Monday 7 June 2021

Row, Row, Row Your Boat...

I made some streams.
(And some ponds.)
These are made using 12" vinyl floor tiles. After cutting the sections I painted them with cheap acrylic paints from Aldi (black, dark blue and green). They then got two coats of gloss varnish.The banks are brown caulk (the cheapest I could find) oozed directly on to the edge of the strip. After the caulk cured I added flock using pva glue.
These are about an inch and a half wide and I made a couple of sections that will enable me to join them to my wider rivers that are about 3" wide. The tiles themselves have a nice faux-stone texture (see below). When combined with the gloss varnish the texture gives a nice ripple effect. The tiles are very cheap at about $1.50 each and they give you about 4 to 5 foot of river per tile depending on how wide you want your river. They are also very flat and can be bent easily back into shape if they warp in storage.

If you decide make some of these remember this: Leave the paper backing on the tile.

And here's the start of my next terrain project. A wadi.
I've been wanting to make a wadi for a long while and in recent weeks I've been trying to think of a way to do it. I've had several ideas and none of them seem workable. The main consideration are:
    1.    It has to look somewhat like a wadi,
    2.    It has to be portable and versatile, and
    3.    It has to be reasonably flat so that it doesn't impinge on a flat desert table too much.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting this here now is that it might force me to start and finish within a decent time frame (instead of starting and then putting it aside for 12 months before finishing it off!).

That's it for now.

8 comments:

  1. They look great. Thank you for posting this I will have to try it out. They look so much better then the commercial available ones.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Mark,
      Yes, they are very easy & very cheap and you can make yourself 10 feet of river in an afternoon.

      Delete
  2. Very effective. I like the confluence of streams.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Springinsfeld,
      I doubt I'd have a configuration like this on the table. But it pays to make the sections just in case.

      Delete
  3. Good job and I assume they don’t warp - winner

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Norm,
      Sometimes one or two might warp a little but it takes about 2 or 3 seconds to bend them back to flat. You can bend them end to end and it barely affects them.

      Delete
  4. i found that sticking the streams onto the reverse side of another tile works well - looking great

    ReplyDelete