There are a lot of things FDM printers do well. Printing terrain for tabletop games? Absolutely. Printing clean undersides without supports looking like they just survived a medieval skin graft? Not so much.
Anyone who’s ever printed with supports knows the drill: remove them, clean up the mess, and then stare sadly at the scars left behind like a parent discovering what Sharpie can do to drywall. No matter how careful you are, the underside of that lovingly printed piece looks like it spent a week rolling around on asphalt.
Enter my wife. Years ago, she bought a wood burner. One of those twenty-dollar, “You’ll definitely use this someday” gadgets from the craft store. I never touched it. Why would I? I don’t burn wood by hand – I use a laser for that. But I’m a hobbyist and a pack-rat, which is just a polite way of saying I have a closet full of unopened tools purchased with the best intentions.
Fast forward a decade. I’m printing the Fortified Trench Church by MiniatureLand. Beautiful piece. But the undersides? Yikes. I tried fiddling with slicer settings, reprinting parts, whispering encouraging words at the machine. Nothing worked. Then, out of nowhere, it hit me: PLA melts at about 350°F. A wood burner burns wood. Surely that math checks out.
So, I dug out the wood burner, dusted off the unopened package, and plugged it in. Turns out it came with different tips—one of which was a nifty little trowel-shaped head. I heated it up, pressed it against the mangled underside of the print, and… magic. The PLA smoothed out like butter on a hot skillet.
Problem solved. Terrain saved. Faith in humanity partially restored.
So if you’ve got a stack of terrain prints with ugly underbellies, don’t despair. Grab a cheap wood burner, add it to your hobby arsenal, and give your PLA a spa day. You’ll thank me later.
And if you want to see the exact piece that inspired this revelation, you can find the Fortified Trench Church here:
👉 Fortified Trench Church in the store.
