Tuesday 20 March 2012

Decision trees or Trees of Decision

Last Saturday was a great day for wargaming. Four days before I noticed that the Re-Action-Convention (link) took place at Rheindahlen (about an hour away from where I live) and convinced two friends of mine to accompany me. It was a great time and I'll post a review the next days.

However I spent yesterday evening with Ice Hockey and modell trees. The stems are from Heki, a Germany producer, and I bought them years ago. Finally I used them to tried different methods of foliation.

From left to right:
Heki stuff:
On this tree I used the stuff that was sold with the stems. It's a kind of fibrous web with some flock glued on.

Foliage:
For this tree I used Woodland Scenic's Foliage Light Green as the Heki stuff it's a kind of thin web with small foliage glued on. Unfortunately the foliage is very, very loose.

Bushes:
Another Woodland Scenic's product on this tree: Bushes Medium Green. Actually it's a kind of clump foliage but cut into smaller pieces.

Polyfibre and Turf:
On this tree I processed in two steps: First I applied a cloud of Woodland Scenic's Polyfribre to the tree, covered it with glue again and dipped it into fine turf (some Citadel stuff I bought about fifteen years ago).


Conclusion:
I like tree number three ("Bushes") most. The clump foliage was easy to apply and it's quiet sturdy when varnished. And it looks very well.
The polyfibre make a nice crown but the old Citadel turf isn't suitable as leaves. With a rougher turf (like the stuff on tree number two) it might be better.
The other two variants failed. The flock falls off very easily and glueing the web was a pain.

What do you think?

5 comments:

  1. I'm in desperate need of tree and will certainly be looking to copy the 'bushes' model with clump foliage; looks great to me.

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    Replies
    1. And they are done extremely fast:
      - bending the stemps into three-dimensional-shape: 2 minutes per tree
      - black undercoat: A few seconds
      - airbrushing the stemps brown: Half an hour for ten trees (incl. cleaning the airbrush)
      - applying the foliage with spray glue: Less than 5 minutes per tree

      So I really can recommend that method.
      (I decided to paint the stemps brown because there were white stripes where the plastic was bent)

      Cheers
      Monty

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  2. Niclas a.k.a. Auld NickMarch 20, 2012 11:23 am

    I've got two favourites: Nos. 1 (Heki) and 3 (bushes). My advice: Try to add more flock/scatter material to the fibrous web of No. 1; that would make the crown if it look leafier and thicker.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Niclas a.k.a. Auld NickMarch 20, 2012 11:27 am

      Damn and blast, that always happens when typing too quickly, of course I meant "…the crown OF it look…"

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  3. Of the lot I agree with No.3 as it's the better looking to my eye....

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