basing

A new material

Thomo the LostLeave a comment
The label on the plastic sheet
The label on the plastic sheet

I was walking around Art Friend the other week here, looking for some A4(ish) size sheets of 3mm MDF. These would be perfect, I thought, for making terrain squares for the Aeronef project. They didn’t have any.

I did, however, walk past the plasticard ((very expensive and now warping under my Middle Eastern 2mm buildings)) and came to one corner and end of the store. There I found some plastic sheets, about 3mm thick. I thought I’d get one, it was only 90 cents, and try it out.

It cuts with ease using a box/carton cutter and a steel rules. It is slightly less “bendy” than balsa but appears as strong as MDF. Because it is a PVC, there is no grain so slicing in any direction is fine.

So far I have used it for basing under some ships. I am also planning on using it to make some 15mm DBA terrain pieces. I also think that the next batch of 2mm terrain will go onto some 1mm thick sheets of this stuff.

I’ll also post pictures of the terrain when it is done. I’m also sorry that I cannot give more of a name to it than just the label in the photo.

WIP – 15mm American Civil War – Union

Thomo the Lost2 Comments

DSC01450Most of the 15mm ACW figures are painted and just waiting basing. I had originally started basing on 30mm frontage bases when we decided that we would follow Fire and Fury basing – that is, a 1-inch wide base as the standard. This resulted in my “unbasing” some figures and rebasing on the 1-inch size.

When using a 30mm square base, I was basing 4 infantry figures per base. However, as we are changing to the 1-inch base, I will only be sticking three figures to the infantry bases. This will also give about a 25% increase in the number of bases available.

The photo to the left is a view of the basing material and the first batch of cavalry being based. I got my bases from Litko Game Accessories. LItko offers a plywood base as well as adhesive magnetic tape pre-cut to the base size. Mind you, it does take a while to stick the magnetic material to the bottom of the base, but the fit between the wooden base and the magnetic material is great.

The figures shown above were unbased to start with. I also had some 15mm cavalry already based which I needed to unbase and rebase. The picture below shows the figures based so far.

DSC01453

Magnetic Tape – Making it Straight

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IMG_0537

Not that type of magnetic tape, the other!

One of the issues I have had in the past with adhesive magnetic tape is that it comes in rolls. The tape is stored for long periods and the closer you get to the end of the roll, the smaller the radius of the roll and therefore the harder it is to straighten the tape out when affixing small lengths of it to a base.

The solution? When I buy that tape now I lay it up on the outside of the refrigerator door at home. Might not look so attractive on the door but a week or so stored this way and the tape remains flat to the end of the roll.

Still, if needed, you can also slides notes and kids drawings under the tape on the door so you don’t lose any of the domestic advantages of the refrigerator door.