Indoor crawler terrain - tips and tricks wanted

[JimBear]

Yes, I know - a million questions and ideas buzzing around in my head ... feel free to ignore!

I am thinking of building "some stuff" for the 1/24 trucks to crawl around. I want it to be small and "portable" - either a larger piece to put on the kitchen table (80x140 cm or so), or a few "set pieces" to use on top of a green or brown carpet-something (Warhammer vibe-o-meter on high). Right now, I am thinking that it building something from scrap, painting and glueing would be a nice pastime, rather than just buying more ready-made stuff.

I was thinking of plaster and chickenwire, but how to get that to be sturdy (and heavy) enough? MDF underneath and then wire and plaster on top?

 

 

[Willy iine]

I don't know about plaster as it can be a mess unless it's going to be casted, I would search how to do paper mache.   It's a lot easier to do and you can use old fliers, junk mail, news paper, etc.  Heck, if you can make the general shape out of something non-water soluble (like yogurt cartons stapled or zip tied together), you can use that as your base to design your terrain.  Once it dries, you can remove it from the bottom and your 1:24 is light enough it should not deform it.  Then seal with like gloss or clear coat if you wish, and spray paint the surface to your liking..including using sand texture spray.  (On one of my earlier posts for my future outdoor TRX4 terrain I mentioned chicken wire as it's going to be a fairly big lump of paper mache and would have wooden post reinforcement under the terrain to support the weight of the vehicles).

As for the obstacles (bridges mostly) I used popsicle sticks and random dowels I had in the house + wood glue.   As usual, I did not use any kind of designing  tool or anything like that.  I just started cutting and building it, eyeballing where all the pieces should fit.  Turned out pretty decently for a beginner like me.. I think..

[JimBear]

I ordered some plaster, and I am going to get going once the stuff arrives. Thinking of doing a first try with a one-piece board, something like 140x50 cm, or maybe two 70x50 that I can combine. I'll show some progress photos eventually.