Creating a Ledge around a games table

 

Ever since I created my Hex scenery I have wanted to make a rail that goes round the edge of the table to finish off the look and hold the hexes in place - I have also always fancied a table with attachments like dice trays, etc as well.  It all seemed too expensive to do and difficult.

Then I saw the kickstarter for the War-ganizer Battle Board which is essentially a fold up table with a 3d printed attachment rail system based on 2" thick foam.

This isn't what what I wanted but I did wonder if the files would be modified to work as a rail system without an entire 6' x 4' piece of foam.

The rail is going to be in sections (maximum 2’ long) so I can have a 4' x 4', 6’ x 4’, 6’ x 5’  and 8’ x 5’  setup using the folding tables I use as my games table.

 I used polystyrene initially as I had it but  ordered some 50mm deep dense foam sheets to use for the final thing.

I have changed the panels to have a top and bottom ledge so that they form a box around a pieces of 50mm x 40mm foam.  I have also extended the outer panel so that it overlaps the table by 2 inches to stop the whole thing sliding.

To connect the length of the rail together I have made a 4 inch panel to connect to the attachment points and 2 more 4 inch panels for the left and right side of the connectors.

I have thought about making the inside panel blank, so that it was easier to print, but I need to be able to use the connector panel inside, and might want to attach somethings like dice trays to the inside of the rail.

I will probably cut some attachments down to 4” so I can use those at these spots as well.

Photos of initial pieces below:

I just posted this on the FB group for the designer and one person wondered why I didn't just design a box rather than filling it with foam.  To be honest I hadn't thought of it :-) 

Doing a quick sanity check, a solid box of the same size (with 25% infill for strength) would cost nearly twice as much in filament, take 1.5 times longer to print and I'd have to attach the 6 inch sections together with dowel or something.  It would probably be easier to make and put together but the foam I have ordered is less than half the price difference - not to mention I'd only get 2 feet of rail per roll of filament!

Nice to know I am not missing an obvious way of doing this - I could also have done it with 3" square lengths of wood with a 5" piece on to overlap the table.  Then I'd still have to print panels and glue them on for the attachments to connect to....

After a fair amount of experimentation and trying various things out - double and triple checking measurements I have managed to put together two pieces of the rail system.

A corner piece and a middle rail.

4 corners and 4 rails will combine to edge my normal 4' x 4' table and be useful for boardgaming or small wargames.

The next step once that is complete is to add another rail section which will clip in and extend it to a rail that surrounds a set of 4' x 4' boards (2 x 4' x 2' 9mm MDF) - the last picture above shows what the rail will look around a board.

After that, I'll add 2 x 2' sections to extend it to a 6' x 4' table then maybe two more to extend to 8'x 4'

probably 80 hours of more printing to finish the the 6'x 4' lot!  I complete the printing for another straight section today.

The attachment shown is a turn counter for 1-15 turns for One Hour Wargames, looking at card holders, dice trays and token trays.  Not so sure about drinks holders - nice idea but there is plenty of space to put drinks elsewhere,

Been enjoying the experimenting and problem solving.

The black covers cover the attachment points when they are not being used.

ACW in 20mm

 Played an ACW Game this morning with Anthony, my regular opponent, using the Osprey With Hot Lead and Cold Steel rules and my 20mm collection. Enjoyable game - we had to call time but the Union were slightly ahead at that point.

We haven't played the rules in quite a while so it was slightly slow as we remembered exactly how they worked, even with the 5 page synopsis I had typed up after our last game.

We both like the rules - they had a fairly easy order system, use initiative so it isn't quite Igo-Ugo and have the ability for units to fire back if shot at and they haven't fired that turn.

The units shift down in size and abilities as they lose bases and the morale tests are fairly tough so once stuff starts to run it can be difficult to rally and it can sweep the rest of the brigade along with it.

Playing with hills

 

Spent some time today playing with hills and how I want the hex terrain to work with flowing hills rather than occasional lumps on the battlefield.   I have been cutting extra tiles to provide unpainted supports beneath the flocked surface.

I recently added some stream tiles to go on the surface.

I am quite pleased with the way it is looking.

I have enough basic hex terrain cut to cover an 8'x 5'table which was my eventual aim. I need to cut a load more "support" tiles to build the hills up and more edge supports so that the hills can start right on the table edges.  But it is coming together...

Playing with Polystyrene

 I have bought a box of 600 x 400 x 25mm polystyrene packing sheets to use as the base of the table and give me a sunked ditch.

Spent some time today playing with how it might look.  I need to work out the Glacis before I have an exact idea of the siege lines side of the ditch.  But I think it looks deep enough.  The Ravelins, etc will also be raised out of the ditch as well...

More Ravelin(ing)

 

Spent some time today working out how to measure the walls on the 3d model and reproduce them as flat objects I could laser cut.

All the walls now cut and rested on the model to try it out.

I have also cut some pillar supports for inside to support each floor.

Next up is gluing it together and then experimenting with texturing with tissue as I've seen used but never tried myself....

 

Playing with Ravelins

 I made a start of designing the Ravelins for the Siege of Dendermonde project quite a while ago but got stuck trying to visualise exactly how they were going to fit together, how the walls would work and exactly what internal supports I would need.

So, I cut some samples pieces this morning.  The base out of 4mm MDF and the floors and structure out of 3mm MDF.

The individual pieces are shown above.  The base is designed to fit in with my hex terrain system.

These pictures show the initial assembly and how the the pieces fit together.  I glued the wooden pieces together and used bits of card to support them.

Then I cut some very rough pieces of card to get a feel for how it would look with walls.

The walls are very rough and I need to work out the joining angles before designing them - they will then be cut from 2mm MDF.

The back of the ravelin with have a set of 3d printed stairs to the top platform.

The next picture shows some British troops manning the Ravelin while Austrian grenadiers march along the outside ridge to get to a bridge to the Glacis.

The final picture shows how the base tile will fit in with the hex terrain.  In the finished piece it will be surrounded by ditch tiles, which will be brown and then there will be other ditch tiles that fit over them showing the flooded ditch.

Been a while

 I caught Covid for the first time shortly after my last post in April and it made me fairly ill for a couple of weeks.  it also knocked my rhythm out and I really lost my "mojo" for doing anything on the hobby including painting or terrain making.

I did managed some more terrain just before I got Covid.

This shows a 2' x 2' board with the terrain so far.  I have since painted a couple more ruins so getting close to having a 3' x 3' board ready for a game.

I also added some initial roads to the hex terrain - as I realised I needed some roads that could go over hills.

I finally played a game on the hex terrain last week - a One Hour Wargames FPW game.

I have been doing some commission work and have been making some Toy Soldier style Zulu Wars terrain of a fort and a wagon laager for Anthony as well as working on some movements trays, etc for people at the Guildford Club.

But I have struggled to get on with anything of my own.

The painting table as a bunch of 15mm ACW buildings to be finished, 40mm AWI and some 25mm Marlburians that need blacklining but I can't raise the enthusiasm at the moment.

Hex Tiles Finished

 I managed to finish painting and flocking the last of the tiles and the hills over the weekend.  I set them up in a small battlefield to see how they looked.  

I'm pleased with the multi-layer hills but probably need to add extra hill tiles at some point to get the upto 5 layers look I want.

Flock of...

 Started on the great flocking project of getting the hex tiles ready...

Still need to paint the hill edges green and then cut some 2mm wood and building bases.

Finished the cutting out

 

I have now cut everything needed for the base terrain and sprayed it green.  Just need to start flocking now.

I have ordered some non-slip backing to stop the hills moving on the flocked surfaces.

I am mixing Spring Meadow and Marsh Green flock together to get a slighter darker, less lurid green then Hexon uses.

More Laser Cutting

 

 

I spent this afternoon cutting the rest of the big tiles and decided to go for just over 6' with 7 tiles wide - it also comes to 45" deep or so - will be a bit deeper once I've cut the edge pieces.

The pieces aren't quite exact multiples of 2" due to the laser Kerf which cuts away a small amount.

I have also started painting the hill tops ready to be flocked.  I decided that flocking over a green was better than bare MDF as it hides any missing bits and also shows the hex lines in green.

The big pieces are going to have to be sprayed green as using a brush obscures the hex lines and you need to run a knife along each of them - fine for the smaller pieces a real pain for the bigger ones.

I have to do the same after flocking as well, but that isn't quite as bad.

I have ordered more flock and will try to get the edge pieces cut next week and make a start on painting the big tiles (difficult as they have to be sprayed in the green house if raining and I can do about 3 at a time!  Also won't be able to use the greenhouse once I've put some plants in there in a week or so.)

New Hex Terrain

 

I spent the day working on some new terrain boards - which wasn't what I planned at all.  I've been thinking about some form of hex terrain which will let me represent different levels of hills in a satisfactory way.

I have always liked this picture from Battle Magazine of a Spanish wargamer's setup and was deeply envious as a teenager of his wargames room...

So, armed with Sketchup and my laser cutter I played around with 2" hexes and produced some Hexon shaped tiles which I quickly realised were too small so made tiles four times as big.  Unfortunately, I hadn't studied Hexon closely enough and didn't make the tile in the same shape as 4 hexon tiles tesselated, but after I'd cut 5 of them this morning I realised and redesigned the tile so it tesselates properly with a 6-hex tile.

The basic big tile is this:

I had a go at flocking a small tile (and painting the edges grass green) and the hexes virtually disappear but can still be seen for alignment.

I have cut enough for nearly 4' square now and started playing with hills.

This is how I visualise the hills working - as double height pieces.  Either with 2 x 4mm MDF glued together or simply with plain (but edge painted) pieces underneath.

 

 

Bavarians at the bottom of a very steep hill...

 

 

Now I just need to flock a load of tiles and work out a frame to hold them in place.

I will probably just use my standard roads and stream at the moment as I am not planning on using the hexes for movement but might go to sunken stream tiles later on.

Looking at the original photo he has 5 levels of hills so I need quite a lot more tiles!