Tag: Palm trees

As convention season is upon me – starting with TotalCon 37 this weekend – I wanted to make a quick post on some jungle bases I have sculpted for my new Maya scenario. I bought some inexpensive palm trees on Amazon – the one on the left was for cake decorating and the other on the right marketed for use on railroad dioramas. I had 30 trees in total – and they looked pretty shiny as one would expect of plastic. And shiny is not what I wanted.

The basic preparation of the trees involved removing mold lines (lots), washing them, and making a plan for their use. I needed some single trees for use on a beach (sandy bases) and some larger more muddy looking bases for the jungle around a Maya village. These are for the Battle of Centla Feudal Patrol^TM games I’ll be running in upcoming conventions. In addition to removing the mold lines, I lightly sanded and filed the plastic which gave the bark a more friable look.

I then mounted the trees into poster tack on specimen jars and used three different washes on the foliage (all the paints and materials that I used are listed at the end of this post for those interested).

Next, I needed a more detailed plan – I wanted to make the bases such that the 30 trees were varied across all of the bases and spaced far enough apart for good gaming with miniatures. I decided to make one 5-tree base, one 4-tree base, two 3-tree bases, three 2-tree bases, and 5 single bases. The single ones would be beach bases and the others jungle bases.

For sculpting, I went with Apoxie Sculpt, a 2-piece resin that is very workable but hardens like a rock. I needed to have some support for the trees – otherwise they would have just drooped excessively while the Apoxie Sculpt cured and hardened overnight. To solve this, I removed the little tabs on the tree bottoms, and glued the trees to steel washers. I gave a few a little bend as well.

For the 2-tree and 3-tree bases, the washers were easy to sculpt around and provided support – and I added some popsicle stick supports connecting the washers that I encased with Apoxie Sculpt and sculpted over. For the two bigger bases, I made supporting bases out of several popsicle sticks, then glued the washers with the affixed trees to them. I sculpted over the bases. More or less, these actions provided structural support and allowed me to make the bases strong. I needed to make sure that I used a putty knife to lift them from time to time off of plastic plates and cutting mats else they would cure permanently to them.

After curing to tremendous rock-hardness, the next steps for them were to get painted and flocked. For the single-tree beach bases, I used chinchilla dust over PVA (thanks again TIM!) that I have used in the past. For the jungle bases, I used a texture paint, pigments, and different flocking materials.

After the texture paint dried, I played around and added multiple (3) pigments, and let them dry.

At this point, I wanted to add some tufts, debris, and low-lying foliage. I had some old 4-Ground leaves, and a Ziterdes “butterbur” laser-cut foliage that had been hanging around for years with no home. I mixed those with some tufts to create a hybrid jungle-looking plant. I learned butterbur is not native to the Americas, but with the tufts it looked fine.

I have also acquired some more bases from Dave Stone’s workshop that I will eventually work into the game. These are very nice and I will also flock them similarly to match mine. Unfortunately, the UK cyber attack delayed them getting here in Massachusetts until today so they won’t get done until later – not Dave’s fault!

I hope that this was interesting – certainly it was a diversion from my recent Ozz stuff. I’m still going to run Mesoamerican games – and will be adding Ozz games too. I certainly have room for both!

Thanks for taking a look – let me know what you think!

Miscellaneous details and references for those interested in that sort of thing:

For all of my previous posts on games, units, and other projects for my 16th Century Spanish Conquest supplement for Feudal Patrol™ – “Civilizations Collide” – please see this page.

PAINTS, INKS, GLAZES, SHADES, WASHES, PIGMENTS, FLOCKING, GLUES AND MORE THAT I USED ON THESE PALM TREES AND BASES:

1. Scicalife Model Tree Coconut Palm Trees
2. HUIANER Palm Tree Model Trees
3. Coelia Greenshade (wash)
4. Poster tack
5. Biel-Tan Green (wash)
6. Hexwraith Flame (as a wash)
7. Vallejo Primer “German Dark Yellow”
8. Army Painter “Speed Paint – Dark Wood”
9. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Contrast Medium”
10. Citadel “Contrast Paint – Mantis Warrior Green”
11. Vallejo Mecha Varnish “Matte Varnish”
12. 1.25″ Everbilt Fender Washers
13. Gorilla Glue
14. Elmer’s PVA Glue
15. Popsicle Sticks
16. Apoxie Sculpt
17. Vallejo “Earth Texture Acrylics”
18. All Living Things Dry Dust Bath (chinchilla dust)
19. Vallejo “Airbrush Thinner”
20. Vallejo “Dark Yellow Ochre” (pigment)
21. Vallejo “Burnt Umber” (pigment)
22. Vallejo “Faded Olive Green” (pigment)
23. Vallejo “Green Earth” (pigment)
24. 4-Ground TSW23 “Loose Foliage – Brown Leaves”
25. 4-Ground TSW22 “Loose Foliage – Green Leaves”
26. Ziterdes 79554 “Pestwurz (butterbur)” laser-cut foliage
27. Army Painter “Jungle Tufts”
28. Army Painter “Swamp Tufts”