6 mm miniatures are mounted on stands for battle. You can buy quality MDF (medium density fiberboard) stands online from a variety of manufacturers or you can make your own with plastic card, a bit of glue, and hobby knife.
What You’ll Need
- Plastic Card: You can use small plastic signs for this, though I buy large (8’ x 4’) sheets of 2 mm thick plastic from a local sign shop. The cost per base is much less and gives you a lot of plastic to work with.
- Spray on Adhesive: You’ll need some spray on adhesive available at hobby and hardware stores.
- Hobby Knife: A hobby knife is used to cut through the plastic.
- Ruler: You’ll need a ruler to help stay on track as you cut.
- Cutting Mat: You may want to use a cutting mat if you need to take care of the surface under the plastic card.
- Template: You can create your own following the steps below or download some templates we’ve created. 40x40mm, 40x20mm,and 60x30mm.
Steps
- Create a template of the stands. I use Microsoft Word to create mine, though any word processing program capable of creating tables should work. An art program such as GIMP should work also. Create the cells to match the size of the stand required. For example, to create 40 mm x 40 mm stands, each cell should be 40 mm x 40 mm. Create enough rows and columns to fill the entire paper expanding the margins if necessary. No use wasting paper.
When complete you should have a sheet of paper with rows resembling the below.
- Spray an area of the plastic to match the paper size and then carefully place your template on the plastic. Spray on adhesive can be messy, so you may want to wear gloves. Also make sure to do this in an area where you don’t mind a stray bit of glue. Flatten the paper out to remove wrinkles. You don’t need to allow the adhesive additional time to dry – start cutting immediately.
- Use a ruler to cut along the printed table lines. I use multiple passes for each line cutting a bit deeper each time. You don’t need to cut all the way through the plastic; two cuts are usually sufficient. Make sure to use a sharp blade and be careful.
- Next you will need to snap apart each line and column. If you’ve made two good cuts then the plastic should snap easily and cleanly.
- Done! You now have good inexpensive stands on which to mount your conquering army.
