"6mm sand? Making a desert board" Topic

Hi all,
I'm planning to make a North Africa board for ww2 gaming in 6mm scale.
I've never made a terrain board before. What kind of sand do you guys use for such a small scale? I don't want the grains to be like boulders to the tiny men! :)

Visit your local pet shop (when it is allowed to open) and ask for chinchilla sand.

You can also use tile grout. Put it on outside as it is very dusty. When dry, brush off the extra and you will have very, very small texture for you boards.

Matthew

Get a fine shiver ( cullender set) and run sand through it and keep the tiny stuff.

With such small granules, do you use a spray adhesive to bond it? I ask because using White PVA Glue, and even Mod Podge, with standard sand grains, I get the Glue coming through, giving it a satin sheen. The Glue also partially smooths the surface, defeating the purpose of using the sand!

I will need to do some experimenting, I think. I use colored sand mixtures for my 'grass', but something smaller might work out better, for my mini's. Thanks for the insights, Gentlemen! Cheers!

I use dilute PVA and then when dry varnish it.

Just use paint. Plain old paint.

I used a textured spray paint designed for decorating plant pots and it was close enough to sand colour not to need repainting.

The only things you need to be careful over are:

1) Do not touch while wet – you cannot patch it
2) Shake, shake and shake more – the cans can splutter if not mixed well and this gives little spots in the coat.

Once dry, its like rock and does not chip.

+1 to textured paint

Children's sandpit is very fine, sterile, and comes in reasonably sized bags.

Personally, for 6mm I'd just use emulsion paint, stippled on with a big old brush (4", well smashed about). Start dark, highlight up, three shades should do. When highlighting stipple the brush on an old towel, part soaked in the paint. If you do the stippling on styrene sheets this adds to the texture / finish. Here shown with 15mm.

This was done using Dulux Wholemeal Honey 1, first highlight Wholemeal Honey 3, second highlight Wholemeal Honey 3 plus maybe 33% magnolia (which I had lying about, though any cream colour will do to lighten up for the last highlight).

This shot shows the stippling pretty well, and the edges of the tiles shows the darkness of the underlying first coat – pretty dark.

For a 12 x 6 you need about half a litre of 1, a litre of 3, plus some magnolia. Personally, I bought 2.5 litres of each. If you want the Dulux stock numbers, I can dig them out.

Personally, unless you have a lot of storage room, I'd just get a cloth and paint that. I plan on doing that on canvas sheet later this year to replace my styrene tiles.

flic.kr/p/2juBRzY

The first thing to remember in making a desert board is that the color of sand is mainly from the light source. When inside, sand often looks grey as it is reflecting light from inside lighting, and doesnt look desert like at all. You need to paint your table with a desert color paint.

My experience reflects the comments above – creating a desert board is a pain, and costs more than you would think (paint, brushes, sand, gravel). I recommend getting a cloth / mat.

The western desert is most often described as a cold endless dun colour: A pale grey brown. However, having had a table that colour, I contend that something a little warmer, yellower, is easier on the eye, conveys heat, and simply looks better under artificial light. If you use sand, you are probably going to have to paint it anyway.

Buying a mat for a smallish table is probably the best way to go and quite good value. I'd go that route except that my table isn't small, at full extension it's a 15 x 6, and mats get expensive when you need four 6 x 4 mats to cover it. Suddenly paint looks very cheap: less than 25% the cost of mats. For small tables the price difference is probably negligible and A LOT LESS WORK.

Here is another example of my desert texture and color using GHQ Terrain Maker. For my desert texture, I use fine ground earth color foam from Woodland Scenics and paint over it with layers of thinned down paint. I use a house paint color for this called Ligonier Tan by Sherwin Williams but there are many shades you can choose from.