Good, cheap 15mm trees are hard to come by in New Zealand. You’re either looking at ridiculously expensive model railroad tree kits, like those from Woodland Scenics, or a lot of time consuming wire bending.
So it was interesting to see this scouring pad tree tutorial from Wargames Terrain appear on the official Flames of War forum.
While I typically play Flames of War on a North African table I might just try putting a few of these trees together out of curiosity. I also wonder if they scale to 28mm well.
The tutorial looks like a hard path to an easy job to me.
people could check out this link :-)
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/kimstyle/How_to_make_realistic_trees.htm
Cheers
Kim
I like the look of these trees but I cant help thinking that if they were dunked in PVA and sealed that they could be moulded and cast. it would take alot of time out of the equation.
I like your results Kim but wonder how long they last on the gaming table? Considering the amount of bashing about my wire palm trees have taken while being gamed over I wonder if the flock would be denuded from the branches quite quickly.
How have you found your trees last?
I’m planning to make up a few sets of these. I’m busy building up lots of European terrain for Late War FOW. I’ll probably get to these after I finish the scenery for an upcoming Omaha beach scenario I’m planning to run.
Kim I like your trees but I have similar concerns about longevity. I’ll probably try several varieties of homemade tress and get a feel for what best combines ease of making and resiliency on the tabletop.
Dustan, those scouring pads are really too pourous to be sealed and cast. If you seal them well enough they would absorb a lot of PVA, be fairly heavy, and I think they would also loose a lot of the surface detail that makes them treelike.
Morgan, I think you’re very sensible to try a range of approaches. I see different methods could be nicely mapped to different forests. Kim’s trees for example look quite Italian, and with less flock of a lighter colour you could create nice olive groves. While the above tutorial produces a basic pine tree.
Do you have a blog btw? Got any photos of your tables online at all?
Unfortunately I don’t. Most of my modeling until recently has just been 28mm buildings crafted using Hirst Arts blocks. Its only after I got into FOW a few months back that I started thinking about other modelling projects. These elements that I’ve been putting together for the Omaha beach scenario is the first sizable project I’ve done in 15mm scale.
I’m putting together tutorials on my techniques for Concertina Wire, Cezch Hedgehogs, and Minefields. When I finish them up I’m going to try to get them on the web somewhere, whether that means Terragenesis, the FOW forums or a blog of my own remains to be seen.
My trees have lasted remarkably well. They do however spend almost all of their time on my games table. The funny thing is though that the super 77 has a rubbery texture when dry so the foliage is really resilient. The only one that has broken on me snapped off the base with no dammage to the foliage at all. I’ve got a bunch of “bottle brush” model railway trees. They have taken a beating as they always get caught on peoples sleaves when they are picking up their troops.
Cheers