Make your Own Resin Water Tiles For Cheap!

[ptsuk]

PART 1

While not specifically for heroscape you can take the technique and adapt it for heroscape easily enough, especially if you are using a printed out water tile sheet I recently posted on heroscapers and my site. You could just make a square flat sheet of tiles though if you're going to do that you might as well just go buy an acrylic sheet and just glue on the water tile sheet on the underside. I think i priced out my tiles to be about $1.50 for a 5x5 1/4 thick tile or $2.00 if you count the 5 min epoxy resin I use for making the wavy pattern on the top of the tiles (can't seem to find it in bulk online and the double sided syringes are about $5.00 bucks a pop, but you get multiple uses on each tile, sealing and then wavy pattern by "painting" the resin on)

If you wanted to use actual hex's you could make a mold using heroscape tiles themselves for the outline, like I use legos for my square molds. You wouldn't ruin the heroscape tiles as the molds are wrapped in packing tape which the resin doesn't stick to. To fill in any gaps just use clay before wrapping the "mold" with packing tape, then just follow the rest of the instructions for sealing then mixing and pouring.

this first video is just an overview and the actual instructions will be posted in the next few posts. I hope you'll check it out and be inspired to make yer own!

Enjoy! and happy heroscaping!

-david
http://www.d4d6d8d10d12d20.com - My Game Blog

ps: I'll post the additional videos and posts here in the same thread rather than make a new one each time so you'll have them all in one space well besides my site of course

[tomcollins2000]

Thats awesome. Thanks ptsuk.

[Adam Souza]

It looks beautiful.

Let me get this straight. You are printing out a color water sheet and then pouring clear acrylic resin over it ?

What kind of tape are you using that the resin isn't adhering to it ?

FWIW, I can't see the video while I'm at work reading this, so that's why I'm asking.

I may just have to try out making some heroscape shaped water pieces with this method.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to ptsuk again.

[ptsuk]

Part Two is up and talks about the tools I used (including the tape ) to construct the water tiles. The next video will be about the casting resins I used, one I'd recommend and one I'd avoid.

[ptsuk]

Part Three is up and talks about the resins I used to construct the water tiles. Here is a pic of some water tiles I completed recently using my deep water ocean/lake tiles base printout sheets and they are unfinished, in that they do not have the epoxy resin ontop to create the wavy pattern and of water currents and the edges are sharp from where the resin crept up the sides of the mold. You could leave the tiles "as is" and just sand/file the edges a bit for absolutely still or glass like water too. Its all up to you!
Stay tuned for the next video in this series.

[ptsuk]

Part 4 Is up. This video walks through a prep for a pour of the resin, mixing of the resin and color dyes and then finally a pour of the resin, then finally a demolding and showing you what mistakes (salvageable) I came up against using one particular resin.

-david
http://www.d4d6d8d10d12d20.com - My Game Blog

Preferred Resin to use, very easy 1 to 1 ratio

[ptsuk]

Originally Posted by Adam Souza

It looks beautiful.

Let me get this straight. You are printing out a color water sheet and then pouring clear acrylic resin over it ?

What kind of tape are you using that the resin isn't adhering to it ?

FWIW, I can't see the video while I'm at work reading this, so that's why I'm asking.

I may just have to try out making some heroscape shaped water pieces with this method.

Most of this is shown in the videos, but quickly I use a print out from a laser printer, using a lego mold wrapped in 3m "scotch" packaging tape, and then pour easy cast resin from michaels or other craft/hardware store, then use devcon 5 min epoxy on top of the cured tile to make a wavy pattern. Its pretty easy and really doesn't take any time at all besides the 24 hr cure for the resin.

[ptsuk]

Parts 5 and 5a

Here is the remaining videos for creating the water tiles. In these videos I show you how I use 5 min epoxy to make a wavy pattern by wiggling a disposable brush through "wet" resin and run into a huge mistake of making up too much resin and having it cure in seconds in the middle of my project, that is where the second video comes in and somewhat shows you how to even recover from a bad mistake.

this is the end of this video series for now, "unless I make some specialized tiles", so I hope you all enjoyed this series. I have some other content coming up soon too so keep an eye out!

-david
http://www.d4d6d8d10d12d20.com