged and neglected section of the great wall of China) that was in three parts, I was instantly inspired to created my own piece as a gift for my son.  (Remember my previous thoughts on making Frugal presents?)
 
I’m quite happy with how the final piece turned out so I thought I’d show you all my method for construction, there’s a lot of information, hopefully useful, so I’ll split this post into two parts and put the second up in a week or so.  Anyway, let’s begin...

Materials
The materials I used to make the wall are as follows:

• 5mm Plywood (you can use any thin wood, but I opted for thicker plywood as I wanted it to be hardwearing, see below)
• Crystacast casting powder (any casting plaster or Plaster of Paris will do, but Crystacast is very hardwearing)
• Polystyrene Foam (any old insulating foam or packaging will do)
• Sand and Gravel of various sizes
• Lots of paints (cheap acrylics or emulsions are fine)
• Matt/satin spray varnish
• Flock/Static grass
• PVA or Wood Glue
• Strong Epoxy glue (you can get good quality two-part epoxies cheaply from £1 shops)

Variations
I made my wall using plaster blocks cast from a mould, but you can also get excellent results cutting the walls from dense foam, then covering them with a fine sand and glue mix.

Tools

• Scroll Saw
• Sandpaper
• Hirst Arts Fieldstone block mould - see my review of Hirts Arts moulds here
• Hot wire cutter for polystyrene
• Sharp knife
• Strong pliers for breaking blocks
• Fine saw for cutting balsa wood
• Paintbrushes

Don’t worry if you don’t have a scroll saw or hot wire cutter, hand tools such as saws and sharp knives will also provide good results.

As always, be careful using any tools, paints or glues.  I don’t want to hear about any horrific injuries and I don’t want to lose any followers!

Getting Started
I always start a project like this with a few sketches, it helps to fix the idea in my head and give me something to work from.  I’ve made a few projects without a sketch, but I invariably get halfway through the project and forget some of the bits I was going to do!

At this point it worth thinking about how your terrain piece will be used.  Will it be a piece that is only used infrequently or only put on display, or will it be used all the time and knocked about by carrying it from game to game?  My own terrain piece was to be a present for my 12 year old son and as such it had to be remarkably hard wearing.  This meant a thick plywood base, solid wall construction and minimal details (so no flagpoles, delicate wooden doors, fences etc), all these decisions will influence your decisions on specific materials to use, though the overall types of material and method of construction will be the same.

An important aspect of making a terrain piece like this is the overall size.  You’ll need to consider how big your gaming table is and how much storage space you have available.  After making my initial sketches I cut out a couple of possible base shapes and sizes out of card to make sure the overall ‘footprint’ of the piece would be right.  I made the base in three parts; a centre fortress section and two walls.  This would allow ease of storage and mean that the pieces could be used individually or all together.  When I was happy with my shapes, I drew around them onto my plywood and started cutting.

Earlier this year I had wisely invested some of my money in a scroll saw, this is a very fast moving saw that can cut twisting and curing shapes through a variety of materials.  This was perfect for cutting the curving shapes of my base and it went through my plywood with ease.  When the pieces had been cut I checked that they fitted together correctly and sanded down any rough edges.

 
Making the Walls
When the base pieces had been cut, I went back to my sketches to check where my walls would be on the base and then drew the outline of where I wanted them to go.  The next stage was the most time consuming, casting all the plaster blocks that I needed, fortunately, most of the time is taken up by waiting for the plaster to set, so I could get on with other things.
To make the walls, I laid blocks out over the top of the marks I had drawn on the bases to make sure the size and shape were correct and then glued them together with PVA or wood glue.  DO NOT glue them to the base at this stage, just to each other.  I made my wall sections upside down, I started with the layer of blocks that would form the walkway on top of the wall and then added rows, finishing with the row that would be glued to the base, the reason for doing this is that it allows you to miss out blocks on the bottom row so that the wall will be at an angle when it is attached to the base, enhancing the ruined look.

When these blocks had set, I attached them to the base using two-part epoxy, sanding the bottom of the wall down first to ensure that it would fit smoothly to the plywood and provide a good area for the glue.

I left this overnight to ensure the epoxy had fully set and then used some more blocks to add crenelations (the wavy bits bits that archers hide behind) to the top of the wall.  At this point, I would recommend having one of your gaming figures to hand to make sure that can see over your walls on the walkway, you don’t want to spend all this time creating a defensive position that the defenders can’t see out from!

When all the extra blocks and crenelations have been added your wall should look as good as new, so it’s time to do a bit of battle damage.  I took a pair of old cutters I had around the house and used them to break chunks out of the plaster, focusing the worst (or best) of the damage on the ends of the walls.  This is great fun and will give you a good effect, don’t be shy with the damage either, the badder the better.

Making the Floors
At this point you can make the floors for the top of the walkway of the wall.  I often use planks to cover floors on terrain pieces, but time I wanted to try something a little easier and more fitting the subject.  I read a post on The Miniatures Page about using textured wallpaper to represent floor tiles so I thought I’d give it a go.  Rather than rushing out and buying a whole roll, I found a website selling embossed wallpaper who offer free sample sheets (A4 size) to potential customers, I ordered a couple of styles that I thought may be suitable and got them through the post a couple of days later.  If you have a local DIY or home improvement shop, they’ll probably be happy to give you some samples, you could be really cheeky and take in a miniature with you to make sure that the scale is correct!

Rather than sticking this straight onto the top of the wall, I glued it onto some thin balsa wood cut to size to provide a bit more strength and prevent any of the stone effect on the top of the blocks used for the wall showing through.  I then gave this a bit of a trim and glued it onto the top of the wall using two part epoxy to form a strong bond.

I think that's enough for you all to be getting on with for the time being, I’ll continue my build next time, happy gaming!

EDIT: Part 2 can be found here.

It's drawing to an end...

This week I've been working on some gaming related presents for friends and family, so I can't post any photos of them here, in case they're watching! I'll post some photos up after Christmas so you can all see what I've been up to. Instead, here's my workbench (complete with homemade painting station) with the articles in question removed...
Meeting the Pope
Yesterday my old mucker Jackson Pope, head of Reiver Games (you'll remember him from this interview) was visiting Clifton Road Games in Exeter to demo some of his boardgames. It was good to see Jack again and we played a couple of his excellent games and had a bit of a catch up. I was very impressed with Clifton Road games, it's a little bit out of the city centre and was a little tricky to find, but I was amazed when I got in there. The staff were very friendly, the range of games and miniatures was huge and the store had a huge room at the back with loads of tables for gaming. They run games nights during the week, so I may have to see if it's feasible for me to travel up there for an evening during the week. I'll certainly pop in there for miniatures in the future, the postage on my last order from an online retailer would have covered the cost of a train ticket for me to travel to the shop and pick it up. If you're in the area, I'd recommend checking it out.

Jack has recently posted on his blog, Creation and Play, about the cost of manufacturing boardgmes, it's a really interesting article and makes good reading for anyone who is thinking of making and selling games as a business.

Making and doing and selling...
The past couple of weeks, I've been putting my modelling skills to the test by sculpting and painting Christmas decorations. I finally put a load on sale at a local craft fair and they sold quite well. I also managed to make a few trades with other stall holders. Remember, if you fancy buying any of my zombie or rockabilly related Christmas decorations, click the links on the right of the page, I promise to spend any money made on gaming or modelling equipment, thanks! If you fancy some decorations but are being Frugal with your money, I'm always up for trades, email me (through the FAQ) and we'll see what we can arrange.
In addition I've been putting a load of old bits and pieces up for sale on ebay, a few copies of White Dwarf, a couple of Judge Dredd Comics and a few other books as well, go and have a look by clicking on the 'ebay' link on the right.

Mac Army Builder Required
As well as making decorations and gifts, I've also been keeping an eye on painting more of my Dark Eldar. Unfortunately, my inspiration is leaving me and I need to sit down and write an Army list. I'm currently building my own spreasdheet on excel to keep track as I own a Mac so Army Builder won't work. Does anyone have any recommendations? Are there are any other Mac owning DE players that have an electronic list that I could get a copy of? As per usual, email me if you can help out.

And Finally...
Alas my year of Frugal Gaming only has a month left to run; of course, the site will continue with my occasional thoughts and ramblings, and you're all allowed to join in (see this post). Over the next few weeks, I'll be looking back over my past year in gaming and seeing how I managed to get on against the Frugal Gaming goals I set myself at the beginning of the year. If you have any specific questions relating to my experiences over the year, drop me a line and I'll try to answer them in my posts!

Putting those skills to good use...

All this modeling, gaming, painting and saving money may be fun for a Frugal Gamer, but there are other uses for the skills that you may have picked up over the years. A couple of weeks ago I looked at some ideas for gaming related gifts for friends. This week I've been using my gaming and modelling acquired skills for non-gaming purposes.

This has all come about as I decided to use the plaster casting skills I picked up from making terrain to make Christmas decorations for my friends and family. I decided to make some 'alternative' Christmas decorations (nonreligious, funny, or just plain weird) and set to work making sketches. I used exactly the same method as for making wargaming terrain (i.e. make a master, cast a mould and then cast some plaster pieces) these then have hooks added, they're painted and then varnished. I'm quite happy with the results and I've got plenty of ideas for more. Here's what I've done so far, a man-eating snowman and the grave of Santa:
You can find my Etsy shop here, and an occasional blog dedicated to the making of the decorations here.

Happy Gaming (and crafting)!

Necromunda / 40K Terrain

It's been another quiet week for gaming, plus I've got an exam looming which I'm revising for so the painting has taken a bit of a back seat. Fortunately, this gives me the chance to show you a model I finished a few weeks ago.

I was given an old cardboard tub from a friend (you know you're a serious gamer when your friends save bits and pieces for you!) and decided that it would make an excellent pair of storage tanks. I also had an old broken desk lamp that I needed to use in a project so I decided to put it all together...

I added a few plastic pipes to add to the industrial theme, and some of my plaster mouldings to provide cover.

The tops of the tanks were plastic mesh (used for cross-stitch and available from craft shops). I made the ladders using a technique from a previous post, and the other pieces are all from my bits box.

The base was textured using amis of sand, PVA glue, black paint and plaster. This was then painted onto the base with a thick brush. Various bits of broken plaster, stones and pipes were pressed into the mix while still wet.

The whole thing was then spraypainted black...
Then it was painted with an airbrush...

Final bits of detail and flock were added and It's ready to go! Hooray!

This was quite a quick project, but it was fun to make and I really like the final results. Just because a terrain project is large, it doesn't have to be remarkably complex. Give it a go and let me know how you get on!


Happy Gaming!

Tuesday - Tank Traps

One of the things I decided to make and sell at the Lincombe Barne Wargamers Table Top Sale in Bristol on Sunday, was a Tank Trap area of terrain. I've seen these made by a number of manufacturers and seen 'how-to' articles that describe how to make them. The results are generally mixed, with some looking amazing and some looking pretty shoddy. I thought I'd give it a go and see how I got on. The first stage was to find some inspiration, after a few minutes flicking around on the internet I found this picture which really struck me.
The traps are quite simple, but also have a bit of character in the shape of the top, allowing troops to use them as cover and fire through the hole, very similar to medieval crenelations.

I decided the best way to make these would be to make a couple of master models and cast moulds which could then be used to make plaster traps.

The master were made from layers of foamcard stuck together, cut to shape and then coated with thin layers of plaster to hide the joins. The bases were made using strips of plasticard with small sections of plasticard rods pushed through (carefully drilled) holes to represent rivets. The master are shown below:
The moulds were then cast, using the method I've mentioned in previous posts, and then I could start casting plaster models, shown below:
I'm really happy with how the traps came out, the detail of the rivets was still obvious and the plaster coating on the foamcard gave it a rough concrete look.

All I had to do then was make dozens and dozens of casts! This took a few days and involved me pouring plaster into moulds every time I had a spare five minutes and then drying the casts out in the oven after every meal!


Eventually they were all done and it was just a case of hot-gluing them to MDF bases, adding plaster and sand to texture and then painting them up. I've just finished all the drybrushing, all I need to do now is add a little flock and pick out some of the details. As always, you can click on the photo for a larger picture. Hope you like them!
That's all for today, see you again tomorrow!

The start of a busy week...

Hello all,

It's been a busy week at Frugal Towers this week. As well as the usual pressures of going to work, getting the washing up done and keeping Mrs Frugal in the style to which she has become accustomed, I've been going crazy making terrain.

It's also going to be a short post today, but fear not for I'll be posting again tomorrow and the day after and the day after that... The reason for all this silliness is the Lincombe Barn Wargames Society Table Top Sale, which is being held next in Bristol next Sunday. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I picked up the new Imperial Guard Codex for 40K and I've now got the notion in my head that I need (not want, need!) to buy a Guard Army.

This presents two obstacles to my frugal mission:

1. I've already got lots of minis that need painting.
2. Buying a large army for 40K costs a lot of money

So, I decided to leave off buying my Army until my birthday (August) as this would give me time to clear my painting backlog and earn some cash to buy all those minis (and tanks!). This has given me three months to earn the money to buy the army, which brings me to the Table Top sale next weekend; I booked a place and got to work making terrain; Ruined Buildings (using the techniques I used for my Necromunda terrain), some Tank Traps and Defensive walls using moulds (mould making advice can be found here) and some Rocky outcrops made using polystrene foam.

I've almost finished them now, but I thought that in the run up to sale, I'd post every day to show you how I got on and talk about the techniques I'm using in a little more detail.

Anyway, I'd better get off, See you again tomorrow!

Introducing The Frugal Challenge

It's been a busy week for gaming (surely the best kind of week?), I’ve been building, painting, converting and I’ve spent so much time adding static grass to things I’m completely flocked!
I’ve done a little bit more work on my Blood Bowl pitch, which should be finished in the next couple of weeks, so expect some photos soon.

I also added my blog to the miniwargaming 'Site Rater' engine so go over and give me a thumbs up to help raise the profile of your favourite frugal blog.

Last week I posted about the modular terrain boards I’ve been working on for Necromunda and I’ve had a few requests for better photos of the detail pieces I made, so here you go (on a 1cm grid):

The pieces from top left to bottom right are:

• 2 x Columns
• Shield Plaque
• Window Corner
• Vent
• Plaque/Street Sign
• Half Barrel
• Column Base
• 2 x Windowsill
• Small Odd Decoration

Here they are in situ:




In other news I’m looking forward to my trip to Salute next week, which brings me on to the subject of the Frugal Challenge.

The Frugal Challenge
I’ve decided to issue a challenge to all manufacturers and suppliers involved in the hobby, whether they produce boardgames, miniatures, card games, terrain or anything else for that matter. What I’m asking is;

Do your products offer high quality and good value for money?

I’ve added a ‘Frugal Challenge’ logo to the right of this page which you can click for more information.

I hope to get a good response and I’ll be talking directly to traders at Salute and trying to convince them to send through their wares so they can be exposed to a wide range of gamers (you lot!).

I’ll also be looking for people to review the products I get sent, but I’ll let you all know when I need a little help.

That’s enough for this week, happy gaming!

Necromunda Terrain

After my computer problems of last week, I’ve got a lot to report, I’ve been playing Necromunda (a draw), kiddies games with my daughter and I’ve even managed to arrange the first boardgaming night of the year with a group of my friends. My friends have never really been gamers so I’ve had to introduce them gently to the world of boardgaming. We’ve been playing together for about a year now and I think they’re actually starting to enjoy it! This week we played Citadels, Guillotine and It’s Alive! (for more information on these games click the pictures on the right hand side of this screen) all three are fantastic games and firm favourites of our group. As per usual I lost every single one, but it’s the taking part that counts. Or so I’ve been told.

Anyway the main chunk of this week’s post is a look at producing a modular terrain board for Necromunda...

Necromunda Terrain Making
A couple of weeks ago I gave a brief introduction to creating moulds to cast detail pieces for some Necromunda Terrain. I’d come to the idea of this method for making terrain after my Necromunda opponent Matt asked if I could recreate some of the Cities of Death buildings from Games Workshop. I set to work making moulds, Matt bought some MDF board and had it cut into 30cm squares and I knocked up some templates for the building walls.



The idea of the buildings was for them to be:

• Modular - A square shape so they fit together to cover the table.
• Quick - Easy and cheap to make.
• Simple - Relatively plain pieces that can have other pieces added.
• Uniform - All the pieces must have similar features so they look natural when fitted together.

I’ve started on a simple ‘test piece’ to get an idea of how best to make the buildings, so here’s my instructions for making your own terrain board pieces:

Materials:

• 6mm thick MDF. Large sheets are about £10 and will give you enough MDF to cover an entire table. Many shops will cut it for you for a small fee, and it’s much easier than doing it yourself!
• 3mm Foamcard. Available from craft shops. Expect to pay a couple of pounds for an A3 size sheet, enough for plenty of buildings.
• 25mm thick polystyrene. Available in (very) large sheets from DIY stores. Only £4 or £5 per sheet.
• Cross-stitch sheet. Available from craft shops, this is a fine plastic mesh sheet that is an excellent basis for floors. It’s a couple of pounds for a small sheet, so use it sparingly!
• Detail pieces. Whether pieces from your bits box, cut out pieces of card, decorative beads or home made cast pieces. Use these pieces to add detail to your buildings.

Construction
The basic structure is made from foamcard. To make this easier, make a template out of card or paper. This can then be laid over the top of the foamcard and the locations of windows and doors drawn onto the foamcard. The windows and doors should then be cut out using a sharp knife. The sharper the knife the better as it will give you a much cleaner cut.

When you have your pieces cut out, stick them together to make the basic shape, don’t stick it to the base yet! Use PVA glue and hold the foamcard in place with pins while the glue sets. When this has set, add your detail pieces to enhance windows and doors and leave them to set in place.
While all this is drying you can be adding any shaping to the MDF board using the polystyrene. Cut the sheet to whatever shape you wish and glue it to the MDF board, I normally do this using a hot glue gun.

(EDIT: Better pictures of the detail pieces are available here).

The building structure can then be added to the base board, I again use a hot glue gun for this, but PVA could be used. I find that the hot glue gun gives a better bond and fills any smalls gaps between the foam and the MDF.

At this stage, I give any polystyrene I have used in the terrain a thick coat of paint, this ‘seals’ it to prevent it being damaged when you use spray paints.
The model is then ready to have ground texture added using whatever method you prefer. I give the base a liberal coating of watered down PVA and sprinkle on mixed sizes of sand. Leave this to set and then shake off any excess.

Painting
I always prime, undercoat and then use a basecoat. You may choose to combine your basecoat and primer, use whatever you find easiest. I prime using cheap (£1) grey spray primer, which gives a good even coat for successive coats of paint to stick to. The undercoat is then added using Chaos Black spray, this ensures that any parts that are missed by the base coat (such as in cracks and corners) will be black and not a light grey.

The base coat is applied with a brush using cheap acrylics from a craft shop. I use a brand called ‘Anita’s’ which costs £1 for 60ml and gives really good coverage. Make sure you water it down to make it easier to apply.

Complete the main structure of the terrain by giving it successive drybrushes up to light grey. Add walkways made from cross stitch mesh over foamcard, spray black and drybrush silver.
Finish off the terrain by painting any details such as vents and lights and adding some small patches of flock or static grass. Your terrain is then ready to hit the table.



Conclusion and Frugal Thoughts
This is a big project and will take a lot of time to complete. It could also be costly doing it on your own. The best idea is to undertake the project with a friend or a gaming club and share the work (and cost!). When the terrain is complete (it’ll probably take a while) we’ll have a fantastic modular gaming surface, that can be added to or adapted as required.

If you play a game and want to tackle a large project with a couple of friends, I’d highly recommend having a go. It’s good fun, will improve your modelling skills and from a Frugal Gaming point of view; for a small outlay this will give you a fantastic gaming resource that will last for years of happy gaming.

Mould Making

This week I’m going to have a look at using mould making materials to aid your terrain making and modelling. But first, a round up of what’s been going on.

Weekly Update
No gaming this week, due to work commitments, so I’ve been on Board Game Geek (BGG) trying to track down somebody who want’s to trade their copy of Blood Bowl. I really fancy getting into BB and I’m looking at downloading the living rule book from Games Workshop, but by the time, I’ve made the board and markers, bought teams and all the extras, it could well be worth just getting the boxset! BGG has a facility where users can list games that they want to trade away and list games they want in return. Unfortunately BB is a big game and most of the current owners live in the US, meaning that postage is prohibitive at present. If you live in the UK and have a copy of BB you fancy trading, check me out on BGG and perhaps we could arrange a trade.

I also had some very good Frugal Gaming news this week, I’m not going to reveal it yet, but expect to be reasonably impressed in a few weeks (I was!).

Matt and I have started work on a modular board for Necromunda, It’s based on 6mm thick MDF cut into 30cm squares, each piece will have a bit of terrain on and they can then be fitted together in a number of configurations to make a playing surface. We’ve had a sunday afternoon getting started on them on we’ve got a couple currently under construction. They’re looking pretty good so far. I’ll give them a write up in a future post, but it leads me nicely onto the subject of moulding and casting...

Mould Making
I’ve always enjoyed the modeling aspect of the wargaming hobby and I love making terrain pieces for games. A couple of years ago I wanted to make some rubble piles for Necromunda and decided it might be worth casting my own pieces. After a bit of research I came up with two options:

Latex Moulding - You’ve most likely seen latex moulds in children’s plaster of paris casting kits. They are very flexible and don’t show much detail. I’ve never created latex moulds before, but from what I’ve seen, they’re pretty easy to make. After creating your master model, simply paint on a thin layer of liquid latex and allow it to dry, you can then repeat this procedure to get the layer to the thickness desired. Obviously the thicker the latex, the more durable the mould is, but the longer it’ll take you to make it. You can buy thickening agents to speed up the process, though I’m not sure how effective they are. The benefits of latex are it’s low price and ease of use, though the lack of detail in the final mould puts a lot of people off.

RTV Silicon - RTV stands for Room Temperature Vulcanising, which basically means that you don’t have to heat the solution to get it to set. This type of mould material is more difficult to work with and is generally more expensive to buy but it gives massively improved results. It comes in two parts; the silicon and a catalyst which are mixed by weight. The catalyst is generally only added in small amounts compared to the silicon and must be mixed in thoroughly. This mix is then poured over the master (surrounded by a suitable barrier to stop it going everywhere) and then allowed to set, generally, this takes over 18 hours. The mold is then removed and casts made as normal.


I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. The first step in mould making is to create the master that you’ll be making the mould from. It’s really important to get this right and there are lots of things that you can do wrong and ruin your mould. But fear not, it’s all common sense really, just don’t create any hollows that are larger than their openings (so no bulging, hollow cauldrons), and don’t create any holes that will mean you can’t release your mould (so no handles on crates).

As part of the terrain that Matt and I are making we wanted lots of buildings. We were particularly impressed by the Cities of Death terrain by Games Workshop, but weren’t prepared to spend a couple of hundred pounds to fill a table. Matt asked if I would be able to create something similar for a more realistic price and I took up the challenge.

I came up with the idea of a foamcard shell with moulded plaster pieces stuck on to add detail. This meant I had to produce lots of little decorative architectural pieces such as columns, vents and plaques. I made these from 0.7mm plasticard in layers with further detail added in ‘green stuff’.

Once these were done I could start the mould making. I glued all the pieces I had made onto a grid on a piece of scrap MDF I had and surrounded it with a 25mm high wall of plasticard to stop the silicon escaping before it set. I then used my glue gun to seal up all the little cracks between the piece of plasticard wall as the silicon will leak out of even the tiniest hole.


I then roughly calculated how much silicon I would need (based on the volume within the plasticard wall and mixed the required amount of silicon in an old tin can.
This was then poured over the mould, using an old brush to make sure the silicon got into all the detail in the master.


This was left for 24 hours to set before I removed the frame and carefully peeled the mould off the master.

I am now the proud owner of a silicon mould that I can use to make architectural details for a wide variety of models. In fact I decided to make another mould using the same master, so that I can cast two sets of pieces simultaneously, doubling my output!

All this sounds very good, but is it frugal? At first glance no. The silicon costs £18 so if you’re only making a single model or a couple of models then it’s not worth it. But if you need to fill a table with buildings or terrain pieces all using similar elements, then this is a fantastic way to do it. As I said earlier in the post; high quality building models, as produced by Games Workshop and other firms, are quite pricey, so there’s a big margin for saving money and getting the same kind of quality. But it can be a big outlay so make sure you’ll get the best out of it before you decide to try it.

The first Necromunda buildings are slowly taking shape, but there’s a lot of work still to do. When a couple are complete, I’ll post a full report, showing exactly what we did and how we used the moulded pieces.

I hope you enjoyed this quick introduction to mould making, If you have any questions or suggestions, please post a comment below or send me an email. Happy Gaming.