Starminer Builds...Crimson Fists Display Board

After the foam insulation was carved out to my satisfaction,  I was ready to move on to gluing everything down and building up the ground textures, the ruined building and rubble.

I first glued down the foam using some construction adhesive from a caulking tube. On top of that, I repeated the process to glue the craters down onto the foam and on the wooden base of the display.

I blended the edge of the craters using an air drying artist fiber clay from a local art supply store. This stuff was not cheap, but it was easy to use, and stiff enough to shape and sculpt almost right away. Now, I would probably go with the Sculptamold stuff, or similar product you can self mix, for the cost, as the effect and method of shaping is essentially the same. When it’s starting to dry, smooth it out with a few drops of water and your fingers or a tool.

Here you can see it drying. As the double crater was sticking up, I weighed it down with some heavy cook books until the construction adhesive cured. I arrayed the broken blocks around the craters to get a feel for how it might look.

After the craters and the clay were dry, I added additional clay around the crater to further blend the edges, as they were slightly off since the crater kept warping. And while that clay was drying, I began gluing down the ruined stone slabs and the ruined walls of the building.

This was followed up by adding finer rubble made from chopped up plastic sprue mixed into a course and fine sand mix. I glued it around the walls most heavily, and around the craters, where there was structure. I purposely didn’t add too much here, as this was meant to represent an older ruin which would have a lot of the debris blown and cleared by storms, and because I was planning on adding more mixed sand mixture across the board to add textural interest.

I left this to bake in the sun and overnight until the glue was fully cured. Misting it several times with watered down PVA, to ensure a good solid surface texture.

Going back and looking at the original sketched plan, I was very happy when the proportions and basic layout were actually very close to original concept!

Once it was dry, it was ready for paint!