Recently I noticed an article from someone who had mentioned using twigs from their garden for making trees for wargaming. While this was for 28mm at the time, it got me thinking. A quick trip into the garden and most trees and bushes in Australia have very long lengths of stem and branch between to be able to be used for 6mm gaming. I sat there comtemplating as my wife munched on some juicy grapes. I made some off the cuff joke which resulted in her throwing an empty grape branch at me. It stuck in my hair and upon removing it I discovered its likeness to a little tree. A little tree!
Here is my 1st attempt as using dried grape branches to make trees for 6mm gaming. This process could be used for any scale of trees as I tend to cut a empty branch to make 3 or 4 trees.
Centre is a newly emptied branch, with a branch a couple of days old on the right my resulting trimmed stems on the left.
1. Eat the grapes!
2. Sit the emptied branches somewhere for a few days to completely dry out.
3. Trim the branches to size for the scale you wish to model. Cut the "knobs" off the ends of each branch.
4. Add flock as required and then remove and glue back on in place.
5. Position (but not glue) the trees and any other ground cover to whatever basing method you are using. In this instance I am creating a light wood section. I always use a minor contour to show the area covered by the wood section. Troops will be able to move through this section but allow at the rate a light woods allows as soon as the troops move onto the raised section.
6. Remove all the components and use your base paint colour or glue. In my case I always use a deep brown house paint.
7. Before the paint dries, glue all the components in place and pour a thick layer of flock. Wait for a few minutes and tip upside down and tap gently.
8. Spray the whole model with glue, spray glue, hairspray or whatever you seal your models with.
The finished result after about 10 minutes.
Here is my 1st attempt as using dried grape branches to make trees for 6mm gaming. This process could be used for any scale of trees as I tend to cut a empty branch to make 3 or 4 trees.
Centre is a newly emptied branch, with a branch a couple of days old on the right my resulting trimmed stems on the left.
1. Eat the grapes!
2. Sit the emptied branches somewhere for a few days to completely dry out.
3. Trim the branches to size for the scale you wish to model. Cut the "knobs" off the ends of each branch.
4. Add flock as required and then remove and glue back on in place.
5. Position (but not glue) the trees and any other ground cover to whatever basing method you are using. In this instance I am creating a light wood section. I always use a minor contour to show the area covered by the wood section. Troops will be able to move through this section but allow at the rate a light woods allows as soon as the troops move onto the raised section.
6. Remove all the components and use your base paint colour or glue. In my case I always use a deep brown house paint.
7. Before the paint dries, glue all the components in place and pour a thick layer of flock. Wait for a few minutes and tip upside down and tap gently.
8. Spray the whole model with glue, spray glue, hairspray or whatever you seal your models with.
The finished result after about 10 minutes.
2 comments:
Genius!
Grapes....
Healthy and they make good terrain!
Thanks mate. 1kg of grapes cost about $3 at the moment and you end up with about 20 to 25 trees out of them. Looks funny when you are in the store closely looking at the stems before adding them to your shopping basket.
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