Monday, February 16, 2009

Hill Edge Reinforcing



PM is a military term for Preventive Maintenance. In this case, most miniature game Hills are made from some form of Styrofoam, whether its white, blue or pink. Light weight, shapeable by hot wire, knife, open heat, breaking by hand, very versatile. But... pack it to take with you, in and out of storage containers, move it around and the edge gets beat to bits. Small bits break off or fall off leaving an unsightly edge. My approach is to strengthen the bottom edge. So a source of light weight material pictured at right is what I use. Left over plastic container material. Or from the front of a box item you buy with a plastic sheet to show the item in the box. This box was from 18 pack Christmas ornament box. I cut strips about 8 inches long and about 3 inches wide. White Glue them to the bottom edge of the hill, overlap is fine. The plastic will stick out from the underside all around while the glue is drying. The primary object is that the plastic goes all the way around the edge. After its dry you can use an Xacto blade, or pair of scissors to trim the excess plastic off at the bottom edge of the hill. I suspect that even stiff card stock would give a decent bottom edge to the hill also. Point being that it will take dents much better than the Styrofoam. I left a small border of the plastic on the outer edge and used my Kel Seal to coat the top of the hill and down to the new plastic edge, flocked the hill with bits of bush and grass, pressed it in by hand and let it dry overnight. Next morning used the blade to trim it nice and neat.
Pictured at left is a finished hill / edge. Another point about the Kel Seal is that you can find a light spot of grass, smear some and drag / dry brush it out around and flock, press, let dry. You tend to Not get a defined edge to the grass patch as you would with pva used for the same purpose, or so my attempts have demonstrated to me.
And there you have it.

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