Wednesday Workbench 26 May

 

The past few days have been quite busy and productive, but it has all been little bits of prep work and a couple of tests. 

I've grabbed out a goodly amount of aquarium foliage. I'm going to need to spray prime them, which would be quite fiddly to do, so I decided to make some "spike boards" to hold the bits during spraying. They'll also get used for spraying the fronds of plastic palm trees.

These were quite simple to make. I used the MDF backing board from 8" x 10" picture frames (bought in Poundland), drew out a grid and then drilled holes where the lines intersect. I then cut some cocktial sticks in half and the tips off some bamboo skewers. After applying a dab of wood glue to the holes on the underside, the spikes were knocked through with a small hammer. I then left them to cure on a sheet of siliconised baking paper.

On Monday I prepped two more large brushes worth of kunai grass bunches:

That should give me plenty to begin work with, and I still have two more brushes to snip bunches from.

Yesterday I decided to do some test bases to work out the best method of attaching the bunches. I quickly realised that superglue was a non-starter. I then tried hot glue:

It works, but it's very messy. Covering the hot glue will also be an issue later on. My next idea was to use brown acrylic caulk:

This actually worked. I had thought that the bunches would start to fall over, but they all stayed upright. The bond is also quite strong. 

I've also been working on trees over the past few days. On Sunday I decided to try removing the mould-lines from the trunks of the palm trees. My initial efforts using heat worked to a degree, but with the quantity I had to do I really didn't think the toxic fumes were a good idea. I then tried the mould-line scraper I'd bought from Warlord Games at one of the shows (I think it was Colours 2019) and it was perfect for the job - I'd previously tried it on plastic and metal figures and hadn't been terribly impressed.

As well as the various palm trees, I also dragged a bunch of other tree types out of various storage boxes. They are all cheapo trees bought via Ebay and Amazon, so will need a bit of work to make them look decent (to which end I have just ordered some Noch/Gaugemaster fine leaves).

I took this photo before removing the fronds from two sets of palm trees, here are actually a few more which aren't in the photo:

This evening I've been applying a slightly thinned mix of brown frame sealant and PVA to the trunks and branches:

That mix should act as a primer layer for later painting (and avoids the need to spray prime them). The trunks (and branches) will get painted with various shades of brown, followed by drybrushing in a variety of colours.

The existing foliage on the  leafy trees will then get a quick dunk in thinned PVA to help secure it followed by another quick dunk and a dip into some coarse foam flock to ensure all of the tips are covered. Later on they'll get hit with varnish followed by a sprinkle of the Noch fine leaves and a final coat of varnish to seal everything. 

I do have some more palm trees, some bamboo and some banana plants on order from various Ebay sellers.

It does look as though I should be quite busy for the next few weeks. At some point I ought to think about buying a suitable gaming mat to use as the "jungle" floor, ideally one which can be used for non-jungle terrain as well.