Hobby Project: Display Board!

My first attempt at a display board.

My borrowed foam hill board.  It belongs to the FLGS.

Display boards are important for any serious tournament player.  Many tournaments still use soft scores and making your army look it's best is incredibly important to scoring well overall.  My Salamanders won a few best painted prizes at RTTs, even at a few of the larger local events of 30+ people.  My SW never and my GK have been in the running, in fact if I hadn't won best overall in the tournament yesterday I would have received best painted.  Highest painting scores and most votes ever for my Grey Knights.  I attribute this completely to having finished my display board the day before.  My previous attempt at a Display Board was very basic and not all that well executed, after the break I will talk about my last board and how I made a new, much better board.

For my first attempt I used a jigsaw and rounded a piece of 1.5 feet by 2 feet quarter inch plywood.  I then coated the board with wood glue covered it with sand from a bag my father and I had lying around from our model rail road days.  I also used a few bark chips, glued together, as rocks for the board. I then used an old watered down hobby glue, again from our rail road days, that I sprayed over the sand and rocks with a spray bottle to create a solid hold.  So far so good, but then I made my most vital error.  I spray painted the board with a dark brown that was not a primer or matte spray.  The end result was a super glossy brown.  I painted the rocks grey and inked them black, looked pretty good.  I dry brushed the sand with Elf Flesh, like I do for my bases, but the glossy nature of the brown just keeps showing through.  The end result wasn't all that nice, the lack of a lip on the board meant models that fell tumbled everywhere and the Wood Chip rocks, while nice looking, chipped very easily and felt a bit out of place next to the super glossy sand.

I was tired of the display board I built looking terrible.  I needed something with a lip, and a better look to it as well.  My wife and I went to IKEA to look for a high chair and while we were there I saw one of these.

7.99 at IKEA, awesome deal.

I had one of these trays already that I use for painting.  Space can be at a premium in our apartment sometimes so having a tray that can be easily moved in and out for painting is really nice.  Seeing the tray empty gave me some inspiration so I picked it up.  It is cheap, sturdy, and effective check it out here.  With the tray bought it was over 9 months before I got around to actually working on it!

Step 1 was to prime the whole thing with Black OSH spray primer.  This primer sticks to just about anything including the slick glossy plastic on the tray.  Two coats were perfect.  The next step was to add some nice accent terrain to the base and paint the bottom tray brown using Graveyard Earth.

I then painted the rim of the board, inside and out, with Charnadon Granite.  I used that color as the edge of the bases on my units bases so it made sense to use is on the edge of the display board as well.  With the paint dry and the crater and wall pieces firmly glued in place it was time for sand.  I always use wood glue, it seems to work 1000x better than white or PVA glue in my experience, so I used a large brush and coated the bottom with wood glue.  I then spread a mixture of GF9 small, medium, and fine sand over the board and in places spread a mix of GF9 small and medium sand with the autumn flock.

After the sand/flock have been placed and the glue has dried, about 3 hours of wait time, I set about inking the sand.  I first inked some places with straight Devlan Mud, then I mixed 1:3 Devlan Mud and Badab Black, and in the final areas (less than the others) straight Badab Black.  I left the areas with the flocking void of ink.  I wanted 4 different areas with different shading of sand.

After waiting 1.5 hours the ink was completely dry and the sand was ready for dry brushing.  Again I used Elf Flesh because that is what I have always used over Devlan Mud inked sand and the effect is perfect.  Using a large flat dry brush I went to work on the sand.  I then used dry brushes of Grave Yard Earth, and Elf Flesh on the crater to get it to blend a bit better with the rest of the board.  I then began to pick out the details on the wall sections prior to washing them as well.

With the wall sections finished the board is almost complete.  I went back and put another coat on the edges with Charnadon Granite to make sure it was a nice even coat and to fix the areas where dry brushings and washes had gotten on the edges.  The last picture is the board itself completed and my 2k GK force from yesterdays tournament on display in the morning for paint judging.  I will post a simple write up about the event later today or tomorrow.  Hope you enjoyed the short tutorial!

As always comments and criticism is welcome.  If you have any thoughts on how I could improve the board or want to post how you did yours feel free!