How to Make Tarps and Camo Netting for Wargaming // Terrain Warhammer 40K, Necromunda and Kill Team

hi and welcome to the cult of crafting my name is michael and in this video i'll show you how to make canvas tabs and camo knitting i made quite a few of these and today i'll share what i learned making them and i'll give you all the little tips and tricks i learned along the way we'll pick up where we left off in my previous video where we built these cool little pallets i've made a few more using the same methods as i showed in that video we'll be using scraps of foam to simulate crates i've got some purple xps foam and some white eps foam i'm using the white eps foam just to point out that you can get perfectly good results even though you don't have the ideal materials or tools it usually just takes some extra effort and imagination we'll stack the foam blocks on the pallets to make it look like the tops and nets are covering crates and other goods since they'll be hidden it doesn't really matter if we are using xps or eps foam or any other material for that matter we'll be able to see the rough shapes under the tops and netting so we want them to be reasonably even but they don't have to be perfect xps in a hot wire table is the quickest and easiest way of going about it but you can get away with cutting eps with a knife i'm not really measuring anything out but i do compare the sizes of the blocks to different models and some games workshop ammo crates along the way this is just to make sure that i don't make anything that's wildly out of proportion i cut up a bunch of different sizes the largest are around four to five centimeters on each side and the smallest are roughly one by two by three centimeters i'll eventually add the gw ammo crates and a few 3d printed barrels that i designed but i thought it would be cool to have some barrel shapes covered by the tops i didn't want to waste the barrels on this so i cut some pieces of plastic tube used for electric wiring i believe at a length of around two and a half centimeters anything cylindrical will do you could even roll up a piece of paper to make a tube to make sure the top wouldn't sag in the middle of the tube i closed off one end by gluing a piece of cardboard to the tube and rounding it with a knife this turned out to be pointless because the tarps are quite rigid though it might make a difference with the netting i started by stacking the crates and barrels on the pallets without gluing them in place i did this to make sure they wouldn't all be identical and because i wanted the detailed palettes which i made in the last video to be partly visible while some of the others would be fully covered i also needed to leave space for the decorative elements the gw crates and my 3d printed barrels so the amount of goods i loaded onto the pallets would have to reflect this besides the pallets i decided to make a big pile of crates to see how the techniques and materials would work on a larger scale i simply hot glued a bunch of blocks together into a shape that i liked so the last time i did camo netting was about five years ago when i scratched build some rattling snipers in ghillie suits for an imperial guard army concept that i never finished at that time they used gauze which is a kind of bandage and that worked great because it has a loose weave and a wave pattern and you can enhance this by pulling at it so i wanted to use it in this guy but apparently it's either been replaced by another product or there's a supply issue because i couldn't find it anywhere the role i have was large enough for a tiny miniature but not to cover the crates in this project so if you can find it at all and in the right size it's great for making camo netting so i had to find a substitute and i found this stuff which is quite similar to gauze it's called cheesecloth cheese cloth is a loose woven fabric that's used in the kitchen for straining foods and it seems to be widely available wherever you can buy fabrics it's not as fine or wavy as the gauze but you can still pull at it to create a sense of randomness i got myself a piece the size of a tablecloth and it was pretty inexpensive for the tops i'm using baby wipes the good thing about them is there being a wet wipe it won't break down when we apply glue to it there are a number of other things you can try like paper towels tissues coffee filters or fabrics like an old t-shirt in any case you want something that doesn't break down in water and that doesn't have a pattern or much structure to it the application of the tarps and netting followed the same basic approach with some experimentation to find out what would be the fastest and easiest method and which technique would give the best results so i started by taking a whole baby wipe and dunking it in thinned down pva until it was completely soaked through with glue i find that immersing it in glue is preferable to gluing it down in the normal way because the weight of the pva will help drape it over the crates in a more natural way and also helps in making nice folds i used a brush to push the cloth into the corners and the recesses applying more of the thin pva where it was needed to glue the material in place or just to give it more weight i had a feeling that the pva might have been a bit too thin i left this one to dry on a small block of foam so the cloth could hang loosely and wouldn't bunch up on my table later i'd cut off the excess for the next one the procedure was a bit different here i cut the cloth in advance this way i thought the top might fit better over the crates it was hiding also it would be easier to control how much of the palette would show since this was one of the ones i'd spent time painting i wanted parts of it to be visible it's hard to get the size of the top exactly right so i painted the foam crates in the dark green and advanced just in case parts of them would accidentally show this turned out to be a good idea i also left space on the pallet for a 3d printed barrel to be placed at a later time i did another couple of pallets the same way and now things are about to get messy i grabbed the first and worst green craft paint i could spot and i squeezed out of glob into the pva and mix it up then i pretty much did the same thing i had before in this case the crates would be completely hidden so i hadn't bothered painting the foam the same was the case for the pallets and crates i'd made out of white eps foam i made sure everything was covered by the tops before it dried i darkened the paint by adding some black and another green paint then i took a piece of cheesecloth and dunk that in the paint and proceeded to drape it over the top i suspected that the netting wouldn't obscure the foam crates well enough by itself so i'd use the top to hide them the next one only used the nesting i painted the foam blocks in advance so they wouldn't be obvious because you'd be able to see them through the netting and places where the netting wouldn't cover them properly i was worried that i might get paint all over the palette that i previously painted so i was careful to wring out most of the paint and not drag the paint-soaked cheesecloth all over the palette i used the same mix of craft paint and glue to paint the large pile of crates and to dunk the netting the approach to applying the nets was pretty much the same as for the pallets when the glue dried it hardened the materials rather nicely though still somewhat less than expected i might give them another coat of glue later on i used my scissors to cut away the excess fabric from the tops that i hadn't cut to size before gluing them in place initially i tried following the natural flow of the fabric but that was too difficult so i ended up cutting them more or less straight there's a tendency for the fabric to flare out because of the excess material where i hadn't cut the fabric to size in advance the folds in the tops are a little too soft and rounded because of the scale and thickness of the material i figured out that we can make it look more to scale by pinching the folds to make them sharper i found that this really improved the look it's not perfect but it helps now there were a few pallets where i hadn't added paint to the materials because it would make a mess of the painting i had already done i painted these by hand which worked quite well though it took longer than expected and the tarps absorbed a lot of paint maybe because the tops weren't fully saturated with glue the moisture from the paint softened the glue making the cloth malleable i tried wrapping one of them up while it was still drying to make the top look heavier it kind of worked but i think i overcompensated so now it looks a bit too clingy with the large piles of crates i tried cutting the netting to size before they were completely dry which worked well partly because i could roughen up the edges by pulling out them so they didn't look unnaturally straight i did cut them a bit shorter places but i managed to hide that by stretching the cheesecloth so that might work for the tarps too to add some color variation i brushed over the raised areas with a lighter color it was more of an oval brush than a dry brush you could take the painting a lot further than i did but i felt that they were good enough for now i painted the game's workshop crates separately because that was easier and i glued them in place with pva the point of adding the crates was to hint at what's hiding beneath the tarps and netting and to add some finer detail and color variation to the finished pieces also make it look more interesting i hope this guide was helpful if you want more tips for crafting join the cult by subscribing to the channel if you have any questions or suggestions for future videos leave them in the comments thank you so much for watching have a great day and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Cult of Crafting

Views: 198,081

Keywords: tarpaulin, nets

Id: bzzQvcl5ZJk

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022