Trees on the Cheap, Part III

Posted by gbprime on 19. June 2009 01:09

You know, it really doesn't take this long to make trees.  Not in total anyway.  But recall that I'm a 40k gamer with 3 small kids and a 60 hour a week job.  Trees don't take this much time, life does.  =)  Anyway, on with part 3.

This time around, we're skipping over painting and basing the trees (we'll come back to that later), and are instead looking at cheap scenery bases to put all my cheap trees on.  Recall that I put a rare earth magnet in the base of each of the large trees?  Well that's because I'm basing them on steel terrain bases.  Really CHEAP steel, in the form of a used whiteboard that a friend got out of a dumpster for me.

You can see that I've marked the whiteboard up with a sharpie and laid out the shapes of the terrain bases before I make the first cut.  Metal this thin can be cut with a hand saw, tin snips, or a jig saw.  I prefer a jig saw, partly because I already own one and because it's much faster and neater.

The back of the whiteboard is darker and has a thin layer of rubber.  That means this is the side that things will stick to better and will cover in one coat.  (The white might have to be painted first, and the paint might not stick.)  For this portion, get yourself some PVA glue, a disposable paintbrush, and some box lids.  Don't forget to cover your workspace in paper, as this is gonna be messy!

Use the brush to coat the base in glue.  Make sure you lay the glue on thick, that there are no gaps, and that it goes all the way to the edge.  This may be old news to some of you modellers out there, but it bears repeating.  Your flock and gravel won't stick well if the glue is too thin, and your terrain will start going bald early in life.  Nobody wants that.  =)

I'm using two kinds of material on these bases; brown sand and green flock.  The heavier of the two should go on first.  Pour the sand out in a pattern on the base, and be generous with it.  You'll end up with a mound of extra sand that isn't stuck down, and that's fine.  You can quickly flip the base over and catch the excess in the box lid to be reused.

Now on to the other box lid to pour the lighter green flock over it.  Again, heap it on.  If you have enough, you can even swish the terrain base around in the box to cover it more easily.  Then turn the base on it's edge and shake and tap the excess off into the box lid.

Voila.  18 terrain bases.  Spray them with acryllic sealer once the glue is dry to extend their lifespan under your miniatures' feet.

Note that the bases on the left look different than the ones on the right.  One base was a failed experiment in static grass, and I switched to using finer flock.  But the difference in shading on the rest is the glue.  The ones on the left were done using PVA glue, and there was enough extra stickiness to trap some green flock in amongst the sand.  The ones on the right were after I ran out of PVA glue and switched to a spray adhesive instead.  It makes for a thinner layer of stickiness, and there's no extra to trap the second color of flock.  I think I prefer the PVA glue ones better.

Stay tuned for Part IV, where I finally get around to painting all these dang trees.  =P