Sorry about not replying in a while. the reasons were
a) 40k online wasn't working.
b) my computer got F#@#'d up. (my harddrive is basically gone... or at least my c partition. So Until i get a new one which should be soon. i have no computer at home.. (my brother doesn't let me use his
). And i have just been using the computers at school here. (i am at school right now). But i am very happy that my brother told me that he was able to copy all the files off my d drive.. which i hope is true. Since that is where my WIP progress pics for a majority of the table were. (I erased them from my camera after uploading them - who knew my hard drive would crash). So.... Lets hope that is true and i still have them. so that all hte ones i have taken since then which are still on my camera can be added to it.
anyways. I have been really busy with school so progress is not as fast as it could be. But i try and get in an hour or so a day to work on it.
I have no reason to avoid spray glue. I just have never used it before, and the idea of it seems a bit odd to me. But hey if it works then why not do it. Would 1 can of it be good enough to flock an entire board? (grass .. not the sand). And it is actually quite sticky then it would seem way better than pva glue for attaching hte flock, since i don't think spreading pva glue ontop of sand is as easy as it is on top of bare foam.
Update:
I put in a river (well actually 2 rivers : 1 larger one going across a corner about 4 ft long, and 1 small one across the opposite corner about 1.5 ft long) and foot path which goes across most of the board.
For the big river i first cut out a 1cm deep path that was pretty rough and about 1" wide with a hobby knife. From testing with a heat gun, i found that hte steaper the walls of the cut the better the heat would be contained to the river area (to not make a 6" wide river.. :S). so i basically cut out a rectangular cross section into the foam 1" cm deep and 1" wide with corners. I borrowed a heat gun from a friend and used it to shape the river. Btw, it is A LOT HARDER than you would think. First off, the texture it melts into foam is definitely not smooth!! Like u can get a small 1mm deep smooth area with it.. but anything more there starts to be a rough surface, with strings, and holes etc. For the river i kinda actually liked it though, since it gave the base a texture which is pretty neat. Even though after i glue rocks ot hte bottom u won't really notice it anymore. But for all those people who think a heat gun is a magic way of getting a river and that u can control it easily, u are completely wrong. make sure u practice though before on spare foam. If it weren't for the experimenting with cutting a guide for the heat gun, my river would have ruined the table. (at first i tried with no guide, then i tried with thick/thin/deep/wipe/sharp/soft guides (the area i cut out before with a hobby knife)). Anyways Also due ot the fact that it is hard to control exactly where the foam will just melt away, make sure u have some clearance on either side in case it goes wrong. And my big river turned out deeper than i had originally planned, since in order to keep shaping with hte gun i had to go deeper. So it is almost the full 1" deep. and in a couple spots i hit the wood which i then spackled up.
For the small river i didn't use the heat gun and instead just have an area bounded by hills and cliffs that hte river and run through (like a little valley lets call it). So i don't have to dig down or anything. This one is smaller and will also be shallower. though i might paint hte depth in to the flat base of hte river. All i really had to do for this river prep, is to spackle the area where layers meet to ensure that any fake water product i add won't seep between them.
So essentially i have the rivers in place. They still don't have flock, paint or water obviously so there is still much more work to be done.
The foot path i made was also using the heat gun. THough not as intensly, so that i could jsut lower the foam along the path by a few mm. It worked pretty well though again the surface had many small holes and a couple larger ones due ot inconsistancies in the foam. Spackle after this solved the problem but it just is annoying. The only advantage of hte heat gun for this is that it makes it very gradual and realistic, and causes a bit of warping and discontinuities in the road height (very slight.. don't worry) that make it look more realistic. Time wise and including the spackling.. i would say sanding the path in would be just as fast. ANd if u have a small power sander (which i don't) it would be way faster and better than the heat gun.
Also a huge problem i now found out with a heat gun is the foam in the area where u used the heat gun becomes extremely hard. I mean U CAN"T SANT IT hard. Well maybe if u spend 2 hours sanding a small spot u could .. but for all purposes u can't.
Um. other than that. the only other stuff i have done was sand the entire table once again, after a bit more spackling.
I am now ready to start putting sand all over the board. Though i am not sure when i will get to that. Still don't have the sand, and don't know what i should use. Is there anything wrong with like playground sand???