How To Make Wooden Panels for Set Designs

Recently, taking a break from gaming, we did a set design with a lot of wooden panels as you can see here. Folks asked how we did this so we're going to show you how.

We used the same premise as model houses and fences built for war gaming . Starting with 4 by 8 polystyrene insulation board, we measured distances from 4 6 8 and 12 inches across the board. Vary these so your boards are not uniform.

After spacing out  your measurements  draw long  vertical lines along the board . Using a utility knife  cut a v-shape along your lines .

Next we made knot holes by taking a piece of pipe pressing it into the foam and gouging out an oblong hole.

After you have the hole in place, use your knife to cut a V shape running from the hole out to a point. Then use a pencil or pointed stick to score out other lines around the knot as you see here.

 When finished you'll have a panel something like this.

Painting them will depend on the wood look you are going for. You basically need a dark brown for the shadow areas a medium brown for the main portion of your wood and a lighter brown for your highlights. As you can see in the earlier photo we used medium Brown as the basis for the main boards. Here are individual boards made to attach as needed.

Here on this window we use a lighter more olive brown as the main color.

For our main building we used more of a redwood color.

We plan on getting back to "small" scale modelling soon! Till then,

Have a Great Battle
The Old Crow