However these have proved useful for something else - roads and rivers (for 6mm and 10mm although the adaptability of cork means they can be equally useful for 15mm and 28mm). For 6mm I'm producing 3cm wide strips which make a 2cm wide road.
 |
| The cork cuts really easily, but is also robust and flexible |
Each tile (of which there are 9 in each pack) can produce about 10 lengths of 12" each (so the potential is for 9 x 12" x 10 or over 1,000 inches of road / river. Not bad for £7.
 |
| One tile marked to produce 11 strips of 12" |
I've cut mine into 3cm wide strips (plenty wide enough for 6mm / 10mm). In addition I've cut some 3cm squares to provide 90 degree and 45 degree bends.
 |
| 6mm Grand Armee base for scale |
The idea will be to produce roads with half the tiles and two types of river sections (5cm and 3cm wide with a 5cm to 3cm connector to join them together - together with the same 45 and 90 degree bends as for the roads.
 |
| A typical strip with an mdf base (same width) and a commercial piece of resin road |
The technique is relatively simple - ensuring that each strip has a 2cm central flat strip with a ridge (0.5cm wide) on both sides (which ensures that all road elements fit together). The strips are then painted dark brown.
 |
| 90 degree turn. Note the markings to denote the 2cm road. This ensures each road / river piece connects to each other |
 |
| 45 degree section (square cut diagonally in half). See the 2cm markings again. |
 |
| Road painted brown with PVA on both sides. |
 |
| Lighter brown painted down the centre section |
Of course this depends on your genre / period / location. Autumn in Napoleonic northern Europe may see muddy roads. The same roads in summery Portugal may be a dusty white. In WW2 these may be tarmac black with stripes. How you finish them is up to you.
 |
| Then a lighter shade painted over the top. |
I'm going for Napoleonic (Northern Europw and Peninsular) and Ancient - so a mix of brown and dusty off-white is the order of the day.
 |
| Crossroads (before painting) |
All that the road then needs is for the ridges on both sides to be drybrushed and flocked and there you have it! A whole netwrok of roads for any table for less than a tenner.
The same applies to rivers - except that a wider base is required to give the river a more 'meandering' feel and wider banks on both sides. In the case of rivers, the centre strip is painted dark blue with a lighter blue blended on both sides which then blends with a light sabd shade which becomes the visible river bed and river bank.
I'll show some of these over the next day or so.