maandag 26 juli 2010

Hedges, not necessarily French

Just a short tutorial of how I quickly built some hedges for my 15mm terrain. As with the palisades for the generic native village, I used a dozen strips of 2 x 10 cm. lengths of 1.2 mm triplex. I trimmed these so the hedges like the palisades would match up nicely. I have seem articles using a variety of materials for building hedges, but I prefer the scouring sheet the best. My sheet was of ample size and you could feel the gritty texture of the metal fibers. Caution, I highly recommend using safety glasses while cutting these as you do not want to have any particles flake off near your eyes. I firstly wanted a finished hedge to be about chest high as when cut the material will be teased out to create and extra few millimeters of height. I cut out lengths that double the height. 

Next with the sections, I cut these in half but in a wavy fashion as the tops of my hedges would be irregular in shape. As you see from the photo, the clipped section looks like Kutuzov’s eyebrow. 

Taking each section, I then made vertical cuts and teased the sections out to increase width and height. Gluing the sections was easy and I would advise keeping something with weight on top of the hedge while the glue is drying. 




Afterwards add sand an glue to the sides of the base and add paint as you would your bases. For the final stage, flocking, I had a number of options, but chose Woodland Scenics Grass blend. It has a fine consistency, but the coarser blends would work equally as well. I dabbed white glue over the top half of the hedge and dipped this into a container full of the grass blend and let sit. Flocking twelve hedges took less than 15 minutes and the end result looks fine. From the last photo you can see a general layout with sheep and cattle in two enclosures. The next step would add a small base with a gate. 

photos of the last project. 
  This photo of the generic village in a jungle setting were taken during our last game. The natives are leaving the village to meet the invading “whites”. I think the village palisade could use a gateway and possibly with some skulls decorating the entrance. More little projects. Next posting will definitely cover the ImagiNation: Melniboné