Old school sand bases

Transcript

I’m in the garage with the bugs and all. Um, but no, seriously, I have a ton of of minis that I am going to paint pretty much the rest of the year because I hate cleaning the airbrush, but I really only like to prime with the airbrush these days. I don’t really like using rattle can. I’m going to get all those cleaned up and that’s boring. You don’t want to watch that.

And if you do, I’ve got it in a bunch of other videos. So, today I’m going to make bases in my own old school basing texture. So, let’s get shirt on cuz I had to re I had to re-edit this part because it was it was terrible. It was even worse than it’s going to be right now. But when I first started the hobby, you had to make all your own basing terrain, all your own all your own terrain, right?

You could buy wooden scenic stuff, but it was dumb expensive. There was no hobby stores. There was no LGS’s. If you were lucky, you had a hobby town. You had a comic shop that let you play war games and Magic the Gathering there.

Uh, but this stuff, this diioama effects, this these texture paste as as the kids call them today, they didn’t exist and you had to make your own. Uh, so I tried I’ve made texture paste before. It failed miserably. So, I’m going all the way back to old school. One, cuz I want to use it on models I’m going to paint in the old school way.

But two, cuz it’s super cheap and it’s a recession. Okay. One thing to point out is you want allpurpose sand. You don’t want playground sand. And this is wet, so it’s kind of hard to see, but allpurpose sand is there’s different sizes and there’s different chunks mixed in.

So like if you get playground sand or sandbox sand, it’s all going to be very fine particles and it’s not going to look as good as when you get these different size chunks. Okay, next up, I went to the dollar store. It’s not even I shouldn’t even call it dollar store anymore cuz uh America is in the toilet. It’s like the $1. 50 store.

But I got two two tins. They’re just cheap cookie tins. But you need these because the sand that’s in that bag is going to be wet just from condensation from who knows what they’re doing to it at Home Depot. Uh it’s wet and you want it dry, but also you got to bake it in the oven to kill any bacteria or any any yucky things in it uh that will grow mold, whatever. You just you just got to do you got throw in the oven.

So that’s what these are for so I don’t mess up uh any of my other like real food. One thing you’re going to want is either used coffee grounds and you can throw that in the oven, too. You definitely want to pick that cuz you got to dry it out and also kill anything that’s been hanging out in it after you brewed it. Uh or cheap cat litter. You want the cheap I think it’s made of shale.

You don’t want like scent beads or like any of the newer cat litter. You just want the old like clay rocky kind. And that’s to give you just a little bit bigger rock chunks in your basing material. I use coffee grounds cuz I drink a ton of coffee so I always have it. So I I ran out.

I did this I did this literally 11 years ago was the last time I had to do it and I’m finally out of it all. So, I got to do it again. So, I just saved the last couple of days worth of coffee grounds. I’m going to just throw that. One trail will be sand, one trail will be coffee grounds.

I keep them separate. Eventually, I’ll mix them together, but uh let’s let’s do that and then go. >> Okay. Actually, I just this jar fell behind my workbench. So, you can that’s why the jar itself looks a little gnarly, but uh you can see it’s roughly like the same particle size.

I mean, I’m sure it’ll probably be different based on the grind, but this is actually cat litter. Uh this is the cat litter I’m talking about. And then that is the coffee grounds. So you can see they’re actually different sizes. So you can do all three if you really want to.

Okay. In terms of actually baking it, um sterilization needs 140° I think for like 15 minutes. Like it has to reach 140° for 15 minutes. Um you can take it take it there. Um what I just do, I put it on 300 and then I set a timer for 20 minutes.

I forget about the timer. I don’t hear it going off and then I just go back into the kitchen uh when I smell a weird smell and that’s when I pull it out. Uh, but what I’m going to do is 300 degrees, 20 minutes. Uh, and I’m going to do a layer, like a thin layer. Uh, I’ll I’ll check it.

Um, usually like a top crust will form. I’ll stick a spoon in there and like stir that up. Uh, let it sit at like 300°, 20 minutes. It should kill everything. Um, it’s not like a real science, you know?

You just don’t want anything like super nasty growing. And that’ll also definitely prevent the mold, any mold, and it’s also it’s wet as hell. So, that’s really what you want. But, you don’t want to store it wet for much longer. Like, that’s a fresh bag and it’s still super wet.

So, you really don’t want that or it will mold, especially cuz I’m in the garage. >> Okay, so this is going in the oven now. Okay, so this is the sand dried out. Uh, you can actually see I don’t need to mix anything into this. That playground sand is really good.

It’s almost like there’s those pieces right there are almost too big, but you can see the the variations in the sedimentary layers if uh if I remember my my earth science class. U So, I’m going to when you This is I ble Oh, yeah. This is just an animal cracker an animal cracker jug. I bleach this before I put the sand in. And you might think I’m being overcautious, but nothing sucks more than painting a model and then you put it on the shelf and you come back to it two weeks later and the base is covered in mold.

Uh so, and especially here in Virginia when I’m in the basement, you just always got to kind of look out for that. But anyway, uh you don’t want to just take take the the rocks off the top. You want to make sure I’m gonna spill it. You want to make sure you get some of the actual like fine grain sand at the bottom and sparingly use those rocks. So, when I go and do the rest of that bag of sand and fill this thing up, I’m I’m probably going to use a civ and filter out these big boys so I have a lot less of those in it next time.

But once you once you get it all dry and you can actually see the difference to it, like that’s really like this is kind of the effect that we want on our actual bases to get all the difference in texture. So, now we’re ready for our bases. Okay, so it took literally all day for these to dry. Um I haven’t done the second coat of glue yet. That’s what I’m about to do.

But I just wanted to show you like there’s a little bit coming off, you know? So, there’s still some that needs to come off, but even without the second coat, like I’m dropping these and there’s not there’s stuff’s not coming off. Uh, this fine sand really does a good job at soaking it up. Um, you don’t I’m going to paint these obviously, but if you wanted to go for the sand texture, when you get this playground sand that has all these different types of rocks in it, uh, it really just looks good. Um, a couple things to watch out for, like I don’t have to bust off this big guy right here.

Probably I didn’t push the glue all the way out to the end. And that’s fine. Um, I’m going to use the finer sand to close it in. I got my mushrooms over there in the corner. Uh, dripping off the extra resin.

So, I’m going to get some more isopropyl alcohol and really mix this in with the glue. >> Okay. This uh this is just it’s 90% isopropyl alcohol. And I’m just no glue. I’m just going to spray the top of the bases real quick cuz this way it gets the same result and it’s actually a little faster.

And you can get you can like don’t have to worry about spilling it. I mean you don’t want to spill it cuz you don’t want to waste it, but you can let it go over cuz it’s going to evaporate. Okay. Just remembered I already have or actually is this glue. Just remember from the board we did, I still I have I have the glue mixed that I already want.

So, hitting it. And we want this very thin because this will soak in just across the base and it’s going to make these bases bulletproof pretty much. And lock it in. On some of them, it’s going to take all night. I I did sprinkle a little bit more on some of the patri spots, but this is going to take like all night to dry now.

So, tomorrow morning, we’ll be back and we’ll get them painted.