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Make Your Own Foamcore Buildings - LuckyG | |
| What you'll need: - A pen or pencil - A ruler - A sharp hobby knife with replacement blades - foamcore wears down the edge somewhat quickly, and a dull knife will tear the foam instead of yielding a nice edge - A sheet of foamcore (or more, if you're feeling ambitious) - Glue (I used Lepage carpenter's glue, it holds well, dries fast, and has a nice tapered nozzle) - A sheet of thin card The most important thing to remember when doing this is to think ahead and double-check everything. Measure twice, cut once - because you can't undo mistakes (although it is pretty easy to cover them up). First of all you have to think of what you want in your building. Take a look at real life architecture and movies - I stole from Troy, Gangs of New York, a whole host of war movies, and I'm sure plenty of subconscious designs snuck their way in. Remember to keep it simple. If you put in too much detail, you're going to curse yourself after the third hour of cutting out elaborate buttress engraving. Once you have a design in your head, draw it out and work out the dimensions you want. Lay it out on the sheet of foamcore. Be thrifty with your space, by working creatively you can use most of the sheet. It might help to label the sides so that you know how to put it together, especially if you're making more than one building at a time like I am here.  Once the design is drawn out, you can cut it out. Watch the surface underneath, you'll definitely cut a few lines into it. Score the foamcore first, using a ruler to guide your blade. Make sure you hold the blade vertical, or you'll get angled edges which are no fun to stick together - unless you're intending to have 45* joins, in which case it's okay. Make sure you get a magical elf steel knife like mine - it cuts without you holding it!  Assembly time. This is where thinking ahead and double-checking really comes into play - it's easy to forget which edge gets glued where. Try and assemble the building so that you don't have to fit pieces into awkward positions. To glue, lay down a thin beaded line on the edge to be glued. The foam will soak this up a little bit, making for a stronger join. Press the edge to the surface it is being glued to, and wipe off any beads that appear.  Once everything is together, make sure that nothing has slipped out of place and make sure that everything has pressure on it, once again for a stronger join.  Now you have a building, but the corners are all ugleh. That sucks! Fix it. On the card, draw out strips at least 1/4" wide. Cut every other line so that you have 1/2" wide strips divided in half by a line. Fold along this line, and cut the strips into the appropriate length for your sides. If you want to get really fancy with this step you could use alternating thicknesses of strips for a cornerstone look, but I am making a big friggin' city and so cannot afford this luxury. Run a decent line of glue on the inside angle. Carefully press the sides together to spread the glue around without squeezing any out, then affix it to the proper edge. After about five minutes of drying press and hold for twenty seconds on any places that lifted off.  Bamf! You have a sexy building! Detail and paint as you see fit, and then take your jacks and go trash it!  | |
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