Planting a forest

Planting a Forest  - a How To Guide

Every good wargaming table needs some height to give it that authentic battlefield look; I really don't like flat, uniform table tops, so I try to find ways of adding a bit of real world texture to my gaming tables. One easy way to do that, which also suits nearly every table (I mostly game WW2) are trees.

Obviously, there are other things to spread around your table such as buildings, but they can be very theatre specific; even in northern Europe, the houses in France have a noticeably different style to the houses in Holland, Germany, Italy or even Denmark.  Even walls and hedges can sometimes be a bit too specific to certain parts of the world, whereas you can see the same species of trees (at 28mm scale anyway - I defy anyone to tell the difference between many varieties of model trees at that scale) around most of the world.  Well, certainly across all of Europe and the Mediterranean and even into North Africa and Russia.  ;-)  That covers most of the theatres of WW2, certainly enough for my gaming enjoyment.

One such variety of versatile tree (for terrain-makers at 28mm scale) is the conifer. There are spruce, fir, pine, larch and cedar… and perhaps some more?  The colours and shapes do vary slightly, but the general shape is the same.  Thankfully, for the purposes of terrain-building, we can create generic conifers at a pretty low cost and fill out a table.  Many deciduous varieties are also fairly similar. This blog has some pretty useful source material. Here's a pic of my winter table, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.  Most of the trees in this photo were made for a total of about £20, which is less than a quid per tree.

Some of the non-coniferous trees came from my good friends over at 4Ground, though I don't think they sell trees any more.

How to Make Conifers

The trees are made from something called Hedgehog Gutter Brush, which you lay into your gutters to stop leaves and moss from blocking them up.  It also is really great for cutting into tree shapes. I purchased a 4 metre length from Amazon. It comes in a roll like this...

When creating my trees, I cut the brush into different lengths (rather than the uniform height that the trees you buy usually are), which ranged from about 10cm up to 30cm.  You need some heavy duty wire cutters to snip the metal wire.

Once you have snipped the wire brush into lots of different lengths, you then need to trim the black plastic brush into a tree shape. Get yourself a decent, comfortable pair of scissors to do this. When trimming the brush, rotate it and trim at a angle.  Keep rotating and cutting until you've gone all the way round your new tree.  I tend to rotate it by 360 degrees a few times and keep trimming until I am happy with the shape.  It doesn't need to be completely symmetrical, in fact, I think if there is a bit of asymmetry about it, it tends to look better.

You'll notice from the photo above that I have pulled the brush strands out from the bottom to create the trunk.  I've pulled out about 2cm.

Keep trimming all your trees until they are complete. To stop more of the bristles from falling out from either the bottom or top of your newly cut tree, use a tiny amount of hot glue from a hot glue gun on both the top and bottom of your tree.

Next, it gets a bit messy!  In an old tub of PVA glue, I filled it with about 25% PVA and 75% water and gave it a good mix.

Ensure that you have somewhere where you don't mind making a mess...trust me on this!  Top tip though: don't do it outside on a windy day if you want to keep most of your flock.

Dip one of your trees into the PVA tub ensuring that it is getting it fully coated with the PVA/water mix.  Lift it out and let the excess glue drip back into tub before transferring your glue-laden tree into a large tub of flock; sit the two tubs side-by-side to cut down on the mess.  I used dark green coarse turf from Woodland Scenics.

Generously pour more coarse turf over the tree, turning it as you do so, then lift it out of the tub and give it a gentle shake over your turf tub (or a tray) to remove (and recover) most of the excess turf.  Don't be afraid to pour on lots of the turf material - you will recover most of it back in the tub/tray placed beneath it.  When you think that the glue has soaked up as much turf as it can take, transfer your tree to somewhere to dry for a few hours.  I used a piece of foam with some pre-made holes so that the trees were upright and none of the flock/turf was in contact with anything else whilst it was drying.  Be aware that even though you think that the glue has all been soaked up, it hasn't: you are going to have watery glue running down the trees until it starts to dry.  Next time I might experiment with a thicker glue mixture - it needs to be runny enough to coat all the bristles though, so just bear that in mind.

I forgot take photos during the gluing/flocking stage because I got plenty of glue and flock stuck on me.  A pair of nitrile, powder-free gloves from Screwfix are just the job for keeping the colour from permeating your skin. 

Looking back at that photo, it looks like 4 metres of the hedgehog brush made about 30 trees of different sizes. If you are gaming in 15mm, then I guess that you could make even more. Once dry, the PVA does not fix the flock in place particularly well, so you will find that every time you handle bits will fall off, but there is a simple solution to that.  

Do this next bit outside and I would also recommend that you WEAR A DUST MASK to avoid inhaling any glue. Spray the trees one at a time with a spray adhesive, rotating them as you spray to get an even coating of the glue.  Try and get the spray deep into the "branches", but don't go too mad otherwise you'll get through your can of glue pretty quickly.  

I then dusted my trees with a sprinkling of lighter coloured Earth Blend turf from Woodland Scenics, just to highlight the outer leaves of the tree; this also absorbs some of the spray adhesive.  Remember to give it a shake to spread the sprinkled turf across all the bristles and to penetrate into the tree a bit.  Once sprayed and highlighted, place the tree back in the place you used to stand it up and let the adhesive harden; I left mine overnight.  If you don't want to use a lighter colour, then the same dark green is just as good.

The turf should now be fixed to the bristles of the hedgehog brush really well and will stand up to lots of handling on the gaming table or transporting around. Once you have completed this, all that is left to do is mount them onto some bases. 40mm MDF bases work well, which I used for individual trees, but I also glued a couple of trees together onto larger, irregular shaped bases that I had found somewhere.

Use a hot glue gun to place a nice, big dab of glue onto the centre of your base. Twist the bottom of the brush wire into the glue and wiggle it around to create a good point of contact; use a lolly stick or coffee stirrer to smooth the glue up the trunk of the tree, and then leave for a few seconds while it hardens.  Place it to one side before doing the next tree.

Once you have glued all your trees to their bases, get some paint and paint the MDF base and up the trunk of the tree.  I've got several pots of paint from B&Q that I use for various terrain projects.  Any sort of brown will do, though I used Dulux Espresso Shot here.  I wasn't too fastidious in painting the tree trunk because you cannot actually see them once you've got them based up and on the gaming table.  If you created a longer trunk than the 15-20mm trunks that I did, then you might decide to pay a bit more attention to modelling the trunks or risk seeing the twisted wire.

I sprinkled a bit of grit and sand onto the paint to give it some more texture.  Once dry, I then used some of the 25% PVA/75% water and painted this onto the base, then dipped into a tub of flock to finish the bases off.  Here is what a finished tree looks like, though I didn't match the base of this particular tree to that part of the gaming table!

Materials & Tools

The things that I used to make about 30 trees were:

• 4 metres of hedgehog gutter brush
• PVA glue and water
• Woodland Scenics dark green coarse turf (and maybe a lighter colour for highlighting)
• Spray adhesive
• Something to base the trees on
• Hot glue sticks
• Brown paint
• Sand or grit
• Some flock material

• Heavy duty wire cutters
• Good pair of scissors
• Latex gloves
• Hot glue gun
• Lolly sticks or coffee stirrers

Like Trees?

For those of you interested in making trees and vegetation, I have written a few more blog posts regarding how I made olive trees, agave cactus and low, scrubby vegetation for a Mediterranean or desert-themed gaming table. I'm planning on doing a piece about Aleppo pine trees soon too. 

I hope this gives you some ideas and inspiration; share your thoughts in the comments below.