Many years
ago, early in my days at Osprey, Phil Smith handed me a bag of model railroad
trees and suggested I do something with them. I took them and mounted them onto
old CDs, which I then flocked. As it turned out, CDs were not a great choice as
the trees didn’t like to remain glued to them, but otherwise the project was a
huge success. Those trees featured in almost every battle we fought over the
years. They looked great on the table and could be shifted to make very different
layouts.
I left
those trees when I left Osprey. The ownership was debatable, and I figured the guys there would get more use out of them than me. But recently, I have bene
missing those trees, so I decided to create a new set.
I bought a
£20 bag of model railroad trees from my local shop. I mounted the first few on
some GW vehicle bases I had lying around, and then I ordered some big MDF ovals
from Warbases for the rest of them. Both of these worked much better than CDs. I
also filed down the bottoms of the trees to get a better adhesive surface. I added a few little patches of flower or tufts from army painter, but wanted to leave them relatively flat, so figures could be placed on the bases.
Anyway,
less than £30 and a day of work and I’ve got a pretty substantial woods I can
throw on the table. I also have a good number of individually-based trees of
other designs I can use to add variety to the table.
I still think this is probably the best and easiest way to make a wilderness table look great!
These look fantastic, I must give something like this a go myself.
ReplyDeleteThe trick seems to be in picking the right glue for the job as the plastic bases for the trees are not made from the most user friendly of plastics. Basically the more toxic the fumes given off the better the glue for the job so something like Evo-Stik Serios Glue works quite well.
ReplyDeleteI used to flock the base edges as well as the tops but since discovering forest bases where there are indents for the round bases of the individual trees I just paint them.
You can get trees like these with a snow effect or you can do it yourself with white textured paint, the stuff for doing walls though some of the acrylic gels should come in a more reasonably sized container!
Nice trees! I tend to remove the bases then drill the MDF and insert them with some JB-Weld to keep mine in place.
ReplyDeleteVery nice! Those turned out great!!
ReplyDelete