Advice On Board Material

[SotF]

To start this off, early last month a friend of mine and I put together a couple boards that his wife wouldn't complain about being left on a table for various aesthetics reasons...

Now, how we built them was to take a picture frame, mask off the front of the frame, remove the glass, glue the back in place, take some short nails and put them through the back (Had to be short enough not to rise about the plane of the front, clipped off the tips, but to add strength for the next actual fill), added some glue around the interior, and filled it with expanding foam.

Then cut it level with the frame while sculpting it up for painting/flocking/sealing. Added a layer of felt to the back.

The end result looked like a pretty good display piece that his wife didn't mind.

Unfortunately, since then he noticed that the foam crushes down easily and creates a few problems of its own.

I've been planning a few similar boards of my own, but don't want to end up with the same issues, and I've been thinking of different options to replace the foam. The frame wouldn't be deep enough for most options without a lot more work in getting it right...or have the same issues.

The interior play area is a 2'x2' segment, and from my friends comments on it, well, the frame and such worked extremely well, it's the rest that's a problem.

My first idea is to try cork sheets, but I'm not entirely sure there, or if there are better options.

[warburton]

Can you get polystyrene sheets of an appropriate depth? Interesting idea though.

[SotF]

Can you get polystyrene sheets of an appropriate depth? Interesting idea though.

Not for a reasonable price, there's much thicker ones, but cutting it down on the size I need and then sculpting isn't something easy to do either.

[SotF]

Well, another friend gave me a few sheets of cork that I'm going to try using...just need to wash them up for it and layer them since they're a bit thin, but stacked ones will work.