Friday, April 16, 2010

Terrain: 10mm Woods

With my hedges almost done (just waiting for them to dry) I thought I'd turn my attention to the trees I need to base.  While these trees are N scale the process is pretty much the same as what I did for my 28mm trees, I just used bigger bases (50-60mm MDF) and used a bit of modelling putty to help fix them to the bases.

The process is simple enough, just drill a hole where you want a tree.  You want the drill bit to be a little smaller than the trunk width, if its too big then you will find it fiddly when gluing the tress.

I went for a mixture of two tree and three trees per base.  I found that putting the tree closer to the edge of the base so that the limbs overhang looks best.  It helps hide the base and allows you to bunch up trees to represent thick or heavy woods.

Since the trees were the same height (all 100 of them) I trimmed a little bit off the stem/trunk of each tree before pushing it into the base.  As you can see here the fit is quite snug and probably wouldn't need gluing but I did anyway just make sure, after all these are going to get a bit of handling on the table.  Just a small dab of superglue at the base of the trunk will suffice.



My first few completed stands, even now it's starting to look like a little woods.

As you can see, I forgot about the slotta tab slot.  A bit of paper will do the trick but it was fiddly getting it in there.


So I stopped drilling and glued over the slot on the remaining bases first.

After all the bases had been drilled and trees glued into place I painted all the bases dark green (from memory GW Salamander Green methinks).

Almost done and looking good, just a bit of flock and they'll look even better.  So out comes the flock and my trusty tub of "watery glue sludge".

And then I'm left with this:

Just a few shots of the trees in action.  I'm really happy with these, and best of all is that it only took around two hours from start to finish.  I'll be getting some more of these for sure, you can never have too many trees on the table.

6 comments:

  1. You have just solved my problem of how to base some spare tree armatures I won on Ebay that I'm going to make up. These armatures had no bases (you're meant to stick them directly into polystyrene and leave them there forever). Instead, I'll just buy some GW plastic figure bases as you've done, mount them on those, then my trees are modular!
    BRILLIANT!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glad to help. Have a look at em4miniatures.com for some cheap bases. At around 20 for £1.00 (plus postage) they're the cheapest I've found.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Excellent ideas, Tim. I ended up mounting some Scale Creep Palm trees on 16mm washers, but then had to mount the washers on a larger card circle to give the trees some stability - I'm working in 15mm and I think the palms may have been 20mm scale.

    Really need to finish them off.

    ReplyDelete
  4. truly timbo you are the Macguyver of Wargaming terrain! ;)

    i'll follow the "timbo method" when I get around to doing some trees..

    ive just splashed on some 15mm JR central european village buildings and will need forests shortly.

    for roads.. this method looks good:
    http://www.fonzies-scratchbuilding-service.be/upload/viewtopic.php?pid=173

    good news is my 1.5in hex-star pattern spray template arrived today plus flocking, silfor grass and a few paints and clear water gel from irresistable force. yum.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your blog has also solved my toppling tree problen thankyou

    ReplyDelete
  6. Please tell me the composition of your "sludge glue"
    I've had the worst luck with watered down white (Elmer's) glue for flocking bases. It always seems to mix unevenly and I get only clumps of flock on my bases once it dries.
    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete