Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Making pallets for scatter terrain.

I'm gearing up to play Games Workshop's new game, Shadow War Armageddon. I have almost no terrain for 40k style tables. I did pick up 2 box sets of the game, which comes with a ton of terrain, but you can never have enough terrain. 

I saw on the SWA Facebook page people making pallets as scatter terrain. I loved this idea so last night I rummaged around my basement and found some balsa wood to give it a go. 



 I'm not sure of the size I got, but it was about 1/8 inch(3-4mm) square balsa strip. I used sprue cutters to cut to about 1.5 inches(about 38mm)


 I used my cutting mat as a guide, put the balsa strips 1.5 inches apart(38mm). These are the stringers of the pallet.


 Put something on the strips to hold them in place to glue them. I used a 1-2-3 Block.


Using a low temp glue gun, glue on one coffee stirrer. This is the upper decking.  Glue it all the way to the end of the stringer.

 Glue another coffee stirrer to the other end of the stringer


 Glue one in the center.


Glue the last 2 in the open spaces between the center and each end.


Using a sprue cutter, clip off the over hangs. Clip up right against the stringer.


 Flip the pallet over and glue in the center stringer. Also glue in 3 coffee stirrers for the lower deck. One on each end and one in the center.


 All done.


I made 4 and ran out of the balsa strips to make the stringers.


 After digging through my basement I found another strip of balsa wood, enough to make 4 more pallets. 


This was a very easy project. All told maybe 2 hours, maybe less. I think I need about 4 more, and I'll be done with pallet making. 

Cheers, Xin

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