Going to the mat

[Wirelizard]

We (my brother and I) decided we needed a big, proper gaming mat. We've got lots of scenery (most of it mine) but we've always used borrowed mats, or the communal felt from our gaming club. Wide felt is surprisingly expensive, though, and hard to get in colours other than a solid, billiard-table green.

Then we realized Home Despot and other home reno places sell canvas painter's drop cloths in huge sizes, relatively cheap. We'd actually planned on getting a single 12x9 cloth and cutting it up, but when my brother visited HD they had two 6'x9' for sale, cheaper than one 12x9.

I was looking after our grandmother's house while she was out of town, so we took advantage of her garage to crank out our new mat over a couple of evenings.

I have some in-progress shots, but they're trapped on my camera for a couple of days until I get home. Here's a couple of finished shots, though! Pardon the photo quality, the lighting isn't the greatest in the garage.


Flocked Mat by WireLizard, on Flickr

That little fleck at the centre of the photo? That's a 28mm figure. Here's a bit of a closeup:


Flocked Mat Closeup by WireLizard, on Flickr

We  used cheap paintable caulking as adhesive (as it doesn't shrink), tinting it with brown poster paint because the brown caulk is double (or more!) the price of the white stuff. Spread that on thin, shook a generous layer of mixed flocking down, then patted the flock down firmly and left it overnight.

After it's dry a lot of it shakes off; we recovered this and reused it for the next section of mat. The whole thing was done over two evenings, basically. If you had a LOT of flocking you could do everything in one pass, but a big mat like this would need a huge amount of flock to get good coverage. You'd recover a lot of it when it shook off, but it was more economical to do it in three or four segments and recover flock in between each segment.

We used six tubes of caulk, about $25 of various shades of Woodland Scenic flock, and the original pair of 6x9 drop cloths was $20. That means one mat takes about $50-60 worth of materials, but you have leftover flock for other projects after you shake the excess off for the last time.

I saw a commercial cloth that looked similar for $110 + shipping (which would be considerable!), so we're getting a bargain, I think! It looks solid, there's been no shrinking or distortion of the fabric that I can see, and this thing should last us for years to come.

[dijit]

Looking very good. After havig seen several of these now, I think I may have to give it a try. Did you stretch and pin down the canvas before starting?

[Wirelizard]

Looking very good. After havig seen several of these now, I think I may have to give it a try. Did you stretch and pin down the canvas before starting?

We didn't, and we don't seem to have any shrinking or distortion at all. Canvas this big is heavy enough not to move much when you're spreading caulk and such on it, and caulking is designed not to shrink much, which is the advantage of using it as the adhesive for projects like this.

For a small mat (3'x3', say) I might be tempted to tack it to a frame of some sort, just to make it easier to work on, not because I'd be worried about shrinking.

[Burgundavia]

I initially thought we would have to pin it down, but it turns out we didn't. I did iron the outer parts of the mat to get the creases out, something which I would heartily recommend to anybody trying anything similar.

Also, 6'x9' is a huge mat. We rarely play on anything even half this large, so this does massively (pun intended) expand our gaming possibilities.

[Dr. The Viking]

Mats are the future!

I hope to figure out how to make a snow field soon...ish!

[fastolfrus]

Mats are the future!

I hope to figure out how to make a snow field soon...ish!

We bought a snow field in December - the local shops had lots of Christmas decorations etc including white cloths (to stand under Christmas trees?) with glitter on them. By Dec 24th they were half price, we got some from the Pound shop.
Obviously not big, but affordable.