"Question About Making Roads" Topic

I want to make some macadamized roads for my 25mm games. I have seen pics of games where a loose mixture of floor dry and sand was poured directly onto the game mat and smoothed out to make the roads. It looks great, but I'd like to avoid the mess and clean up. my thoughts are to make my regular caulk dirt roads. After dried, spray them with something like 3M Super 77 and sprinkle with my mixture and let dry. After this point is where I am stumped on what I should do next. Obviously these roads will flex, so I don't think spraying with scenic cement of brushing with diluted PVA will be a good choice. I'm envisioning a rubberized glue I can spread over the mixture that will dry flexible and transparent. I'm sure if there is such a thing it will dry with a sheen. I would try to spray with a matte finish. Has anyone tried something like this? Thanks for any help.

someone made some great roads using caulk and embedding sand into the surface, painted and then floor polished and then lightly coated in chalk dust. satin varnish was then used to coat the whole road.

To follow on from Maddaz, once you spread your caulk, then cover liberally with sand and press the sand into the caulk. Once the caulk is dry you can shake off the unattached sand. Then paint, dry-brush, and seal the surface. Try it on one section to see how well it retains the sand.

Jim

I made my 28mm paved roads using roofing shingles. They are cost effective, simple to make and flexible.

There's a very short blog entry here:
link

And a few shots of them in use here:
flickr.com/photos/jbemmett

Cheers,
John

I use fine model railroad ballast and pour it directly on to the game mat. As for cleanup, I just bought a cheap hand held, battery powered vacumn ($20). I only use it for road cleanup and it just sucks up all the ballast into a plastic reservoir to be poured right back into the ballast container. Easy Peasy.

There is always a slight amount left on the mat that I just shake off outdoors.

I use black or charcoal-gray duct tape. There are various ways you can dull the shine -- flat spray paint, colored chalk, real dust, etc. Also, you can use paint or chalk to put lines on them, if desired. When the game is over, they're easily removed (from most surfaces).

Paint, caulk, and scenic cement all seem functionally enough flexible in my experience. It's the seal coat that causes the problem. Dullcote and the likes are hard and inflexible so leave that step off if you need them to be flexible. Also be careful with primers. Many are polyurethane based and will crack when bent.

While back in the USA last week, I found a Woodlands Scenics C1286 Gray fine Gravel for roads. It comes with an earthy brown Accent Powder. The instructions say to spray the road area with Scenic cement (S191). Pour gravel evenly onto wet adhesive. When satisfied with the coverage, apply scenic cement heavily over the gravel with the Scenic Sprayer (S192) or with an eye dropper. Let dry completely.

When dry, dip a paintbrush into accent powder (a soft cosmetic brush is what I will use) then brush along the gravel roadand blend "naturally". Spray lightly with Scenic cement to seal in place.

Now if you did this over some earth colored foam (from a craft store), I feel like it would remain flixable enough to follow contours on your table. For $5.99 USD and about 50 cents each for a sheet of dark brown foam material, I figure it's a cheap way to try it out with.

Hope this helps.

Tom

I have used Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement and various aerosol spray can adhesives on roads and table mats. All have retained their flexibility.

Tom

By caulk I take it you mean acrylic decorators caulk. That can work. It dries out and cracks eventually.

Another approach uses vinyl flooring – the modern plastic version of lino.
You use it bottom up.
The underneath of most of this stuff has a sort of fine grained texture to it.
Wash it and it takes acrylic paint pretty well.
Cut lengths and curves, paint dark grey and patches of mud etc.

For ww2, and obviously some other periods, a fair few city/town roads were cobbles.
Textured wall paper can work pretty well. You need to look through a lot of rolls first though.

Out of towns, a lot of roads in NWE were still basically dirt tracks.

I've seen wet and dry paper used. That probably has some other name elsewhere in the world. It's dark grey abrasive paper used for sanding metals n stuff.

No need to buy roof shingles. Each time I go to Home Depot I can usually find a bag that has been ripped open and can convince a nearby worker to let me have a shingle for free. It is not very hard to scrape some of the gravel off for wheel ruts. I spray painted mine with cheap brown spray paint in thick globby coats and it looks fine. You can always flock grass along the edges if you want. Pretty easy to cut bends and corners, any path you like and it bends nicely over hills and other terrain features.

The shingle idea is great! Funny, we had a big thunderstorm blow through on Thursday night. Low and behold, there was a shingle lying in my yard the next day (hope it wasn't mine), so I decided to give it a shot. A light drybrush of drizzle gray and some flock along the edge looks great. I wish I could post a pic but I have not found an easy way to post a pic in my posts without getting a Yahoo account (and I don't want one). Thanks for all the advice everyone.