Desert Rock Outcrop

Hello There! While looking through a number of desert photographs I noticed the rocky features that played an important part in many of the clashes that took place in North Africa.

Especially in the Gazala battles these higher areas were seized by the Axis forces and caused the Commonwealth forces countless headaches and losses as they used penny packets of, sometimes, untrained and unacclimatized forces to recapture the high ground.

I wanted to avoid making some special to type terrain, as this may have been very large and caused me some real storage problems. I would also have been unable to change the size and shape of the high ground and could not change the high ground to include or exclude trenches or dug in positions.

I thought out a system of modular tiles which could allow replacement of the type of high ground or, if no high ground was needed I could use as a back ground.

This a basic plan to show what I envisage. The two central, plain squares are 600mm x 600mm flat desert tiles which can easily be replaced with times with trenches or positions in.

Each of the surrounding tiles are 600mm x 300mm and have a rock face along all or part of one side. Each of the four corners have a turn in the rock face and can match up with the tile next to it. They can also be swapped round as they are modular.

Three of the above tiles have slopes to aid access.

Here is a cross section of the tiles. The central higher tile on the left sits on a 2" thick sheet of polystyrene. The surrounding tiles have the timber edge extended to the same height as the raised central tile.

I have started to make some of these already.

One thing I have learnt, is how to cut the plaster rock face moulds. I did not want many repeated rock formations and I was limited to four Woodland Scenics moulds. After experimenting with layers of the smaller rock moulds, here. I decided to use the larger rock casts but cut them to the required height. At first I scored a line with a craft knife and continued during this until the cast snapped. Then I realised I could cut them with a general purpose saw and it was a lot faster.

I have started from one side and worked across to the other. I also try to over lap the castings to make them look more natural.

This close up shows that more clearly.

I deliberately model a curve into the face of the styrene so that the rock face does not look flat and unrealistic.

This tile includes one of those access slope I mentioned earlier.

The slope is also bordered by rock castings but cutting the larger rock casting down to the height that is required means that you now have double the shapes to build up you scenery.

 

Hougoumont Gardens

Hello here! I recently saw some previous work, I had done for my local wargames club. I may have posted it on this blog, but it was a very long time ago, so I thought I would post them on here.

The model of Hougoumont is the Hovels, resin, offering. It did not come with a walled garden but does have the walls. It always looked a bit sparse, when used by the club for its regular Waterloo refight, so I decided to build one.

At the same time I made a garden for the gardeners house next to it.

There are plenty of examples of what the garden looked like, on the internet. I had to separate a wargamers 'best guess' from contemporary painting made just after the battle. Source material, for even such a well read and studied battle, can be misleading.

Here is a close up of the garden. The cabbages are white roses from Hobbycraft scrape booking accessories and painted green and dry brushed a lighter green. The taller vegetation is coconut bristles from a broom head.

The raised beds are thin plywood faced with Slaters Scenics blockwork and then filled in with layers of plaster. Doing one thick layer takes a very long time to set so many thinner layers are better. The triangular plants are a mixture of coconut bristles again and sweet chestnut casings, soaked in glycerine, to preserve them, painted and model railway ballast glued to the top and painted different colours. 

The other part of the flower beads are Woodland Scenics clump foliage soaked in PVA mixed with water, so that they go hard.

The gravel path is, again, model railway ballast.

Desert Roads

 Hello There! With the weather taking a very cold turn, I have started to add to the blog again. I have done some work on the roads for the desert terrain.

I purchased the latex flexible roads from Early War Miniatures, here.

I have a scratch built collection of  rutted roads which I use for my bocage scenery, but this tarmac road was to be used for the desert. There were roads connecting passes and oasis in North Africa but the only tarmac road was the Via Balba. I wanted a smooth surface to the roads and they had to be pliable enough to conform to the uneven surface of the desert terrain I have already made.

Here is the smooth road on the left with a unpainted cobbled road on the right. This is the first time I have used latex roads so they were a bit of a learning curve for me.

I found that they roads tended to stick to each other very easily. I had to consistently peel them apart every time I put them to one side, I would suggest, in the future that if you purchase these, paint and seal them immediately, to stop this happening. This is not a complaint, just an observation as it is a side effect of using latex items.

The other thing I noticed is that if you do not store these flat, both before and after painting, that they can maintain a crease in them. I found this but after a couple of nights sandwiched between two pieces of plywood with a weight on top this was reduced. I presume that a longer period of time would remove any creases. 

With the tarmac roads I air brushed them in Vallejo Model Air 028 sand yellow. Them edged them in yellow ochre artist paint, the same colour as the desert scenery.

About here I noticed that after a few days the roads, if they were not left flat, the paint would start to crack. It was very cold at the time and I did have to put the heater on in the cabin. The roads were not in the direct path of the air heater so were not heated to a great degree.

I would paint soft plastic Airfix figures in a coat of PVA, many years ago, in an effort to stop the paint peeling off them. Here I had already painted the tarmac roads but have added a couple of layers of watered down PVA to both sides of them.

I have since painted the cobbled roads as well.

 

After coating the roads in PVA, I wanted to 'rough' the surface up a bit. The desert environment can easily cover any surface so I decided to use AK dry ground. The road on the left has been stippled with dry ground while the one on the right has some applied at the top, to compare the difference.

 

This is as far as I  have progressed. I am going to monitor the cracking in the paint, to see if it gets worse. I am also considering a further layer of PVA. I will update you on further discoveries.