So today I got some of the EVA foam tiles. The ones with woodgrain on them. I thought they were dark brown with woodgrain painted on them. Nope. They are tan with a plastic woodgrain laminate on them. Look at the label picture...it even has the tiles as dark brown. Sigh.
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Whatever...they were cheap and I can paint them. So I set out to play with them and see what I can do. First I tried cutting them to see if putting a heat gun on them would pull out the detail like in the regular tiles, or if it would turn out horribly bad. Well, turns out it turned out horribly bad. What I thought was a paint job is actually woodgrain laminate, so it melted and bubbled really bad.
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So next I decided to try making a bend in it. I have never played with EVA foam, and I am curious how to get it to do what I want. The black tiles won't get here till tomorrow, so I set my heat gun to 7 and turned it on to level 1. Then I bent it on the carpet and hit it at a side angle with the heat gun for like 10 seconds or so. To tell you the truth, I was scared to try any longer than that, for fear of melting carpet or killing the tile. It worked really well. I mean really, really well. It is a great angle, tighter than I expect to ever use, and it is still there an hour later.
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I probably will use this for accents. I am hoping I can use the woodgrain and don't have to paint over it to use it. I just thought it would be nice to not have to learn how to paint good woodgrain. Cause I suck at painting. Or I may use it as the under layer for my chest piece. Put black and copper accents on top. Or I may just to the bottom black. I don't know. Ooo...or maybe I will use this stuff for the greaves.
So...last test...how hard is it to remove the laminate? Turns out really easy. Too easy. I wouldn't use these tiles around kids, as is shown in the pic. They would destroy them so fast. I just got a nick in one edge, then pulled and it all came off. But you can easily remove the laminate, prime it and use it as per usual. I didn't get what I expected, but I didn't get something unusable. That I think is the important part.
So...last test...how hard is it to remove the laminate? Turns out really easy. Too easy. I wouldn't use these tiles around kids, as is shown in the pic. They would destroy them so fast. I just got a nick in one edge, then pulled and it all came off. But you can easily remove the laminate, prime it and use it as per usual. I didn't get what I expected, but I didn't get something unusable. That I think is the important part.
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