Building a gaming table – Part Three

Hello everyone! Here we are for the last part of building your own gaming table; painting it!

This part is very straight forward but I thought I would share my experiences.

Regardless on how you wish to paint the board I would suggest making a stop at your local paint shop or hardware store to colour match your chosen scheme. You can go in with a swatch of each colour on a piece of clean white paper. However; I found out that to get the best results go in with your actual paint pots and the store will be able to scan the wet paint to match the colours correctly.

For the reddish colour of my board, I purchased sample pots matching the following colours:

2x Scab Red (base coat)
1x Blood Red (first dry brush highlight)
1x Rotting Flesh (second dry brush highlight)
1x Blazing Orange (third dry brush highlight)

I had to purchase two sample pots of the Scab Red to have the required coverage as a base coat.

Before I started on my base coat I gave the entire board a coat of black primer. In this case I used a spray for convenience.

Painting the board is just like painting a piece of scenery (just much bigger obviously), with one big difference being that the brush is bigger. After the base coat is applied and dry we can get to the dry brushing if you are happy with the coverage. In my case I had to apply two coats. Drying will take much longer with the paint from the sample pots, but this is a fair trade-off for the cost savings in paint.




For the dry brushing I found that the best brush to use was actually a cheapish makeup rouge brush. Once I had wiped off the right amount of paint off this brush; it gave me just the right coverage and great control. I thoroughly recommend using one.





I got mine with a heap of other smaller makeup (aka dry brushing) brushes for a few dollars at the local pharmacy.





Once all the dry brushing was done I gave the board a final coat of Scab Red (my base coat) around all the outside edges. I felt this just gave the board a nice clean appearance as I got a little bit of paint from dry brushing onto the sides.




To help protect the paint work on the gaming board I also bought a litre of both gloss and matt Wattyl Estapol. For all my modelling and painting projects, I try to give the item a nice coat of gloss (for longer lasting wear and tear) and a final coat of matt (to take away the glossy look).
Once the Estapol was dry I screwed in two rubber feet on both the long edges of the board to protect the edges when stored.

And that’s it!



In conclusion I am really happy I went ahead with this project (despite the nay sayer’s) as I now have a dedicated gaming board that is a little bit different and is matched exactly to my 40k armies (Crimson Fists and Orks). I really wanted to have a board that gave that Mars / Red Earth / Aussie Outback feel and I am really happy with the result.

In the event I want to play on a green battlefield….well…I have the traditional dark green sheet for this (until I build my ‘grassy table’ that is).

All that there is left to do now is finish some more scenery in the same basing scheme.

Thanks for reading the articles and I hope they were of some use for you.

Until next time….