My Pipe Dream – Part 4

Ho dear readers!

Fly with some more of gaming table goodness. This is part four of my series where I build a game table - from scratch!
I left you last with my table built, ready for primer.
Here's the primer and the table primed. I wanted to use a latex based paint to protect my foam just in case the spray adhesive I wanted to use for my sand was going to melt it. I've even had spray paint eat foam before, so I didn't want to risk that either.
Rustoleum makes their basic spray paint line in quart sized cans. I picked this up at Lowes and it's just black latex paint.  It worked wonders and was applied with a big-ass brush. The coverage was even and the dried paint was durable and even.



Again, note that I wasn't able to get the recesses of the pipe valley. I would have to remove them later to get some paint in there, which wasn't a problem.


Next, the texture. I would need to get my texture on somehow, and since I was doing such a large area, figure some spray adhesive would work.
A possible problem arose though, it was FRACKING FREEZING outside. The back of the adhesive clearly stated that the actual adhesiveness of the glue was dependent on temperature.
Additionally, my wife clearly stated I wasn't to spray anything in the house.
Time to get on the porch, spray, toss some sand, run inside and warm up,... then run back out, spray, toss some sand, run inside and warm up... I don't know, like 40 times?

The sand I used was a huge 50 lb bag of sandbox sand. That tipped the ol' scales at... $4.99. Man, I should buy a bag of this stuff along with like 2000 of those little drug dealer baggies and sell them online for like $2 a piece as "basing sand for miniatures." I could makes hundreds of dollards. Literally, hundreds.

Back on track, after my little dance in and out of the house, I got my lady to help me bring this back in so it could dry. No fumes, surprisingly, and the adhesive worked fine. No messes.
The coverage, while at first looks uneven, was what I was going for for the most part. The areas around the pools and the bases of the hills and around the pipes I wanted free of texture. Next would come actual color! COLOR!
I used a nice brown from Lowes also, their cheapest latex paint in a quart, where the dude behind the counter mixes it for you. Thanks dude! I got the brown and a yellowish color.
To make a little more variety, I mixed a little black in for some spots of the brown. I think this really started to bring the board to life.
Now the brown was looking good, I wanted to Emeril it up and kick it up a notch. I had planned on using the yellow to add some patchy spots of dead grass. Nope. Change of plans.
It was dry-brush time. I gave the whole board a heavy dry brush of the yellow. Man, did it make it pop or what? It picked up the edges of the hills like 'whoa,' and really unified the board.

It also turns out I'll have a ton of yellow left because I probably used about a fluidic ounce of it.


The next step would be to finally address the areas not painted under the pipes. Luckily, they popped out pretty easily, with only one of the elbows breaking. I just replaced it because they only cost $0.29.
I just slapped some heavy coats of brown into the crevice to get some even coverage and put the pipes back in place.

On the last photo here, you can see my first terrain project: The piles of pipes. That is a pretty heavy piece of terrain and stands about 5" tall and is over 10" long. I'll paint them when I finally get to painting the pipes. Things are coming along... nicely.

Until next time, Fly out!