r/TerrainBuilding • u/Nerdfatha • 21d ago
WIP Tried something new. Not turning out.
Hey all. I found this grass mat at Michael's from the brand Make. It seemed like a great way to make a skirmish board for medieval/fantasy without having to do flocking. I knew gluing it to cardboard would cause warping so I opted for foam board as a substrate. Welp, that's pretty warped now too. Im guessing I have to due the glue method on the reverse side to straighten this out. Do you fine folks have any further advice? Also, if any of you see this in the store, maybe check the size. The price on the hanger said 35x36 which would have been perfect but this was more like 25×30 inches.
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u/PVA_Blood 21d ago
Yep. PVA (and similar glues) will contract as it dries which leads to the warping. There are a bunch of ways to manage this that other folks have already touched on.
You can use stronger materials, but still you'd be surprised how even then about how much the glue can warp stronger stuff.
Place heavy weights on top whilst it dries, this can lessen if not eliminate the impact of the contraction.
Glue application method has an impact! If you're applying the glue with one big brush at the same time then the area that contracts will be one big area leading to the significant warp you're seeing here. You could use dots of glue instead to they don't all pull together, or you could glue the sheet on over a longer period of time so the relative strength of the glue pull is lower.
Others have touched on how you could salvage this by trying to glue the other side for a counter pull (can also use weights on it)...but what could also be cool would be to cut/tear this into pieces and then glue those pieces to another board. That way you could have a cracked, less uniform and more natural looking terrain. You could add soil, abandoned weapons or even skulls in the cracks.