Terrain Boards project - The Directors cut

After searching around the local hardware stores for some suitable materials I found some aluminum angle strips which were perfect for the boards. The edging was 1.5mm thick x 20mm on high on the sides. I looked at different options for the edging such as thick tape (duct tape), wooden strips, pplastic edging and so forth. The aluminum edging was perfect becuase the height was only about 1-2mm taller than the edge of the boards. One downside of the edging was the cost and it worked out at about $15NZ per board.

Next cut off all the interlocking teeth from all the boards. Although I used a 1m steel ruler and a sharp knife, some of the edges were pretty ragged and not very straight. It was also hard to gauge how square the cuts were. Overall it worked out well and I didn't have a lot of problems later because of this.

Once I got the edging I measured it and cut the pieces up with a hacksaw and a rotary dremel. I rounded the edges slightly with a file to reomve and burrs and to avoid scratching any surfaces with the boards. As you can see in the picture, the edging was cut at a 45 degree angle to help butting the pieces together when gluing.

The edging was glued to the boards using a product called (No more Nails). I clamped the edging to the boards and used pieces of wood on the terrain side to avoid damaging the exisitng terrain. I also used a builders square (large metal square) to make sure that the pieces were square when I glued them, otherwise the boards wouldn't fit together very well! This was pretty time consuming and I only had enough clamps to glue 4 sides on at a time so it was a few weeks of work to glue all the edging. Luckily I didnt have any problems with the edge pieces moving when I glued them, and the boards fitted together very well afterwards.

After the edging was glued on there was a gap between the edging and the board. The edging was slightly higher than the boards so I had to fill the hole and build up to the aluminum edging. I considered filing the edging down to the board height but I figured that was too hard to get right and the difference wasn't enough to worry about.

Once the edges of the board was filled with silcon, it was painted green to match the original green I used.
Where the road joined the edge, I filed a groove on each side of the roads to match the ditch on the boards. Then I used the coloured caulk and filled in the ditch and road to match the existing roads. Then the roads were painted to match the roads on the boards. The rivers were done in a very similar way but instead of filing down the bank I used 2 separate pieces of aluminum angle (this also allowed me to use some offcuts) and I built up the banks with caulk.

The last stage was to flock the boards and touch up any bits. This proved harder than I hoped as I found the flock I had mixed up originally was mostly gone and I did not have enough for all the boards. I mixed up some more flock but it was very difficult to match the colour and texture well. The lesson here is to use an off the shelf flock from a large manufacturer so that you can always buy more!

Once the flock was glued on and dried there was a noticeable join where the 2 flocks met. I drybrushed different shades of green, brown and yellow to hide the variation and I also smoothed out the flock with a oribtal sander.

Finally I glued on bushes and hedges to help disguise the different flocks and reapir the roads, and overall it worked well. It is almost impossible to see when the table is covered with terrain.