Making the tiles
To start my version of a Victorian London town I wanted to come up with an easily replicable tile system that would give me enough flexibility to construct the town in any way I choose, but also look pretty good. Which I guess is the trade off, large tiles (like I did on Stadtheim) can be detailed to look as involved as you wish. But you lose flexibility.
This time I’m going for small tiles, 150mm (6inch) square to be preceise. It will mean larger buildings will need to be on multiple tiles, but I’m not planning any castles or anything. Just lots of terraced housing and the occasional civic building.
The tiles are all constructed from 1inch thick blue foam, cut with my shiney new hot wire cutter (ooh, ahh). I used white foam in Stadtheim and regretted it. And then the cobble pattern is embossed directly into the foam. But to save doing this by hand I came up with a pretty ingenious solution if I do say so myself. I’m not sure if it’s my creation, feels like it should have been done before, but I’ve been browsing hobby sites for over a decade so there’s no chance of remembering the source. If it was you, thanks, if it was me, you’re welcome 😉
To make my tiles first I cut out a 50mm square piece of blue foam, and deeply carved onto it my rectangular cobbles, 10mm by 5mm in dimensions. I made sure the scribing was far deeper than usual. Then I boxed it in with foam card and poured on a thick layer of Herculite (very tough plaster).
When dried I had my custom stamp:
Then by means of a ridiculously precarious temporary jig, I sliced out a 5mm deep, 90mm wide trench for the road. I’ve just finished building a jig to do this in a more sensible way which I’ll show presently.
Then I lined the stamp up with the corner of the foam and pressed, hard. This is why I used herculite, it can withstand the pressure. I suspect plaster of paris would just crumble and break.
Finally I sliced out some 5mm by 3mm (ish) slivers to edge the road as kerbstone, then scored then at intervals.
And that’s the road. I’ve started the painting, a grey basecoat, thinned black wash, and then grey drybrush. Once I have them complete I’ll post them up.
Oh and here’s a plain tile, there’s be a few of these as well.
As you can see I didn’t do a great job lining the stamp up on this one, but it’s highlighted more because I used a pencil to scribe the joints. Once it was basecoated it felt a lot more coherent.
I’ve got four tiles being painted. I need 36 for a 3foot square table. So just 32 more to go. Oh and then the little matter of the buildings…