Ziterdes Stone Bridges (11936)

I was in need of a few landscaping items for the tabletop.  In particular, hills, rivers, bridges, and woods.  I found many good options on eBay, to include a nice set of hills and rivers from Poland, a Geo-Hex set of hills that I have been looking for for several years, and two Ziterdes foam bridges.  I had just finished up 39 landscaping trees, so on to the bridges.  This was a good project to work on while recovering from sinus surgery – among others that will be posted here shortly.

As I said, these were made of foam and from Germany.  I got them from Noble Knight Games.  The detail seemed nice and the size appropriate as shown below.

 

 

 

I was reticent to prime them with spray paint and see them melt away from the acetone.  Therefore, I primed them with “White Primer” from Armory paints that I bought in 1996.  This project finished this stalwart bottle off and into retirement.

 

I then applied “Stone” wash from Secret Weapons Washes to get into the crevices and deep sections under the paving stones.  This worked but used a lot of the wash.

 

I was not overly happy with this look, so I went to another old paint, a Polly-S “Ocean Gray” from 1984 – (yes, a 32 year old paint from a company that long ago was acquired by Testors).  It worked ok and while I tried as best as possible to be almost a dry-brush process, the colors were not yet to my liking.

 

I then went back and used the rest of the “Stone” ink wash.  I then used “Pewter Gray” from Apple Barrel (which I had left from 2000) to dry brush, and that did the trick.

By the way, if you are getting the idea that I use all my paints until they are gone, you are correct.  However, if I find them unworkable, dried out, chunky or even with mold in them (happened once), I toss them.

The final product looks pretty good.  I did not apply varnish as I am still leery of melting them.  They will work well as nice additions to my battlefields.