Waiting for the glue to dry

The Joys of Expanable Foam

Since this is my first post to the new Google blogspot (muchos grenadas to Pete Mancini,) I thought that I would repeat an oldie from the HMGS-MS Dispatch from several years ago that got a lot of comment. Being right proud of my gaming workshop here in my Columbia, Tennessee "man cave," there is nothing that I enjoy more than a few hours spent happily at my workbench. Over my forty years as a miniature gamer, I have acquired loads of tools and equipment to the point where I can fabricate just about anything in the scales that I game. Over the years I have built enough miniature fortifications to stop Kutuzov's Soviet Army (and make a game completely unplayable.) As a dedicated pilgrim of overkill, I continue to build on. Or at least I did until I ran into expandable foam.

This is the stuff you use to seal windows and doors, and it is readily available at any building supply store. It comes in aerosol cans, and I have used it many times in household activities. I bought the beautiful Hudson & Allen foam castle from a few years past to use in running my big siege game. I have a marvelous time fixing it to where the drawbridge would crank up and down and the doors were hinged. What fun. Then I decided that the wall sections were just too light, and needed a bit more weight to keep them from toppling over during a game.

Tracing the bottoms of the sections onto masonite, I cut out bases for each section. The walls are hollow, and I determined that they would be even better if they were filled with something to strengthen them from the occasional bear paw grip of my gaming friends. Soooo, I ambled down to the hardware store and picked up a can of expandable foam.

I put a generous amount of glue on each masonite base, squirted the foam into the cavity, stuck the two pieces together. Moving down the line of wall sections in a way to bring a tear to the eye of Henry Ford, I was going to have the job done before my secretary got to work, and I would have to return to the drudgery of making a living. Looking proudly down the line of my now completed wall sections, I was horrified to see that they were climbing into the air! Somehow I had gotten a can of "nuclear" foam, and it was expanding at a prodigious rate, pushing the wall sections up and away from the bases.

Lots of cursing ensued on my part and I began to frantically try and scrap out the excess and put each piece back together. The foam, Frankenstein-like, continued to expand. By now I was in my "maniac" mode. The air was blue with my language. As you may know, this castle kit is rather expensive, and I was not about to surrender it to a can of rabid expandable foam. Both my secretary and my research assistant ( I am a real estate appraiser) arrived, but hearing the commotion, did not dare to enter my inner sanctum. They both know my moods, and determined that discretion was the better part of valor, and left me to deal with my foam problem in solitude.

By the time I had finally solved the problem, they were through for the day and slipped quietly out the door. As the foam hardened, I ended up taking saws and hammers to it. By the end of the day, my ardor spent and my castle finally saved, I finally sat down and heartily laughed at my own stupidity. The moral for that day was a lesson that has been taught to me many times, and that finally (maybe) I have learned. Test your materials first, and don't get into a hurry.

In future entries, we will go back to the workshop for more adventures. In the meantime, I will be here waiting for the glue to dry.