Making a table for X Wing

 
So I recently had a friend over to play a game of X Wing. Normally when either my wife or I have some hobby time planned, we plan it so the other is available to look after our daughter. And failing that, we can usually arrange a babysitter but today I had no option but to game at home while I looked after my little girl. No problems. This would mean I wouldn't be able to play in the shed where my gaming table is set up, but would instead have to play in the house on the dining room table. Luckily, as you might remember I had a star mat on which to play!

Slight problem though. My dining room table is only 33" wide, and an X Wing board is 36" wide. So the mat was hanging off the edge.

Oh well, not to worry. I head off down to Bunnings to get a sheet of plywood to lay over the table, so that I can sit the star mat on it. But when I get to Bunnings, they don't actually sell 36" wide plywood. 36" comes to like, 910mm and the closest they have is 897mm. I know, weird size, right? Anyway, what difference is 13mm going to make? I buy the wood and take it home.

But now, the wood isn't flat. It's slightly warped and rocks on the table.

Sigh.

Ok, not a problem. I head back down to Bunnings and get some 18mm by 30mm pine batten to attach underneath the plywood as a frame to straighten it and give it some rigidity. I get a bit... perfectionist with this. I'm not a very good woodworker so I tend to do things the long way around and make a lot of mistakes. I attached the pine to the bottom of the plywood by gluing and screwing it. I pre-drilled the holes, measuring to get the in the right place, and countersunk the heads by drilling a larger hole where the screw heads would go.

Once I'd come this far I decided to go the whole hog and glue the star mat to the plywood (you might recall, I received two of them, so I had a spare) and glue down some felt on the ends to make it look all pretty.

The plan was to glue the star mat in the middle of the table. Since the plywood I bought was 1200mm long, this would leave me about 140mm on each end to glue some felt onto, just enough room to put some ship cards, upgrades, dice and damage cards etc. So I would glue the star mat in the middle, glue some navy blue felt on each end, then secure the edges with some 10mm by 20mm pine batten.

So I went back to Bunnings to get the pine, some more screws (I needed smaller ones because screws that were too large would split the timber) and some spray adhesive to stick the star mat and the felt to the table. Then I went to Spotlight to get the felt, and some black ribbon to glue down as a border between the star mat and the felt. As a bonus, the extra 20mm width on the table from the pine batten would make up the difference from the plywood being that bit short to start with.

I got a bit carried away with it all and forgot to take some photos of the early stages, but you can see here I've glued the star mat and the felt down, and am in the process of gluing the last piece of felt down. What I did was mark out 140mm from one end, then place some masking tape there. Then I placed the felt (which I had cut to size and ironed first, to get the wrinkles out) against the edge of the masking tape, then used MORE masking tape to tape the felt in place. Then I could fold the felt up, leaving the underside of it and the table underneath it exposed. I covered the rest of the table surface in newspaper to avoid getting glue on it, and I hit the table and felt with the spray adhesive. This stuff was great. It says 'safe for indoor use' but I would NOT use it indoors. Even spraying it outdoors I could feel it sticking onto my arm hairs and just getting all over the place. Outdoors only for this one.

The spray adhesive I used

Once I had sprayed both surfaces, I let the glue go tacky as per the instructions on the can, then folded the felt down gently and pulled it to remove any wrinkles. Jobs a good 'un. I forgot to apply any glue to the edges, so I used some PVA applied with an old paintbrush to glue down the edges.

Then I repeated the process for the star mat, but this time I used the edge of the felt as my guide for where to place it (thus making sure all of the table was covered) and I remembered to glue the edges of the table as well.

I really should have used a manual stapler to fix the star mat in place after I glued it down, but I felt like the glue was holding it in place well enough. It wasn't. Now that the table is finished, there is a slight 'bulging' effect along the edges of the star mat, it's not perfect but it's still acceptable.

The felt taped in place, ready to be glued down

The felt folded back, ready for the spray adhesive to be applied

Next step was to affix the pine battens. I used a mitre saw to cut the ends at 45 degrees so it would look nice, but I was a bit clumsy and some pieces were a touch short, and some were a bit rough. Never mind, a bit of paint and some filler will cover a multitude of sins. I measured and predrilled all the holes for affixing the battens, and then clamped them in place while I was screwing them. I also glued them before I screwed them. But the holes at the ends, probably the most important ones because they're the ones that pull the corners into each other, I didn't drill those holes deep enough and when I went to screw them in, the pine split. But I didn't have any spare pine so I had to take the screw out, re-drill the hole and then put the screw back in gently, just putting some pressure on it before stopping. Close enough.


The rest of the battens went on more smoothly because I learned from the first one and went back and drilled all the holes a bit deeper. I then filled all the holes with rapid set filler and I plan to paint the whole thing with a gloss black.

The table in use!

Until next time, happy gaming!

Gaming Mats

My local games shop has a table that is painted in black paint, given a star scape with a toothbrush and some paint, and then a clear coat finish to protect it. It's great to play on but it means only two people can play space games at a time. Since we're running an X Wing round robin league at the moment (with yours truly in third place at the moment!) we really needed a second playing area.

So I started looking at play mats. Now, if you're at all interested in space play mats, you're probably already aware that there is a huge selection, in a variety of types from a range of manufacturers. You've got felt mats, vinyl mats, cloth mats, neoprene gaming mats, DIY solutions, etc. I ended up deciding to make my own from a banner printing website. And once again, the choices available are myriad. I went with bannerbuzz, mostly because they had an Australian website (which I hoped would save me on shipping) and because the other website I was going to use didn't have an option for a 3'x3' banner.

I didn't want a felt mat because I don't like the texture and because I'm a clumsy bloke who would sooner or later spill something on it. I really liked the idea of a neoprene mat (and will probably try one for my next mat) but couldn't find one with a design I liked for a reasonable price. So in the end I went with a printed vinyl banner from bannerbuzz.

And here it is. I ordered mine to be 3.1' square, and lucky I did because it's only just 36" along one edge, and slightly longer (37") along the other. I ordered a light GSM (for those not in the know, GSM means Grams per Square Metre. The higher the number, the thicker the fabric) as a trial run. For an image, I jumped onto google and just searched for 'stars' and set the filter to the second largest image size. A large image size is important for a project like this because a small image stretched over three feet will look blurry, and not very nice. A larger image can always be shrunk, but a small image cannot be stretched. So if you're going to give this a go, use the largest image you can find. There are literally thousands of suitable images, some including planets and nebulae and all sorts of cool space imagery, but I really wanted a plain star scape.

I opted for no hem, no image protection (which I think is some kind of protective spray they put over the finished product) and no eyelets or anything like that. The final price came to about $55 which was more than I really wanted to spend, but I was also kind of curious to see how it would turn out and I liked the idea of having a unique mat as well, so I soldiered on.

Their staff were very good. The first image I sent had a thin blue line that was difficult to see on the computer screen but would have stood out on the table top. They noticed it when putting together a proof for my order and I resubmitted a new image. But I accidentally sent a small version of a larger image. Again, they noticed this and asked me to submit a new image. Third time was the charm and I finally got my image to them. I have to say, this was a bit of work since the uploader on their website didn't work and the file was too large to email so I had to upload it to google drive and then had to chase them by email a bit before they got back to me and confirmed that yes, they had received the image.

I got the mat about a week later. When it arrived, the return address was in India so I guess that's where their production facility was. Either way, shipping was only $7.95 so I wasn't too concerned.

When I opened the box, I got a nice surprise because they had sent me two mats, rather than one! Happy days! I considered contacting the company to see what they wanted to do about the error, but decided against it since they would have no use for it, I wouldn't want to pay for postage to return it, and it could get some poor schmo in trouble for accidentally sending two instead of one. Plus I'd be lying if I didn't say getting two for one was pretty cool.

The mat in use.

The mat itself is pretty good. Some people complain about ships and tokens slipping on the vinyl surface, but this is only a minor problem IMO. I've played a few games on this mat now and accidentally nudging ships hasn't been a significant problem. It is a bit shiny, but not so much that it glares. It rolls up easily enough, although I store it flat to prevent it from curling. However, due to the light weight material it does tend to fold rather than bend when you pick it up, and I quickly noticed some cracking and fraying on the edges where it was folding. So I picked up some 50mm fabric tape from Bunnings and taped over the edges, as you can see in the pictures. This protects the edges and serves the dual purpose of adding some weight to the mat to prevent it from curling up. Only took ten minutes to tape them up and I used the tiles on my kitchen floor as alignment marks so I get the tape on evenly. Well, mostly evenly.

The back of the mat with the tape visible. You can see the second mat underneath.

Here you can see a closeup of the tape. From the star side, it's almost invisible.

In the end it's probably not a purchase I would make again. I love the mat and the image is printed very well in a high resolution, but I think for my next mat (a 3'x6' for Star Wars: Armada) I will be getting a Gripmat. The price is reasonable, it advertises a neat 'grippy' surface, it has neat printing and it looks like it will be easier to store and transport.

Until next time, happy gaming!