Lead Adventure Forum
Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: thenamelessdead on September 03, 2017, 10:28:49 PM
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I have been watching some videos on making dungeon tiles with Styrofoam. I like the look of this but have a couple of questions.
1. Is Styrofoam that people model with the same thing as insulation board?
2. Where might i procure some in an actual shop? It seems fairly easily available online but please indulge this old fashioned shopper! If you think online is pretty much the only way to go feel free to tell me though. I just like to see things in the flesh before buying.
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I have bought some stuff in Wicks before and I have also see it on sale in art shops but a lot more expensive
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You're quite unlikely to get it in a shop in the UK, other than in specialist architectural modelling shops like 4D Modelshop in London. Where it is very expensive to buy in small pieces, but you can get in all sorts of thicknesses and cut to size for you.
Panel Systems Ltd is the go to online supplier, but you really need to buy a box of several sheets to get the best value. If you don't want or can't afford a whole box, maybe split a box with a friend?
http://www.panelsystems.co.uk/products/modelling-foam
B&Q and Wickes both used to sell 1200x500 sheets of styrofoam for loft insulation under the name 'space board', manufactured by Knauf, which made great baseboards and were dirt cheap. Unfortunately now discontinued...
The type of loft insulation with silver foil cladding is not proper styrofoam and won't serve in the same way.
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Builders merchants usually have it and it does show up in B&Q now and then.
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I'll have a quick look in Wickes when i get a chance but looks like I'll be going online. Thank you for your responses. Polystyrene doesn't look like an option as the texture wouldn't work.
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Builders merchants usually have it and it does show up in B&Q now and then.
I can confirm that the Knauf Pink Board is discontinued in both Wickes & B&Q - rather fortuitously I picked up 8 sheets in a clearance at the beginning of last year :D
The yellow celotex referred to by Captain Blood is not strong enough for modelling
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I made some tiles using foamcore, with one side stripped so I could scribe some texture onto it. Then fix the foam board to a self adhesive floor tile to give it some weight and stiffness.
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In Germany it is called Styrodur ( Brand name) and can be bought at builders centers. Maybe if you google that name you might find that round your place too . Or look for extruded Polystyrene that is the chemical name.
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Are we talking about styrofoam as in Expanded Poly Styrene (EPS) or Extruded Poly Styrene (XPS)? Both are available in single 25 to 50mm sheets in any old DIY here in Sweden. Are they really that hard to come by in the UK?
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I've been using 25mm thick offcuts of pale blue Floormate 200 Styrofoam by DOW...
I see it is stocked by Jewsons.
It's a tad denser than the pale green/pink stuff so probably good for terrain tiles
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Panel Systems Ltd is the go to online supplier, but you really need to buy a box of several sheets to get the best value. If you don't want or can't afford a whole box, maybe split a box with a friend?
http://www.panelsystems.co.uk/products/modelling-foam
I'd second the recommendation for Panel Systems - they come in perfect 2ft squares, more or less any thickness you could need.
You do need to buy them in bulk at £46, but how many boards (or whatever you're making) you will get from it depends on the thickness you want. For example I wanted 20mm thick sheets for my terrain boards, so got 15 in the box, which is probably all I'll ever need. If I was making thicker terrain boards and had gone for 50mm, I would have only got 6 for the same price.
http://www.panelsystems.co.uk/product/craftfoam-blue
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Are we talking about styrofoam as in Expanded Poly Styrene (EPS) or Extruded Poly Styrene (XPS)? Both are available in single 25 to 50mm sheets in any old DIY here in Sweden. Are they really that hard to come by in the UK?
Yes, it seems so. Maybe they don't usually need to insulate their houses and ground plumbing etc like we do in the Nordics ;)
Here in Finland we have Finnfoam, cheap as dirt and readily available in every DIY store in various thicknesses.
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Its also worth giving ebay a look. You can often pick up some at decent prices there.
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On the subject of foam, anyone used expanding foam on a terrain project?
(https://www.abbuildingproducts.co.uk/images/content/Expanding_Foams/cans/No_Warp.jpg)
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Yes. Not an unqualified success... see pages 7/8 or so of my Cave Wars table build thread... http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=76576.90
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Some years ago I bought some expanding foam to fill a big crack (in a wall, before you all start making up your own jokes)
Although it says you can clean out the nozzle, I have found that it is a waste of time, so (it being a fine day) I laid some sheets of newspaper on the lawn and played with the rest of the can's contents. It comes out the consistency of soft poo.
Like soft poo you really do not want to touch it with your fingers. You can however have great fun poking & prodding it with a stick, or even putting a bit of newspaper on it, then pulling it away.
When it is totally dry it can be carved, broken, even scribed into. Over the period of a month the various shapes sat beside my painting area. Any time I had a bit of paint left over (at the end of a painting session) I thinned it down & painted it onto some bit of the shapes. Effectively giving the 'turds' an interesting finish. The ones I had scribed into were then based up (onto CDs or thin MDF shapes) as alien monoliths & standing stones. The others became various asteroids for my spaceship games.
As the bits had been formed onto a flat surface (the newspaper on the lawn) the 'underside' was flat & easy to base.
I hope this helps you.
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Oh, yes. Several times. It is quite useful as adhesive and filler for extruded Styrofoam constructions. Bewre, though, a pile of that foam, painted in earth tones will look very much like a pile of human shit.
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I'v e recently been inspired to try my hand at carving styrofoam. Lots of you blokes have been doing it for ages, but hey, a guy's gotta start somewhere.
Here is an example of two types of styrofoam insulation blocks that I picked up at a local DIY shop (here in France, I tried several but found what I wanted at Leroy Merlin). They are 6cm-thick basic styrofoam (similar to the stuff you find in electronics packaging and the like, and 2cm-thick much denser stuff that I assume must be the extruded polystyrene that I hear folks talking about.
(http://gdurl.com/Rrxy)
Notice the yellowish stuff on top, and the white stuff on the bottom of the pile. Those are the materials I've started working with.
Both are easily cut and carved with a hobby knife - although the 6cm-thick blocks are almost too thick for any of my extendable hobby knives to cut through, even after several goes, since I have to cut at quite an angle to avoid tearing. The denser stuff also takes details a lot better. I was trying to make a table-top version of the Storval Stairs from the Pathfinder adventure path called "Rise of the Runelords"... and had mixed results.
(http://gdurl.com/MMtw)
You can see that I used five layers of the denser extruded polystyrene for the stairs, cut more or less regular notched lines to represent stonework, then cut them up a bit to represent aged stonework, and used the rock you see there on the table to add some surface details, and to rough up the other cuts and slots. The denser stuff took the detail well, the less dense white polystyrene (not shown on that photo) didn't take much detail at all. For that reason I think I'll avoid it in future.
Both kinds of polystyrene took paint fairly well. Unlike an earlier project, I made sure to get spraypaint that was advertised as being usable on polystyrene. No troubles at all, though it comes in smaller and more expensive cans, from a craft store, so there is that. On an earlier project, I used standard spraycans, and the paint did eat its way into the polystyrene itself, especially the bits I'd done carving on, but it wasn't an entirely unpleasant effect, since I'd wanted to simulate rough stone.
Once I've got more and better pictures of the finished project, I'll start a new thread with it all here, but since the OP went and asked about it, I thought I'd share what I learnt here.
If you're still unsure where to obtain it, do what I did. Go to your local lumber store, DIY shop or hardware store or whatever you call it in your country, go to the area where they sell bulk supplies to builders, and ask about styrofoam insulation panels. Most of the ones I saw had drywall attached to them, so were no good to me, but I asked again and they pointed me to another bay with the two types I showed you, with no drywall attached. Worked great, and I'll soon be back for more!