Working With Cardboard

[D'karr]

One question on printing the Maiden. I have an inkjet. What kind of printer and stock did you use, if you don't mind saying?

I used an HP Dekjet 820Cse. An old printer to be sure. I used ink refills for all the ink, which I've been using for years. For the cardstock I used 110# Georgia Pacific Cardstock, which I bought at Walmart for about 4 dollars a pack. The Foamcore is black on black from XActo, also bought at Walmart for about 3 dollars a sheet. For the Maiden you will only need one sheet of foamcore and about 3/4 of a ream of cardstock.

BTW, I stopped using an XActo knife for cutting large pieces because it would dull too easily. Now I use a box-cutter knife for cutting large pieces and the XActo for detailed stuff. It works much better.

I have somehow managed to completely miss out on the WorldWorks models! Thanks for bringing them to my attention!

You're welcome. I love their stuff. Absolutely brought a new dimension to my group's gaming. Battles are so much more interesting when you can actually see a balcony above you and jump to it or from it.

Kitbashing their stuff is also fantastic.

Are the Worldworks things only available as PDFs? That's just too much colour ink to use up.

There is one set available as pre-printed. It is "Chunky Dungeons". You should be able to find it at your FLGS since it is available through the normal distribution channels. I think you might be able to buy it online also but I cannot say that with certainty.

As far as ink usage goes, it will depend on your printer and on which print settings you use. I have an older HP Deskjet and my usage of ink is minimal compared to the amount of stuff I get printed. I also get ink refill cartridges for working on this stuff. That saves a lot. Like someone said above, try getting a highly detailed prepainted resin 28" ship for the price of The Maiden. It just won't happen. You'd easily pay 3-4 times the cost of The Maiden, cardstock and ink.

The great advantage about Worldworks stuff is that it is durable but if you break something it is simple to replace it by just printing replacements. Also, you can expand as you see fit. If you need 1, 2, 3, 20 new rooms/buildings just print them as needed.

Most people start small and expand as they find necessary.

I've found the WorldWorks stuff to be top-quality, inexpensive and very satisfying to build. Their "builders" community is also top-notch, helpful and encouraging. Visit the WorldWorks forums, you will find a very cool community.

I'd love to see what you end up building, so please post pictures.

 

[Steel_Wind]

On the color ink thing...

This may sound a tad odd - but we all know what we would love to do -in our dreams with this sort of cardstock.

That's print out your images with a full color laser on cardstock.

Full color laser? Nuts you say? $1-2 a page at kinkos!!

Depends. There was a deal (now over) at Future Shop in Canada in May which featured the HP Color Laser, with complete load out of 4 color toner cartridges, for $389CDN. (about $320 USD).

Downside on the model - output was fabulous. Size of this thing was friggin huge!

It was a close out on the model line. It's over now - but HP does this every year. They'll do it again next spring too.

Yeah it seems a lot. But if you are just planning on using that for color cardstock - you'll get about 700 full lasered sheets out of that. It will look freaking gorgeous. And you'll end up with more card stock models than you know what to do with. (and yes - laser toner can be refilled cheaply without wrecking your printer - something I don't recommend doing when using ink jet carts).

Anyways - main point: color lasers are now dropping low enough that they are in the same zone HP personal laser printers were about 6 years ago. Not cheap - but still reasonably attainable if you decide you really want one. When on end of line special - not a bad price at all.

I must say the idea of a lasered card stock ship is attractive...

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Kinkos! Great idea. Hopefully they won't give me grief about printing a copyrighted image, but I'll have my receipt ready if I decide to.

Okay, some more info would be useful.
What level of detail do you want?
Do you want a fully explorable ship (e.g. do you want to be able to take off the deck and put miniatures in the hold?)?
Are you open to working with other materials than just cardboard and a hot glue gun?
i]

Level of detail? The Maiden is more than I need.

Fully explorable? Yep.

Open to other materials? Yes. But price is a serious issue. I'm trying to expend my time as the commodity since spending money in large sums to do this is not much of an option. I have hot glue (Elmer's too) and cardboard for free. The "print for cheap" at Kinko's is looking attractive, but I'm also curious to try out different media like the foamcore and styrofoam option mentioned. I'm just getting into this.

I'll try to get over to check the Worldworks forum. (I visited that thread last night.) Though I visit too many boards as it is right now.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I'm not so sure how many pages the .pdf of the ship actually has. Looks to be at least 20 or so. Might be twice that. Anyone here know?

At any rate, $30-$40 plus the costs of card stock + the cost of the .pdf in the first place to just have Kinkos print 20+ pages - I'm not with you in the "cheap" camp.

I prefer to own my own hardware when my costs go that high a page. YMMV (and in this case, clearly does).

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Ew. If it's 20 pages, then color laser printing is so not an option. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[hexgrid]

I had good luck with the pirate ship plans on this page:

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/library/pirateship/index.asp

It uses balsa wood and card stock. The curved hull is achieved by wrapping the card stock around a balsa wood base.

I went on to use the concept to build a cardstock/balsa wood "airship" based on an old spelljammer deck plan. It even has a removable top with below-deck rooms.

If you want, I can post some pictures of it.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

Varianor, you may want to PM Rel about this project. He has built several airships for his Sky Galleons of Mars series at NC Game Day and may be able to give you some good tips. Here is one of his early models: http://ncgameday.dhorizon.org/community/gallery/relNCGD6/106_0668. I'm not sure how detailed you're looking to get, but I just thought you'd like to know that another ENWorlder is an avid builder of airships

NCSUCodeMonkey

 

[Steel_Wind]

If you have access to a projector - you can use a 3d airship model created by one of our tile modelers at DLA.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Varianor, you may want to PM Rel about this project. He has built several airships for his Sky Galleons of Mars series at NC Game Day and may be able to give you some good tips. Here is one of his early models: http://ncgameday.dhorizon.org/community/gallery/relNCGD6/106_0668. I'm not sure how detailed you're looking to get, but I just thought you'd like to know that another ENWorlder is an avid builder of airships

NCSUCodeMonkey

Nice! Thanks. This is all good stuff.

Edit: Yeah, hexgrid, I'd love to see your stuff. Thanks.

 

[Conaill]

I'm not so sure how many pages the .pdf of the ship actually has. Looks to be at least 20 or so. Might be twice that. Anyone here know?

At any rate, $30-$40 plus the costs of card stock + the cost of the .pdf in the first place to just have Kinkos print 20+ pages - I'm not with you in the "cheap" camp.

I prefer to own my own hardware when my costs go that high a page. YMMV (and in this case, clearly does).

FYI, the Maiden model costs only $15. And forget about Kinko's - their prices for color prints are just too outrageous to be useful for this.

I bought my own Lexmark printer for something like $40, ink cartridges included! (Yes, for this one it's about as cheap to buy a new printer with cartridges, than to buy new cartridges. ) The cartridges it comes with are 1/2 size ones, but should be enough to print out a couple of Maidens. 3rd party refilled cartridges or ink refill kits can easily take off 1/3 to 1/2 of the ink price as well. (And as I mentioned above, some printers seem much more economical with ink usage. IIRC, one user claimed he had already printed several reams worth of WWG models on a single set of ink cartridges.)

And 20 pages? More like 50-60 for a pretty minimal build, plus maybe another 10 pages of optional props, and 5 pages of transparencies (for windows, rigging, etc.). Yes, this is a BIG model! But the end result is well worth it...