Scratch Building & Terrain Projects
	Scratchs/ Conversions	Terrain	Background

Please keep in mind that the following projects are for wargame purposes, not necessarily as stand-alone modelling projects.

The projects are categorized into "Scratch Built Models", "Casemates, Turrets", "Conversions", and "Figure Conversions".  An explanation of these terms is found below.

The picture to the right is of a model of Signal Hill, St. John's, I helped with my wife, April, and daughter, Leanna for a school project.  Of course, the overscaled (for this diorama) USS Hartford was added later....  No other specific pictures as of yet, except references to existing game reports, below.

On my terrain techniques, there are two main techniques I use: that for water and that for hills.  My wife April has thought of and helped me experiment with many of these methods.

7 July 2004 I've also added a section on making Bocage hedgerows.
 

Water

On Colours

Hills

Making Bocage Hedgerows

Water - Seas & Rivers, Naval Actions (Back to Terrain)

For naval actions, see any of my pictures on ironclad games.  For specifics, see the terrain notes on the Battle of Venice.  The vinyl sheeting over scraps of cloth is a visually very effective method and also very, very inexpensive.  It was also an original idea from my wife.

Water - Streams, Rivers for Land Actions

For water in rivers, the method April came up with was using stain glass paints which are available at craft stores and even in craft sections of department stores such as Wal-Mart or Zellars.  Cut out a base section from cardboard or some other material - my latest was some soft plastic sheet I got from the same section of Wal-Mart as you would get bristleboard/poster board.  I prefer to have a white coloured material for the base as this best brings out the translucent colours that will go over top of it with the stain glass paints. Then using the paints, in various colours, start painting over the section with a basic colour (I often use a slate blue).  Apply thickly so that it will dry with a ripple effeect.

Use toothpicks to tease in other colours (pearl white for rapids, silvers, greens, other shades of blue).   Use toothpicks to agitate the whole mess so that the paint will dry with ripple marks.  You can also glue in rocks and tease in white around it for rapids or frothing water around it.  White glue works fine for this sort of thing.

Optionally, you can use caulking, or mastic, to create river banks which can be flocked with flocking, static grass, ballast, etc.  I use various types of Woodland Scenics material which I get from any hobby stores, especially those that cater to model trains.  The idea of using paintable accrylic caulking/mastic comes from web site.  There are some great and very doable ideas here - I use his method for making roads a lot.

Here is a picture of a river which shows the result.  I often leave the ends of each section free of the caulking/mastic & flocking so that I have some flexibility to joining river sections together, rather than just butting ends together.  Where this results in some areas of the river bank free of actual banks, I'll lay down lichen (as you can see in the first river picture) or some kind of ballast or kitty litter, just so the bank looks continuous and does not have any obvious connection spots.

Other pictures include this one, with light reflecting off the shiny surface the stain glass paints create.  Here are some Somuas fording a river in another game.  A scene from a East Front game.  Another picture of an older river I made (with no banks): in this game set up, rocks/ballast were lain across a ford point to indicate the ford.

By the way, if you get dust on your rivers because of loose flock, or ballast or kitty litter or whatever, Windex and a paper towel cleans it up just fine.

I generally go to the craft store, look at the stain glass paints and come home with 3 or 4 colours including my basic slate blue.  I'm sure there are other colour combinations which will look just fine - see the following notes on colours.>

A caution: the stain glass paint tends to stay sticky for a long time - one of the nice things about building up the river banks is that it allows for a space between the stain glass paint surface and the next section when storing your river sections.

On Colours  (Back to Terrain)

Remember, that like everything in nature, there is not just one colour.  One thing April likes to get me to do is simply look at a forest from a distance, for example, and take especial notice of the myriad shades of greens, browns, yellows.  It's pretty amazing the variations of green and even of all the different colours that compose what most of us who are not so artistically inclined just call a "green" forest!  Similarly, with rocks and cliffs, I was amazed at how much blue there is in dark grey stones.  Whether you are making water using the above method or washing over some plaster, styrofoam or other material rocks, it's the combination of different colours that make the overall colour...

Although there are lots of very good terrain sites out there (see the link above to Lloyd's site), I would also recommend getting the book, Scenery Manual, from Woodland Scenics (go to the how-to manuals link on their web site).

Hills  (Back to Terrain)

Once again, April has been a big help with this.  I've used three major methods to make hills and have settled on the last one as my "standard", though the second method gives the most robust terrain.  I only talk about shaping the hills, not of flocking or painting (see "On Colours", above).

Hills: Method I - Plaster Coat

A basic shape is sculpted using pink or blue styrofoam - don't use the white stuff which is beady - it's far too fragile.  Use white glue and round toothpicks to stack and affix pieces together.  Use a hot wire cutter (available from some craft stores, I found mine in the flower section - apparantly flower stores use this to shape styrofoam for flower displays) and/or a fine toothed coping saw to shape the styrofoam.  Don't worry about gaps or jagged edges - the plaster will take care of this.

Once the basic shape is finalized, slather plaster all over it.  Polly Filla, Plaster of Paris, or craft store craft plaster can be used.  The great advantage of the plaster is that you can shape things very nicely without having to worry about gaps or other problems with the basic shape.  Paint and flock.

The disadvantage of this method is that the result is relatively fragile, especially if you cart your terrain to events or venues other than your own home. The point of land in this picture is a plaster hill.  Note how I (actually April in this case) was able to sculpt rocky features in the cliff walls.  The same hill, from another angle is to the right in this picture, while the hill to the left (surrounded by a stain glass paint river - see above) with a bunker is another plaster hill.

Hills: Method II - Stiffened Cloth Covering

Basic shape is cut from blue/pink styrofoam exactly as per method I, above.  Once again, you don't need to worry about gaps or other faults.

Get some scrap cloth from any craft shop.  I get mine from Wal-Mart's remnants bin in their material department.  You'll also need some kind of fabric stiffener - this sort of thing is used by craft people who make things like Christmas wreaths to stiffen large fancy bows tied around them.  The stuff I used was called "Stiffy".  I suppose you could use watered down PVA/white glue, though I'm not exactly certain what the composition of the the fabric stiffener solution is.

Cover the basic styrofoam shape with cloth, tucking it in underneath the bottom of the hill.  Now, using a large brush, slather the fabric stiffener all over the cloth, including underneath - set the wet hill up on some blocks so it doesn't stick to newspaper or whatever.  It's been a while since I've done these hills, but I think it takes about a day to dry.  Once dry, paint and flock.

These types of hills are fabulously tough!  The absolute best way to construct hills if you are moving your stuff around a lot.  I have two large hills made this way and they can be seen in this picture of a quad and an 18 pounder on one hill and the here is part of the other, being scaled by a group of Panzerjaeger Is.

Hills: Method III - "Bare" Styrofoam

Cut the basic shape from styrofoam as described in method I, above.  However, since the styrofoam is not going to be covered by anything but flock and paint, you will need to take care in making sure there are no gaps.  Some of the cuts made by coping saws, especially, leave series of wavy ridges.  I always use a medium grit sand paper on a block (or even an electric palm sander) to smooth out these ridges.  You can also hollow out shallow depressions in flat styrofoam.  Paint and flock.

This is the fastest way to make hills, but painting is important.  What I do is spray with an earthy coloured paint (I prefer Testor's flat light earth, but you can use any spray, including an appropriately coloured craft or other cheaper spray can), and, while the spray is still wet, I sprinkle my flock on then.  As with all flock on any of the three hill methods, I always spray a coat or two of Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement which is supposed to be watered down PVA/white glue, but it works far more strongly and effectively than any PVA/white glue that I have watered down!

Some pictures of these types of hills are here, and I like this retouched photo of an S-35...

In the early to mid-90s, before I was connected to the internet, I was pretty much isolated with respect to hobby related news, as were/are many wargamers/modellers if they are too cheap to subscribe or buy magazines!  8)  With my growing interest in modelling and wargaming at that time, I realised there were a lot of model vehicles I wanted to game with not available in 1-72/6 scale.  Also, Airfix had discontinued many of its classic vehicle kits many years before (in 1994, with the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, a lot of their kits we re-released, albeit with a curious box change which stated the kits were now, somehow, 1/72 instead of 1/76).

Thus I decided that where kits were missing, I'd make them.  My first attempt was four universal carriers, modelled after the Airfix kit, of which I had one.  I know the Airfix kit has a lot of flaws, but beggers can't be choosers type of thing, so off I went!  From that I learned the best scratch building subjects, for me, anyway, are subjects which are boxy and with few curves, like the universal carrier.  The "curviest" thing I've done so far are the round turrets on my FT-17s which were not that bad to do, as long as I understood the math and geometry involved with rendering a curved surface to a 2 dimensional depiction.