Seeing the Woods for the Trees

Finished trees and buildings back in 2013 on the old table!

In February 2013, I spent a weekend happily putting the finishing touches to some new Peninsular War buildings and a large collection of Woodland Scenic trees.

In the last two years these buildings and trees have stood duty from Rolica to Oporto and in the case of the trees I was gradually finding as much cluster foliage in the storage box as was actually on the tree armatures.

My trees after adding the filter material, spray painted dark green, already looking more verdant

Woodland Scenic trees can be a very frustrating product and I wasn't entirely satisfied with the finished product, despite having carefully followed the directions for putting these things together. I think they were designed for model railway use not for wargamers constantly picking them up and moving them to storage boxes.

So I started to look for a solution to resurrect my rather battered looking tree collection in time for Talavera which requires quite a few of them. There are always lots of great ideas out on the net and in the spirit of the JJ motto  "Adopt, Adapt, Improve" I went in search and found this useful idea at the 1000 Foot General blog who had obviously had a similar problem.

http://1000footgeneral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/flocktober-improving-wargame-trees.html

Test trees done, with the cluster foliage stuck on the filter material, producing a much better tree

I managed to source a supply of aquarium filter material which arriving white needed a spray coat of black and dark green before being squeezed on to the armature. The good news is that there is no need for glue; the armature just seems to grab hold of the filter material.

Once in place I started to use my new hot glue gun, and quickly became very fed up. I don't like hot glue as that molten stuff is agony if you get just a little on your hands and it seemed to take for ever.

So I reverted to using super glue to put the foliage clusters on the material and the picture above shows the finished look. However I have a box load to do as seen below!

Homework!

So I am awaiting a bulk order of super glue to commence work as soon as. Once the cluster foliage is on then I will spray them with scenic cement and hopefully get more than two years worth of usage out of them.

When that box is done Talavera is back on track.