The Atom Furnace: DIY 28mm Tabletop scenery, accelerated

One of my favorite parts of tabletop gaming is creating a good looking table. There are many ways to achieve that, but I have focused almost exclusively on do-it-yourself approaches, both to cut costs and to feed my creating/modeling habit.

A few months ago I built a movie scene building, the corner cafe, from the final sequence of Saving Private Ryan. While happy with the result (see here) it was a long process to research, design, obtain textures for, and build the building. I wanted a faster way to fill out a partially ruined set of buildings. I found online an outfit called www.davesgames.net that provided reasonably detailed PDF files for a set of print-your-own buildings, designed to be printed on cardstock and assembled. While not interested in that "2 1/2 D" end product, I thought I could use them as the basis for some foam core buildings, as the overall design and textures were already there, for just a few dollars.

I started simply printing out the various pages on plain white paper, and cutting them out with an exacto and straightedge. The "outside" wall pieces were then glued to a piece of foamcore:

in as economical a pattern as possible. The floors and roof would be printed, cut out, folded in half up to a light so the edges matched, glued over a piece of cardstock, and when dry, cut out as a single piece.

The "inside" walls were cut out and glued to their corresponding outer wall sections.

I trimmed the pieces, then beveled the inside corners and assembled the walls.

If I were doing this over, I'd trim the "destroyed edges" before any assembly, but this was a lesson I had to learn (we'll cover that later).

The floors and roof would be supported by some appropriately damaged framing, made from balsa strips, and darkened with a mix of black and brown acrylic washes.

Yes, they should be running the other direction...

Here, in a separate build of another of Dave's buildings, I made a full ceiling, in reverse order, attaching lath (strips of dark brown cardstock) to the plaster ceiling, laying joists on that, and the floor on tip for a "sandwich ", installed as a unit;

I also used the wash on any white cut edges showing. Repeat for all floors and roof.

Now to address those chunky cut edges of the walls. First cut the edges back, rounding off the sharp angles, straight lines, and any bits of white paper showing, leaving an irregular but somewhat beveled surface/edge.

Next, paint the edges with Flex Paste or equivalent, to fill the pores, smooth the surface, hide the foam, and make it enamel resistant.

Next i mixed some acrylic paints, white, orange, and a dash of brown, to replicate the printed brick color. This was painted on the edges, covering all white showing.

When dry, I used a razor saw to score the edge at every mortar joint.

I followed up with some light grey enamel on each of those joints to blend with the printed sides.

Overall, I think it gives a much more realistic look than either a narrow carboard wall, or a monochromatic painted edge, at a very small addition in time and effort. Now I have two more to build....