Trees

It has been said of wargamers that they spend all their time painstakingly painting figures and then ignore the terrain. A trend that I feel is changing for the better with printed game mats and 'teddy bear fur'. 

Today's post looks at trees: more specifically, Woodland Scenics deciduous Realistic Tree Kits.

2"-3" trees, light green foliage, PP and SF figures for comparison

Warning: great trees, messy process.

The trees come in several different sizes. Packaging varies, sample kits consisting of armatures and foliage are available, or alternatively elements can be bought separately.

They all 'work' the same regardless of 'version'.

2"-3" on the left, 3"-5" on the right

I've gone for the 2"-3" armatures and 3" - 5" armatures. Armatures are tree trunk brown plastic and look very uninspiring when you first encounter them., as they are 2 dimensional. But do not be put off, the 2D branches can be bent and they remain where you put them. The armatures also have bases which they push into (more of these later).

They look very uninspiring straight out of the packet

Tree packs have a bag of clump foliage with them, the armatures you'll need to buy this separately. I've gone for dark and medium green for a little variation. One pack of clump foliage will do 14  trees sized 3"-5".

The stuff of horror movies - this stuff is e-v-i-l

You'll also need to buy a pot of Hob-E-Tac. Which looks like PVA glue. Do not be fooled. You can't substitute PVA for this stuff. It's also one of the most awful things to work with. It gets everywhere and stays sticky for weeks. Which, to be honest, is what it is supposed to do.

stands have pretty much disappeared

I base my trees on oval MDF bases, 3 of the smaller trees together, or 2 of the larger size. I glue the stands into position on my undercoated bases, and when dry  I flock them. Once dry you need to clear out the tree base holes with a 3.5mm drill bit, then dry fit the tree armatures. Trust me on this, do this bit now - saves lots of mess later.

But you said you flock your bases... I did a batch of 14 trees, I'd only flocked 7 bases, and was using the unflocked bases for drying

Regardless of whatever surface you model on, cover it with cardboard. Don't ignore this bit, you have to protect everything from the perils of Hob-E-Tac.

Now cover the branches of your trees with Hob-E-Tac. Be generous with it. If you have dripped any anywhere, clean it up now. The trees need to be left to 'dry', which means that the white Hob-E-Tac has gone clear. My trees where clear after about 2 hours.

I've found that the least messy option is to empty the clump foliage into a large ziplock bag. It's a good idea to de-clump the foliage, as there are often very big blobs of the foam residing in the bag.

Remove the now dry tree from its base and immerse into the foliage bag, gently pressing the clump foliage onto the branches. Give it a good shake to remove any excess. When out of the bag, squeeze the foliage onto the branches, and fill in any holes.

I leave them for a couple of days, before I glue them onto their bases. Don't worry, expect the trees to shed some foliage in the process.

They will dry clear, won't they?

The final part of the process is to fix the foliage in place. Spray them liberally with a 50/50 mix of PVA and water. As a rough guide you are aiming to make the trees turn white with the fixing mix, don't worry it will dry clear. If you want to use the spray head again, flush it out really well.

They do dry clear. 3"-5", medium green foliage, with PP and SF figures for comparison

Great trees, but expect to find bits of clump foliage for weeks to come, and those blobs of Hob-E-Tac you missed when cleaning up can be removed, with solvent based brush cleaner.

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