What the hex am I playing at?

I have been pondering how to do more precise hills for my hex cloth for a while. I finally took the plunge and ordered a big pile of 100mm dimension MDF hexes from Products for Wargamers. I did vainly hope that I could just use them "as is" but the 2mm depth was insufficient really. Luckily I had some polystyrene sheets lying around from an earlier project, and so I resolved to stick the hexes to those.

I was able to glue 18 to a sheet in various configurations, using PVA glue. This tine of year this would normally take about two days to dry, but current unseasonable conditions allowed them to stick overnight.

Especially when they'd been left under some heavy objects.

I cut round them with my hot wire cutter, which needed new batteries, as you can see from the slightly scruffy edges.

Anyhow, proof of concept worked, so I set to gluing up the rest of them.

Next I decided to give them some texture, so I flipped them over and applied textured paint to the polystyrene side.

I then discovered I didn't have as much green basing paint as I thought, and had to pause and go and buy some more.

I was then able to start dry brushing them, picking up the texture with some light brown.

Alas I had got ahead of myself. When I put them together on the table they wouldn't line up without giving me big gaps due to poor cutting of the polystyrene. So I flipped them back over, and did the MDF side, having gone round the edges again with the hot wire (with new batteries) and a Stanley knife to tidy them up.

This is the finished full complement, together with some of my home made river sections. It took me just over a week of elapsed time to get them all done, which amazed me. Unfortunately it drove home how much I need to look at the bend sections for my river, as they're designed for use on an un-gridded board or squares. Hopefully I can look to do some 60 degree curve sections to go between hex sides on an angle next week.