6 mm Woods

[jon_1066]

To go along with my 6 mm Napoleonics (that are in the casting queue with Baccus) I need some 6 mm woods.  My plan is to use a game mat over suitable shapes for hills so I want my woods to be flexible to be able to follow the contours to a certain extent.

So first I took a cushion from a sofa (long story short the dog attacked the sofa so we needed a new cushion pad - result one old cushion ready for plundering) and attacked it my self.

An old blender that is being retired with a spice grinder attachment (I think that is what it is)



Whizzed up then stained with some paints liberated from the kids making box and you end up with this:



And this:



Was nearly dry this morning.  So now armed with my clump foliage what next?  I guess this goes alongside how do units move through a wood? 

One method is to use bamboo skewers (or galvanised nails) and impale a piece of foam, then glue the clump foliage onto the foam.  Pros are an established look and the wood can be constructed such that units can be placed under the canopy.  Cons are that is is not flexible so needs to go on a flat piece of terrain.  If I am going for the 1809 campaign then the wooded bits are not going to be flat.

Making individual trees would be another method but I don't fancy that since I really don't want ot make hundreds of trees in 6 mm scale for a wood.

Any other bright ideas?  I am thinking of using a larger chunk of the foam with a flat base, staining it then adding the clump foliage to it.  This should flex over the contours.  Then if a unit enters the wood I can use a cocktail stick or pin with a flag on it to mark its location.

[fred]

A good start - how did you get the red foam to go so green?

How about using some funky foam as the base, would be fairly flexible.

[Brigade Hoelz]

My flatmates and now my partner would have killed my if I used the blender for making folliage...

Anyway. What about making lots of small irregular bases with Wood - sticks and folliage - and some large base out of flexible material (like cloth with sand, sawdust, fine turf) to place the woodbases onto. You also get an rough terrain base "for free" this way. I have some pic of this done for 15mm. But have to find it. so maybe later.

Hope this helps.

[jon_1066]

Everything helps - thanks for the suggestions.

Luckily for me the blender jug was broken by my wife so the chopping part is kind of useless (and you can't get a replacement jug of course).  We have literally never used the spice grinder pot before (in 15 years of owning it) so I thought that was fair game.

The colour is just from soaking the foam in kids paint diluted a little with water.  Squeezing the water out is pretty messy (but pretty satisfying).  The bits with more squeezed out are lighter in colour.  The second batch were bluer as I ran our of yellow and thought they would be good for variation and for pine trees.

I used up the last of the paint on a larger piece of foam last night.  That doesn't look much at the minute so I will experiment with sticking some of the other stuff on to make it more like a wood.

Will also experiment with a felt base or similar as the under layer that the tree canopy can sit on. 

[rabenga]

Make a dome like shape out of metal mesh or chicken wire... Attach sticks at the perimeter to elevate the mesh above the gaming mat and attach your clump foliage to the mesh. Should be flexible enough that you can confirm it on hills, you can out your tiny man's underneath it and you should be able to see the ugh the gaps in the canopy...

[nic-e]

I use drawing pins.

You can group them up into bunches or make single trees.

[MediumAl]

See what you mean about the drawing pins. They look effective. Can you get pins with a longer stem to vary the height? Upholstery tack from a hardware store might give you some options.

Al

[jon_1066]

Thanks for the ideas.  Might have a go tonight if I can find some mesh and drawing pins

[jon_1066]

Well finally got round to making some woods.  Went with the mesh method with hanging basket liner as the medium to stick the foam pieces to.



Am now going to experiment with some individual trees for hedge lines, gardens, etc.

[Rich H]

Looks great!