There's a great tutorial on CoolMiniOrNot about making your own Lava board. I've been wanting to make my own for a while so I thought I'd follow his steps.

Here's a pic of his finished LAVA board!

What I like the most about his board is the added detail to terrain pieces. This, in my opinion, is what separates it from your run-of-the-mill gaming board. He also did a great job explaining the process and materials used.

Materials:
3/4" x Foam Board
Foam Cutter = $8, but we paid $4 from Michael's coupon
2x4 MDF boards = $2.18 a sheet from Home Depot
Locktite caulking x2 = $3 each. Already had a few of these.
Acrylic caulking x2 = $2-3 @ Walmart
Caulking Gun = $1 Again had this laying around
Hot Glue Gun (Optional) = $3 for gun + $7 for 100 sticks
Black Latex Paint = $1-10 @ Home Depot/Walmart
24oz paints = $1 from various craft stores.
Paint Brushes = $1 from dollar store
Batteries, D cell for foam cutter x2 = $5 (cost more than the cutter)


1) I started with a 4x8 foot sheet of foam and cut it into 2x4 sheets. Three sections are going to make up the board while the fourth piece may be another section or maybe for terrain pieces.

2) After a couple doodles I decided on a design and sketched it out. My only dilema, as a chaos daemon player, is having enough room to deep strike my units. Unlike the other board I opted to not make a volcano in the middle and instead added a lowered section of terrain.

3) Cutting the foam. Pretty straight forward. It's about as difficult as cutting butter with a warm knife. I moved the wire in a sawing motion to add some jagged edges to the lip.

4) Adding a little detail to the terrain. The 90 degree angle didn't look right for this board (maybe an ice board) so I wen't over it again at a 45 degree angle. This gave it much better detail.

5) I numbered the sections so I wouldn't forget where they went. Good thing too since I had a fun time trying to get them positioned correctly, lol.

6) With everything cut it was time to glue the board in place. I loaded the locktite multi-purpose adhesive (it's just what I had in the tool box) and got to work. Pretty straight forward, just pull the trigger and keep the glue about 1-2 inches from any edges. Keep a nice bead going and cover the board evenly.

7) The three sheets were stacked on a flat surface with the mdf board facing up. I placed plenty of weight over it and let it cure for 24 hours.

Here's an update on the Avatar for Hoot. I turned it over to him so he could work on the details on the armor. I'm fairly pleased with the results, though given more time I'd like to add a bit more to the lava and effects. I think that's a good thing though since I could feel myself wanting to paint something else lol.

One thing I'll try next time is starting with a white primer and work my way to black. That would help in creating the really "hot" lava effect.

The sword was a new test for me. I started with a little boltgun over the symbols followed by a fade in of fire around the blade edge. From there I went over it again with Dwarf Bronze to give it a type of golden fire look. The pic doesn't do it justice, though, it came out pretty cool.

The Helmet side armor was faded from TinBitz to Boltgun Metal and highights with Mithril Silver.

Next project: I'm going to take a break from painting and focus on terrain again. Right now I'm sketching out a few ideas and plan to have the inital ideas up soon. Aside from that I have a few green stuff models to finish too lol.

Aside from working on call, I had a little time to work on the Avatar some more. It's nearly completed and I'm liking the results. I'd like the lava to have a very "hot" look to it, so I will probably go over it again with skull white some more.

This was a test for the lava on the base.


Dry bushed Scab Red followed by Red Ink


From here I started at blending from Red Gore to Blood Red to Blazing Orange.


Blending up from Blood Red to Blazing Orange to Sunburst Yellow and a little skull white

Started the detail on the head piece with a thin coat of Commando Khaki (shown on the left of his face) followed by Bleached Bone (right side of face)


Cleaned up a little with Chaos Black and added Tin Bitz (woot) to the armor

More pics to come :)

Working on the Eldar Avatar. I had to put it on hold since I wanted to re-prime the model. I noticed some areas of the base coat were chipping off as I was painting and decided to start over. While the model was in the dip tank I decided on adding a green stuff lava base to it, rather than the normal glue-n-sand method. I'm pleased with the results so far. It's subtle, but won't distract from the model like some bases I've seen. Check it out!

- - - Avatar of Khaine - - -

- - -Basing - - -

While the green stuff is still soft I added a few grooves to it. It is much easier to sculpt with the surface and tools wet.


After an hour I went back and started molding some detail to the base. I added some textures to the surface areas to help with highlighting later.


Primed and ready to paint

The next step is to start the lava flow between the armor and similar effects. I'm looking forward to finishing the base. Going to try a new tchnique for lava. More pics to follow in the next few days.