Hi folks, in the past I have used an old wooden picture frame as an overall base for my dioramas; in other cases just a piece of plywood with no framing. From there I added material for elevation (such as more wood, Styrofoam, etc.) before covering it with celluclay.
I want my next dio to be presentable and displayed in my office on a respectable wood base. Nothing to fancy, but definitely better than a slab of plywood. It will be fairly large dio at around 19x19 inches. Also, since it will have some slight elevation change from one end to the other I am thinking I need something to align along the vertical sides so that you can’t see the buildup material (likely Styrofoam) I used to raise that side of the dio.
So my options then are to go to a custom picture frame store where you can pic a frame and they will cut it to size. Even the cheaper custom frames (which will be fine for this) will probably set me back $30-$40.
I have seen others use a piece of (what I think is) solid wood that has been beveled with a router. Forgive me as I am know carpenter but it looks to be a custom cut with some nice edging/dovetailing/bevels (not sure what it is called). I am not sure if the local home supply store can custom cut a piece of wood do the routing or not. Thus, that would probably mean I would have to purchase my own router and learn how it is done. That would be an investment but would probably pay for itself after 3 or 4 dios (cost of custom frames vs. buying your own router).
Either way, my biggest question to the group would be what have you used for vertical sides to cover higher elevations vertically from the wood base to the top? I have seen where some have cut plywood (or maybe balsa wood) then stained it to match the base floor. I think others have simply put some kind of paste over the Styrofoam and painted it black along with the floor wood base. If the former, did you cut slots in the wood to slide the plywood into or is that even necessary?
Thanks for any tips.
I use balsa wood to go around the edge of the base. The base itself is what ever wood i have to hand. then, if neded, i build it up with strofoam. I then add the balsa but slightly higher than the foam to allow for the celluclay. I stain and varnish the balsa before add the celluclay.
I don’t have any in progress images on Photobucket, but hopefully you can see what i mean.
Hope that helps.
In regards to routing edges, i do that for bases when i am not doign a dio. I use a piece of shelf pine, sometimes 2 stuck together. I got a router quite cheap, about 320, and its really not that hard to use, and trust me, i ain’t no chipy either. But be aware, if useing celluclay on a single piece of pine, it can warp. I have had that happen a couple of times. But i would do this for a dio, as i like my dio’s to cover the whole base.
That was two pieces, one on top of the otehr. You can see the join, i need to improve on that. This is one piece and it did warp slighly.
Hello!
I solved this problem like this:
It’s described step by step here:
http://www.vietnam.net.pl/M55mod3en.htm
Hope it helps, good luck with your build and have a nice day
Paweł
Thanks guys, all excellent ideas. Love the blog on your build as well. Great job on the step by step. I had no idea you could do so much with styrofoam. Gives me some future ideas 
Bish, I do like that idea of the bevelled edges using the router. So it seems there are two advantages to joining two pieces of wood. One to avoid warping and the other to have two beveled edges. Although if you stain/seal the wood first that should avoid asorbing water right? Also, don’t they have routers that can make a similar pattern without joining two pieces of wood? I looked at some on Amazon today and they do get pricey. I may watch some youtube vids tonight 
Thanks again.