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**Nerd alert**: 3D Settlers of Catan board. Photo heavy.

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
:nerd:

We've been pretty big fans of the game Settlers of Catan since we were introduced to it during what has since been dubbed "Catansgiving" over the thanksgiving holiday a couple years back. Sometime ago I stumbled across this post on Reddit where somebody built a 3D board, and I've been obsessing about it for a while. So I've finally broken down and started it.

For reference, this is what the basic, 4 player game board looks like. Also, woman-childs first victory.


Fortunately, the last couple weeks at work have been real slow, so I've had a lot of free time to get started.

Hexes are about 3.5" across, so I was able to fish out some scrap aluminum from the can in the sheet metal shop. Cutting, sanding, cleaning and polishing.
















 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Next, was to create "masters" for molds. There are 8 distinct tile types, and 52 total tiles in the basic 5-6 player version. I want to create at least enough total tiles for 2 sets of the game, maybe even 3, so I'll need to be able to make lots of duplicates. I bought a 1.5lb box of Sculpey modeling clay and got to work.

The port tile: (since scrapped for a different version)
Roll out clay, shape, then press in the port tag piece so it will fit in game.




The ocean border piece


Repeat for Ore, Wood, Sheep, Brick, and Wheat. Also need a desert piece. I also created 2 of every type of hex, for variety, though not all are pictured here.

Ore:



Wheat:



Brick:



Sheep:



Lumber:



Bake at 275 until hard. Preferably in the work oven so as to avoid wrath of wife.

 
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Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Next up, mold creation. Woman-child really wanted to do sheep first, so we'd tried it at home.

I cut a couple big mixing cups to use as a form, then sealed it to some plastic sheeting with silicone. As it turns out, I later got some used release paper from our composites guy in the hangar, and the silicone around the form is unnecessary because the 2 part silicone rubber for the mold is so thick.






Pouring a thin stream from up high helps break out bubbles in the mixture.



But as it turned out, this stuff only has a 6 minute pot life, and they mean it. I definitely stirred for too long. Got a ton of bubbles in it and it started to set up as I was pouring.



Plus, leaving it on this paper bag was a dumb move. Their wound up being a huge wrinkle in the bottom of the mold and a big lump on top where the silicone hardened up before it leveled out.






The clay piece also separated from my aluminum base when I pulled the master out of the mold. Super glue fixed this. While I still have this first sheep mold, I'm pretty sure I'm going to wind up chucking it.
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
MOAR MOLDS!

This was my first experiment with the release paper. The mold actually set up before the black silicone did, so I was happy to quit using it.













The completed (1st) set. Rinsed with isopropyl and drying in the sun. I still have the other set of the alternate molds to pour, but I'm out of silicone rubber until payday. Shit's not cheap.

 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Time to play with resins!* Lets create some pieces.





This stuff is super thin. Like, in all my years with airplane composites, surf boards, and cars, paints, etc I've never poured a two part as thin as this stuff, which is good, very few bubbles.







Curing.



Mid-change





I think I've way overestimated the volume of casting resins I'll need. Which is good because this shit is also very not cheap.

If you can pull the mixing stick out, you get to be king of England.



First round out of the molds about 2 hours ago. Pretty damn happy. They need to be cleaned up and sanded for sure, but for first pours I'm ecstatic. Can't wait to see how paint goes.




*Not the sort of resins that CO is more famous for these days.
 
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Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,031
7,550
That's awesome, especially since you are involving the kiddo.
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
That's awesome, especially since you are involving the kiddo.
I don't have it pictured, but the Alt sheep tile doesn't actually have the little rice shaped sheep on it. She wanted to make sheep out of bits of cotton balls and glue them on. I thought that was a fantastic idea, so where going to go with it for the other half.
 

4130biker

PM me about Tantrum Cycles!
May 24, 2007
3,882
447
Super cool project- thanks for sharing! Love settlers, but my family doesn't like playing with me. I guess threatening to use the robber if people don't trade with me is bad form. :rofl:
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Is this related to the Settlers computer game from ~20 years ago?
I'd never heard of this game so I had to look it up. I couldn't find anything that says one is the successor of the other, but if they aren't it's an amazing coincidence. Though, in Catan, there aren't really any "armies" per se. You can have knights, and earn a couple victory points if you have enough, but at least in the base game, you can not win the game with knights alone. There is an expansion called cities and knights that I guess puts a bigger emphasis on this, but honestly I've never played it.
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Very cool Will you be painting those?
Paint and scenery. I started with the desert pieces I had, because it seemed to me they ought to be the easiest.
Coated the pieces in a mix of white glue and water, poured over some brown ballast I got from a local model railroad store. It was fun to go in there and look at all the crazy stuff they have for trains.




I also primered the more "woodsy" pieces with green, though I forgot to take a picture while they were outside.


I started flocking some sheep pieces so daughter could do her sheep thing. I had this grass stuff laying about and used it, though the longer I look at it, the less I like it. I'll be going back to the train store to find something better.









Washed with an ink to create a shading effect.






Basing. I'm still experimenting with this. Seems like I'm going to have to do two layers of glue and grass to really cover the hex.











The ports



 
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canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,190
19,156
Canaderp
Awesome.

This is the best game ever. It becomes increasingly more easy to create a strategy to steamroll other players, the more you hit the shed up. :drag:
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Border pieces, AKA the ocean. I wanted a "deep water" look so I went with a base of black and darker blues.




Mountains in progress. Didn't get around to them over my weekend, hoping to finish paint here at work today. Still not sure how I want to flock the bases.



 
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Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Stupid airplane stuff. Damn work getting in the way of my personal projects. :busted:


Some mountains.











I wanted to finish the brown ones today. I've been keeping all my crap in my motorcycle panniers. I drove the jeep today so I grabbed the cases on the way out, but I forgot to grab the keys. :( Contemplating going home at lunch to get my keys, but if I go home I'm not coming back.
 
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Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,031
7,550
Those look amazing. Mariko saw them and said "can we get them, dadda?" She didn't even know how to respond when I told her that you made them.
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Wheat:
I pitched the earlier models I made after seeing a guy on youtube who makes stuff for miniatures battles make wheat fields out of a door mat. I thought it was brilliant and decided to go that direction. I also found some "plowed fields" stuff at a train shop. It's just corrugated cardboard with one smooth side not applied and coated in earth tone base. I think they look amazing. The challenge here was building a hex that would hide the edges when everything was cut out, then fitting the scenery into the hex. I think these wound up being the most difficult pieces to build.

scavenging the scrap can for aluminium


Success!






 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,138
16,537
Riding the baggage carousel.
Was supposed to meet @Nick last week for skis, but he had something come up. I went to Denver any way because I was excited to pick up more resin material. I spent the majority of my last weekend before last pouring resin into molds as fast as it would cure, which fortunately is faster than the first time around. I'm working with stuff now that has a half hour cure time vs the two hour cure time the first stuff I worked with had.
The molding place saw some of my finished pieces and offered me trade on materials to display some of my completed pieces on their shelves. While super flattering, I declined, at least for the time being until I'm satisfied that this will all work out. I have an idea for a volcano/desert piece I may be willing to trade some pieces for if they will trade me some super clear resins,






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