Monday 23 June 2014

15mm Skirmish Box - reworked board, work to do!

I've been reworking the board for the skirmish box.

Instead of 4 x square foot tiles I've changed to 6 tiles covering a 22 inch x 22 inch area. The reason for this is to avoid the complications and quality issues with having to apply a number of paper sheets to the same tile. This size lets me print one sheet of A4  to one tile, looking  to give a smoother and less gappy finish. Hopefully the loss of a couple of inches to the board dimensions will make little or not difference to the enjoyment of play.

 Also I have moved from printing on standard printer paper to 210gsm card (the same grade as the buildings). This gives a more durable playing surface I feel and applies to the adhesive tile better (no problems with the print flopping or wrinkling)

On the setback side though I've found that may tiles are curling up at the edges which isn't ideal at all.

This causes problems for my "smooth and less gappy" play surface brief. The problem I think come s from the way the tiles are manufactured. I'd assumed that they were flat, but looking again there is a slight bevel in them, so the the edges stay flush to the floor if the adhesive fails. Of course I'm using them upside-down, so this translates to the edges naturally curling upwards.

I'll have to figure out how to solve this or move to a different board material or setup.

Why all this R&D I hear you ask? Well, almost as if I was short of projects (which I'm not), I'm looking at producing a few of these skirmish boxes to see if there are any interested customers out there. If I can run a small batch and they go then we'll take it from there.

So far already it's been an interesting experience just considering the processes of upgrading something I bodged together for myself to a cost effective product that is practical to build and with an end product that I'd be happy paying hard cash for.

By the way, don't worry, I'm well aware of copyright\IP issues and have already made contact with relevant parties. No piracy here (unless its a theme for a future Pirate boxset!)

4 comments:

  1. Hi!

    Lovely looking little board there! It may be worth stacking the tiles face down with a pile of heavy books on top. I had similar issues with my vinyl floor tile board initially but solved it by sticking cork tiles to the underside. Thats not ideal for yourself but I do find that by keeping them stacked with some books on top when not in use does keep them from curling!

    All the best

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    1. Thanks for the tip. What type of glue did you use to stick the cork tiles? I'm experimenting at the moment and white (PVA) glue doesn't work at all and Hot glue I think may be a bit fragile (probably as I'm gluing to the vinyl surface)?

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  2. I don't know if this is helpful or repeating what you already know (so forgive me if this sounds patronising), but I've had trouble before with adhesive on a large flat surface, as it contracts when it dries, thereby almost always curling up. I've had this trouble with 1/4" cork, rigid plastic...even with 4mm wood!

    Weighting it down is a great idea; part of the way I solved it in my case was by coating the underside in adhesive too, to balance out the contraction a wee bit...

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    1. No helping hand is unworthy, Admiral. Thanks. The adhesive on the tiles already when bought but I'll have to have a look what I have to put on the not play surface side that can balance it out.

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