Today I made a visit to B&Q and bought myself some materials and then I pulled out the power tools and made the base in preparation for my final model. The base is made using MDF, I chose 12mm MDF because I need it to support the weight of my model which will be made from 6mm MDF to represent the thickness of the walls and floors. I have seen bases made out of thinner MDF and the bases flex and the model becomes compromised causing parts to break over time and I did not want this to happen. My model base is also reinforced inside using additional strips of MDF as supports.

The whole base is stuck together using extra strong wood glue and screws that have been made flush with the MDF using a counter sink tool drill attachment. These will all be filled with polyfiller and the whole base will be sanded before while paint is applied to the whole thing to match the colour of the model. The base will be sanded to a high quality finish so that the MDF joins are not obvious.

My final model will be laser cut at 1:50 scale, therefore I needed to make the base a bit smaller than A1 to allow for the model and the land gradient representation that will surround the model. When you make a model out of MDF, it is going to be heavy anyway, so you will need a strong, heavy base to support it. The 8 foot by 4 foot sheet of 12mm MDF was not that expensive, only £16.50, plus £5.00 for the strong glue and I already had the screws and power tools.

I am planning on filling, sanding and painting the base over the next few days, so I will show you all the result in another blog post. Then over the next few weeks, I will show you the progress of my laser cut final presentation model.

This took me a good few hours as it is the first thing that I have ever made using MDF and I am really pleased with it so far.