Crikey! A Post! Yes I am still alive, I just haven’t been doing a heck of a lot of modelling lately. Goodness knows why since we’re heading into the depths of winter here in New Zealand and the World of Warcraft account I was gaming on finally expired. Man that game is addictive, best I just let it go I think…
Anyway, some time ago I inherited a set of 28mm scale palm trees made by a gamer friend of mine. They’re perfectly nice and playable but the anally retentive modeller in me simply didn’t like the smooth trunks they’d been modelled with, plus they’re a little large for a 15mm Flames of War table.
So this weekend I threw together a handful of my own palm trees using the same gardening wire/masking tape technique. I also spent a little time winding each tree with a ribbon of epoxy based builder’s putty for some extra texturing.
They’re not too time consuming to create and with some decent basing and a reasonable paint job should look fine on the table. They will also be considerably less painful to game with than the etched brass palms I was looking at recently.
I suspect 15mm (roughly) scale palm trees will also be fine for 28mm gaming too, because a true scale 28mm palm tree would be a liability for any heavy handed gamers at your table.
One last thing, I’ve been getting a lot of automated comment spam recently from some asshole so I have cranked up the settings on my own automated comment filter. My apologies if you get presented with a ‘captcha’ to post or your comment doesn’t immediately appear on the site.
Very nice looking tree. I just came back from Florida so I got to see a lot of Palms up close – yours looks spot on according to my memory. Perhaps you’d consider posting up a step-by-step article for like minded tree-heads?
Thanks, I plan to build a few more this weekend so could throw together a photo tutorial easily enough. There’s a few tutorials on the web for various techniques but they’re hard to track down in Google for some reason.
Wohoo Im famous!
I am that “heavy handed gamer” Stu was refering to! :)
Altho I feel not so much “heavy handed” more “ham fisted” (Im SURE my hand will fit between those 2 buildings… crash… nope…)
In fact I’ve consciously been working on my “kid in a china store” approach to Stu’s garage. The pose when they stand with their hands carefully clasped behind their back and lean forward… :)
Heh. I guess I did have you in mind :). I’ve noticed in winter though I’m just as likely to knock stuff over because I’m wearing my ‘gaming swandri’ out in the garage.
The palm tree does look really good. If you can make them that nice without driving yourself crazy then that’s definitely the way to go.
We’re entering spring/summer time here in the Bay Area but your ‘gaming swandri’ comment reminds me of my failed attempt to get the entire garage insulated when we remodeled the kitchen a few years ago. Sigh, my wife knows me too well. :)