Landing/ Teleport Pad

I’ve mentioned before that my girlfriend has a large tract of land down at our local community garden.  When we go shopping at the 99 Cent Store, she indulges my quests for cheap scenery and I help with some of the garden stuff she looks at.  Every now and then they overlap.  Like when I found a bunch of three-inch plastic army men (five to a pack) and decided we needed some to protect the garden.  Well, once I’d made a few small conversions, anyway...

And then there was this time, when I found something right there in the garden section while she was looking at herbs.  This is a plastic saucer to go under flowerpots so they don’t drip when you water them.  They come in a couple of sizes.  This one’s the 10”, but there was also a two-pack of 8” ones and a three pack of 6” saucers.  My brain started working with these immediately and I ended up grabbing the largest one.  I also grabbed a tube of “Fix-All Adhesive” glue because it works on plastic and rubber.  So this project is going to cost all of two dollars.

I flipped the saucer over, peeled the label off the bottom, and cleaned it.  I didn’t want any little pills of paper left here, so I actually put this in the sink and used some soap and water on it. 

Once it was dry, I put a few threads of regular super glue in the indents from that large “10” at the center.  Arguably, you could keep it as extra detail, but I wanted a large, flat center on my landing pad.  Once that dried I used a few last drops to fill in low spaces and gaps.

Helpful Hint – It’s tempting to use the super-cheap glue I just bought, but it’s too thick.  It’s never going to settle down and smooth out, and I’d just end up with little wrinkles and peaks in the center.

I cut a bunch of card strips at 1 1/8” x 8 3/4” (your own measurements may vary depending on your saucer) and folded them into consummate V’s.  I set these down inside the saucer and glued them with the adhesive  This was the most time consuming part of this project.  The glue needs three hours to set and a day to cure completely.  So, I glued them and set it aside. It’s a long time, but it makes the whole thing rock solid.  I can actually lean on it and it will hold up my weight.

Another Helpful Hint – While the V’s were drying, I put a piece of paper across the top of them and set a book on top of it.  If one or two of these curl up, the landing pad will never sit flat, so it’s important to keep them all in position.

At this point, this piece is effectively done.  I primed it black and gave it a very light drybrush with some Boltgun Metal paint (Leadbelcher for those of you who’ve already moved on to the newer paint colors).

There’s a bunch of ridges and valleys on this thing that make for fantastic detail.  It’d be very easy to paint concentric circles, or a few of the small “buttons” as lights.   I used a yellow base and did white over that to make it look like a bright light.  It's big enough that I could clean up any messiness with a black magic marker. You could also extend the lined all the way to the center to make it look more like a cross-hairs target for landing, or use all eight of the radiating lines in bright red to give it a Chaos feel.  You could even do the little ridges/ tubes on the outer ring in a glowing/ electrical color scheme and say they’re force shield projectors, allowing you to use it as a raised/unfurled Skyshield.

Alternately, with a slightly different color scheme and detail-pattern, this would make a fine teleport pad.  You could probably go down to the 8” saucer and still fit a full squad of Terminators there.  Paint it black and green, focusing on the buttons more, and it could make a very passable Necron array of... well, probably some kind of death.  Necrons are big on that.

All for just two bucks.