Building the board
First experiment
Intro
In my presentation I set a couple of questions for myself where I could build and design on. These were the questions: What would be a good surface for a boardgame? And a good base for any scenery? Where could characters be put on and roll a dice on? What can I pour into a big squared mould?
Making and finding the material
I was looking for something that would get hard, firm and was durable. So I was thinking of clay. I also found this a good base because I could exactly form it how I'd like to. I looked up how to make my own bio clay and found a good article on WikiHow which helped me a lot. On other websites I read that I needed clay soil in order to make clay because making clay out of normal soil is not possible. The clay soil contains a higher concentration of contaminants than the normal soil. I was looking for a place that sells clay soil until I stumbled up onto this website.
Het LNV-loket has an amazing map of Holland that visualizes all the places that contain clay soil. I then found a place near my neighbourhood (10 min biking) and found the clay I was going to work with.
I started digging and collected a lot of soil and put them into some garbage bags. And yes, I felt very weird digging up soil with a lot of filled garbage bags around me. But I knew I would need a lot because I read somewhere that only 25% of the soil could get formed into clay.
Turning the soil into clay (magic)
When I got home with all the soil I started my process.
I filled up the bucket with soil and added some water untill I saw the water coming above the soil. I then sifted the water-soil into another bucket. What is left on the sieve can be thrown back into the nature.
What is poured into the blue, sieved bucket needs to stand for a while (I did it overnight). The water will come on the top of the bucket and has to be thrown away as well.
What is left is the clay. This needs to be dried in the sun, in a towel or an old shirt so that all the last bits of water leave the clay.
End result clay
Unfortunately I didn't had enough to fill up my mould so I had to repeat the process.
Building the mould
My plan is to design a big squared boardgame where I can fit a lot of things on. My first idea was to get some used wood from the bulky waste and make that into about a 50x50cm mould. Because the mould just had to be squared I didn't had to do too complicated things with casts, 3D printing etc. But then I saw that Loes had a 50x50cm acrlylic sheet. This was exactly what I needed! So I borrowed this from her and sticked some cardboard pieces around it. (I build this when I didnt know I was going to use clay, otherwise i wouldn't have really needed this actually)
End result board
I poured the clay into the mould and let it dry outside for the whole day and after that 2 days in my shed so that it would get hard. I am pretty happy with the end result. I think it's a good base for a board and it already kind of looks like a landscape, like I wanted to. It's not perfectly flat but I don't mind it.
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