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Steel Beams – you can always use it
Steel beams can be used in many ways in Tabletop Terrain. In every industrial building, power plants, silos with poisonous green slime, buildings and ruins from the 20th century. Probably there will be steel beams even in 40,000 years.
Chipboard or bookbinder cardboard
Chipboard* is a very form-stable and hard cardboard. An ideal material for tabletop terrain crafting for smooth surfaces. Inexpensive, easy to work with, can be glued to (almost) anything. Bookbinding cardboard is very similar. The variant I have is not as firm as chipboard, although the bookbinding cardboard is thicker. I prefer to use “Medium” strength chipboard. This is about 1.5mm thick and very suitable for our 28mm scale.
Strip by strip
A double T steel beam basically consists of three strips. I cut three strips of 5mm width from the chipboard. With superglue I glue a strip vertically with a narrow longitudinal edge in the middle of the wide surface of another strip. Then the third strip is also centered on the edge of the vertical strip. That was all the craft work.
Waterproof primer!
Especially with cardboard, you should apply a waterproof primer so that the cardboard does not soak up all of the paint later. I make myself a mixture of napkin glue, water and in this case a white ink. In fact, the waterproof adhesive is enough. The splash of paint is only used to see where you work with the stuff.
Another effect of the adhesive is that the surfaces are hardened again. How to harden the steel beams completely can be found in Make Paper And Cardboard as Hard as Plastic.
It doesn’t really matter which glue you use. It must be waterproof and diluted to a milky broth. I have ModPodge, Ponal Wasserfest and this napkin glue. Today I took it. It is very similar in consistency, smell, etc. to the more expensive ModPodge.
I have no idea why. A chemical reaction or dyes in the chipboard. When applying the primer, it turned pink in some places. Doesn’t bother me, I just noticed.
Cardboard to steel
I actually start painting with the base color. Because it’s supposed to be steel, I’ll use a metal paint. Here I choose Aldi Silber. The cheapest metal paint I have. It doesn’t have to be of higher quality for the basic color either.
The Aldi silver looks more like a light gray when painting. It doesn’t seem to cover well either. After drying it unfolds its splendor and glitters like stupid. The lack of opacity is very well overplayed. The glitter is much too strong for me
So black Vallejo Game Wash * is applied thickly. The exaggerated glitter is gone, but a metallic glow is still visible. It’s nice.
Such steel beams rust very quickly. You know that. If you buy a new steel beam, you lay it out in the garden for a week and over with shine. Everything rusted red-brown.
In this case, my favorite rust effect paint is Vallejo Dry Rust (72.136). Fantastic. One coat and the grate is ready.
You hardly see anything of Aldi silver, but noticeably enough to perceive it as metal.
To intensify the metal effect again, dry brushing is done with AP Gun Metal.
The steel beams are finished.
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