Grass mat trouble

[Centurio Cunibus]

Good morning to y'all,

A while back, I had the luck of having both an empty room in the house which could be transformed to a gaming room, and some spare time to make that happen. So I bought some wooden boards (2'x4' a piece), stuck 'em together with various beams underneath etc to make the gaming table. Then I put some wood glue, diluted with some water, on one end where I would glue the grass mat in place. Laid down the mat, but heavy stuff on it and waited for the glue to dry. Then, I put glue on the rest of the table (used a brush to evenly spread it), stretched the mat out and laid another similarily sized board on top of it, with plenty of big history books spread out on it to hold it down. That was where it went wrong.
2 days later, I removed the books, removed the board and saw: wrinkles. The entire grass mat was billowy, wavy and indeed, seems ruined. Must say that, for my first time making terrain, this isn't a good start!
EDIT: some additional info: the mat was of the 'paper' type, very thin, the kind usually used in model train business.

Does anybody: 1)Know why this happened? 2)Know how to fix this? Or at least: 3)Know how to prevent this?
Thanks in advance!

Ps. I'll see if I can get some pictures up later.

[Stuart]

Water, wood glue / PVA can sometimes warp the paper part of these mats due to the paper drawing in the water, if you've covered the whole surface with glue I'm not sure there's a way to rectify it. If you can, you should get hold of one of the fabric GW mats, they're about £18 but last ages and as it's cloth you don't need to glue it down. I have two of these giving me a 8ft x 12ft gaming area (each being 6x2). Hope this is some use.

Stuart

[Parus Ater]

The GW grass mat is the best on the market and since it's cloth you don't have to glue it since you can use double sided flooring tape to stick it down.

[paulsmodellingworkshop]

I'll second Parus' comments - not sure how you can save the original mat (sorry) but i would have used double sided carpet tape to hold it down - no glue, no mess.

To possibly save your current one, can you use a needle to get rid of the air/creases and sprinkle/glue some more static grass over the top?

[Big Al]

Actually, The GW mat isn't going to help you is it? What you should do is get some of that wallpaper glue that is available from DIY shops in tubes. It's specially for gluing down the edges of wallpaper where two strips join. Take a sharp knife or scalpel and cut down the centre of the Billowy bits and then squeeze some glue underneath. I would then use a broad brush, you can get them from DIY shops as well, they are about a foot or so wide and are used to flatten wallpaper and brush the air bubbles towards the edges (which is why you usually need the tube of glue after wards). Alternatively, a 4 or 6 inch whitewash brush should do the trick The cut can then be repaired with suitable static grass and some PVA after it has all dried. I would start in the middle and work my way out. Use cuts and overlaps to remove creases. It should work!
I'd have used wallpaper paste to glue it down in the first place. It works well normally and sticks heavier paper to vertical surfaces for extremely long periods of time, barring any little kids finding an edge and pulling it off, of course.

By the way, don't get the impression I'm any good as a decorator. I can wallpaper, but I haven't done it for 10 years or so, but I suppose it's like riding a bike, you never forget.

[Centurio Cunibus]

Thanks a lot for the help gents, I'll try Al's method and otherwise have a look at the Citadel/GW mat.
Ironically, I was thinking of buying that one, saw cheaper ones and went with those instead.. damn my cheap dutch genes!

[Cubster]

If it was me, and it was physically feasible, I'd be tempted to snip the creases right off with scissors and cover the holes up with some flock, shrubbery, etc.. You could get away with it looking like a feature.

[CaptainMatt]

If it was me, and it was physically feasible, I'd be tempted to snip the creases right off with scissors and cover the holes up with some flock, shrubbery, etc.. You could get away with it looking like a feature.

Now that is a good idea!!!

Matt