10 April 2016

Jersey Bars

I've been playing around making some jersey bars/barriers to add to the tabletop.

I know that there are a lot of companies that make them, and a lot are for a reasonable price, but shipping to New Zealand costs and arm and a leg so I decided to go about creating my own.

I'd read on LuckyJoes blog that he had made is own out of plaster of paris and an ice cube tray and figured that it was worth giving a go.

I had one of those flexible mould type trays which, whilst not giving an exact shape, was close enough to represent some type of barrier. I was able to pick up some cheap plaster of paris mixture from our local $2 store and set to work.




My initial attempt was with basic plaster of paris, which came out nice and white, however I had trouble painting them. 

The paint wouldn't stick and every time I picked up a barricade, what paint I could get on them would just flake off on my fingers.

So it was back to the drawing board, and on the second trial I decided to mix some grey paint into the plaster of paris mixture. However, I didn't get the consistency right and there ended up being a large amount of air bubbles in the mixture, and I didn't make sure the mixture covered the whole of the mould completely and so when it dried and came out, there were gaps and holes all the way through it.

Being a resourceful chap, I decided to use that to my advantage, and just damage them up a little to make it look as if they had been battered, shot at, crashed into etc. 

A line of high viz yellow on the top finishes the look and there you go:




They aren't accurate, but I think they do a job. I'll do some more which are in better shape and less damaged so we've got some choice depending on how dilapidated we want our terrain to be, but for the sake of a $2 bag of plaster, cheap poster paint and half an hour, I don't think they are too bad.

Scale comparing it to a Zombicide miniature.

Hope you like.

Cheers,

2 comments:

  1. They look great; I've been looking to make something similar for a while so I'm now looking into icetrays too!

    ReplyDelete