Battalion Attack: Fire and Movement - Board Part III

The "battalion attack" battle board Hexagon story continued ...

The basic green with a little flock was covered with a "sprayed" PVA and the hexagon bases were permanently (or what I thought would be permanently) attached to the card with a [OK fairly cheap, low cost] "glue gun" melting long "gun sticks" which was all pretty cool stuff to use (see below for the reasonable end result, as in I could turn the board upside down and nothing fell off):

Note: The 'sophisticated PVA dispenser" was an ex-household cleaner product (now empty) bottle salvaged from the recycle bin for an honourable "second life" as a wargaming scenery making tool. Hexagons firmly affixed to said board, I then turned my attention to the gaps between the hexagons and for no better reason than "I could" and "I fancied a go" I filled in the brown again, painting out any bits showing obvious 'white' card (see below for the result):

I have to confess, I then got the "FLOCK IT" urge as I found a jar of brown scenery "pebbles" and proceeded to scattered them all over a newly added wet PVA surface (again using said PVA dispenser (see below, you can tell "I was in the scenery zone"):

In my rummage through "old half used tins of DIY products I was not going to use any more" I came across a tin marked 'sealant' (of sorts) and thought it would be a fitting end to an adventurous night to apply this. The coverage was good, though it was a little on the smelly side, so I was sure glad that I was doing it in the garage and not in the family home. With a sense of anticipation I left it overnight to dry (see below, still in its wet state): 

The morning after ...

Oh dear (or strong industrial words to that effect) there had been "a bad chemical reaction" with the sealant, glue and sticky label backing paper I had used to originally mark out the hexagon shapes as I cut it from the cardboard. Put simply, the hexagons started falling off.

:(

A major rework was now set in motion and a fair bit of glue peeling had to be done which was really tough on the fingernails (see below):

 As strange as it may seem there was a "silver lining" moment to all this tragedy.

Pause:

Then there was a naked moment of truth and realisation in that "I had done it wrong in a big way already (before things had started peeling off)". As I looked back at Phillip Sabin's Simulating War book, I could that see to my horror that I had chosen the "wrong grain" of hexagon placement in the first place. Meaning, instead of eight "flats" along the baseline I needed eight "points" (see later photographs for clarity on this, but trust me I had stuck them wrongly in typical DIY man style by not going back to check with the instructions).

The board was just to say 'not big enough', just (grrrr ...) to rotate by 90 degrees and add two more columns. So they would all have had to come off anyway. To calm my nerves I decided to start painting the whole of the 'underside of the board' brown (see below): 

Painted brown (see below)!

This was a really cool result, as it reminds me of a WWI battlefield (maybe good for Canvas Eagles) or a Science Fiction planet. The previous flocking made the hex sides stand out in a cool but subtle fashion. I decided to put this board to the side, keep it as it stands and start afresh with the hexagons on a new blank board.

The moral of the story was: "All was not lost despite nothing going quite to plan!"