Cork-tastrophe

Every time I work on a piece of terrain, I find myself loving the process more and more. Lately I've spent more time looking at terrain how-tos and galleries than painted minis. About a week ago I saw a nifty tutorial on making a water feature with cork as the base and spackle as the dirt. Awesome, since MDF requires taking a chunk out of the day to cut and form, whereas cork lets you sit, rip it in to shape, and you're good to go.

I wanted to just test out the basic idea, so instead of covering the bottom in debris I just painted black it to give my water a darker color. After following all the steps, my heart skipped a beat as I got to finally pour in the water. I don't know what it is, but using water in the hobby is crazy-fun to me. I mixed my Envirotex Lite, added a drop of blue ink (that ended up being 4 drops - whoops!), and poured it in my manmade watering hole.

I set it on a paper tower to catch any drips because I didn't want my wife, who was standing right there watching, to slap me for getting my hobby on the counter. As we both admired how awesome this simple thing looked, we both walked away and let it begin its long curing process.

Never one to not look, I lifted the box I was using to keep dust off it and tried to turn the piece to inspect the various angles. Well, I tried to turn it. The entire thing was stuck - including the paper towel! Bending down to see what the heck happened, it looked like the paper tower had fused with the counter and turned it bright blue.

Immediately I knew cork had more negative space than I'd given it credit for. And despite the Envirotex being the consistency of mud, it laughed at my layer of paint as it crept its way through the cord and down to the counter. My trusting wife never questioned why on earth I was hammering something in the kitchen, and I as soon as I successfully chiseled the cork free I thought I was home free. But...

My countertop now has shallow water, so bring your amphibious warjacks!

The removal of this will be relatively easy (my wife reads these so I have to say that), but I thought it was a hilarious lesson in common sense. Cork seems like an amazingly simple base to work with, and I'm going to try my hand at other terrain features. Still, it's good to know that during this internal debate:

"I wonder if the water is thin enough to seep through the cork..."
"Nah, it'll be fine!"

I should tune out the voice of lesser caution.

But hey, at least the rest of the test piece turned out well!

See you tomorrow!

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