Sally 4th Terra Formers: Once More into the Sectional Terrain Breach

 In my never-ending quest to find the "perfect form" of sectional terrain, I decided to give the new Sally 4th Sectional terrain system a try, via their recently completed kickstarter.  The "Terra-Formers" are a neat concept 1 foot square laser cut box frames that are held in place with magnets (round ones placed in the precut holes.  The interior of each frame is filled with Extruded Polystyrene foam (EPS - aka insulation foam).

There are 33 unique types of terrain squares that allow you to incorporate hills, caves, rivers trenches, etc).  Given this years painting challenge now has a terrain aspect, I suspect you'll see a lot of these on my blog over the next few months.

 I decided to build a simple right angle jig to facilitate building the frames and ensure everything stays square.  Given that the laser cut pieces fit together snuggly you can get away without a jig but it speeds up production.

It took a sheet of 1/4 inch MDF and cut it down to a 24" square.  At one corner I glued to pieces of scrap 1x2 to form a right angle.  Make sure you use a good quality square to ensure the pieces form a 90 degree angle.  If you're off every terra former square will be off.

 Once the glue on the frames has set, covert area where the frame will rest with painters tape - the glue squeeze out will not stick to the tape.  If you don't cover with tape then you have a very high likelihood of glueing the terra former frame to the jig, which really isn't that helpful.

An action shot of the jig in use - it really doesn't get more exciting than that.  Feel free to oooh and aaaghh.

After 30 minutes (plus some drying time) I had assembled 8 frames so it goes pretty fast.  I've only built some of the flat panels and a few river sections - you can see one of those at the top of the stack.

I need to go to the hardware store to get some EPS and will use my trusty proton hot wire cutter to cut out foam to fill the frames.

I'm really impressed with both the product quality and Sally 4th's turnaround on the Kickstarter - it was only a few months from the close of the kickstarter until I received my stuff.

Nicely done Sally 4th!