Inexpensive and easy homemade flock!

Thought I would post up a quick tutorial about how I go about making my own homemade flock for figure basing and terrain projects.
I am by no means the first person to do this so I cant claim complete originality with it.
Hopefully you'll be able to find a good use for it.


First things first, you have to get a god source for sawdust...and quite a bit of it.  Best bet is to find a local mill/cabinet shop or the like. People that have home wood shops will not have to worry about this part. As I am without my own wood shop, I go with my wife to a craft store that does holiday wood cutouts in bulk. Seems as long as she is in line buying something when I ask for a container of sawdust, they have no problem getting me some for free.

I usually take a big cleaned out coffee can for them to fill.

Once you've got your sawdust. you'll need to decide what color flock you want. I've just gone with green here for simplicity sake but soon I plan to make a rust colored batch for a Dark Age board.

When the color you want is in mind, go buy the cheapest craft paint you can find. You'll want it a bit darker than what you want the end result to be. This is the most expensive part of the entire project. ($2.00 or so)
A good long stirring stick is also a must, I use BBQ skewers but Popsicle sticks or a plastic butter knife should do the trick as well.

More after the jump!

Making Industrial silos

Wow! Already the 13th of August and I'm only two posts in for the month. Gotta love how time fly's when you're  having fun.......or just working like crazy!

I had a few requests to show how I did my industrial silos, so I thought I'd go ahead and write up a tutorial for them. 

 

 First step is to gather up your Materials. Here, I've scavenged parts from sprinklers, old printer parts, and random bits of PVC piping that I pick up from the Hardware store.

 I assemble everything with hot glue because it bonds extremely fast and strong. Ive also added part of a toy (yellow pipe)because I thought it looked cool and my son asked if I would use it on my next project.  :)

 Next, what you'll want to do is punch out a massive amount of rivets. I use Very thin plastic card and a 1/16th hole punch to make them. Apply them to the silo by stabbing each rivet with an exacto knife, and then dipping into a reservoir of superglue. Then you just hold the rivet to the desired spot for a few seconds and it should be stuck pretty securely.

 After you have applied a sufficient amount of rivets it will be time for the undercoating of rusty paint. any rust colored paint should do. I would advise against the real cheap stuff because the tape may peel it off in a later step. Paint big swathes of color in random spots all over the silo.

 Now that the rusty colored paint is applied, you'll want to attach randomly cut pieces of masking tape to the painted spots.  I lay out a long piece of Masking tape on my cutting mat and then use my exacto to hack it into odd shaped pieces. Try not to cut out square shapes if you can avoid it. Rounded and jagged pieces of tape will look more natural.
Make sure the tape only covers rust colored spots.

 You will need to buy a spray paint that specifically adheres to plastic or make sure to give it a proper priming first. The color of Spray that I liked for my silos did not have a plastic adherent type, so I just use my regular, white model primer before I apply the color. This will help avoid drips and having to use a ton of the colored spray.

 If you're stumped for a good color to pick, go have a look at a sewage treatment facility or construction site to get a good idea of what the real life stuff looks like. It could vary from an Aqua blueish colored to light tans, depending on whats inside.

 Now, once the paint is thoroughly dry, use a pair of tweezers or your exacto to pry up and gently peel off the tape to reveal the "rust underneath"

 Now comes the fun part. I add decals and printed placards to the silo to help with a sense of realism. The placards were just printed out from a "hazard sign" google search. I cut them out of the printer paper, dipped them in water and they stick very nice. The Decals came from various military model kits that I've collected over the years. Once they are dry (or mostly) give them a god shot of matte varnish so they don't come off in the weathering step.
I also jumped the gun here and started adding my dirty washes before I took the picture with just the decals.

For the final stage, I add washes of dark brown and the original rust color to the silo. make sure its nice and sloppy with drips and pooling all over the place. Once the washes are dry, I use a spare piece of blister foam to apply random scrapes and pocks to the entire surface. Just dip your foam in some of the (thicker) paint and dab most of it off on a paper towel. Then make quick, precise dabs randomly all over the place.
I added some some black MIG pigment to the tip of the pipe to show that it belched thick, black smoke at one time.
Seal with Matte varnish and you're done!
You could make quite a hoard of these things in an afternoon. Just keep your eye out for cool and unusual pieces of junk that could be used for similar projects.

Here's the finished product.

Quick and easy razor wire.

I have been asked a few times about how I make my razor/barbed wire for my futuristic figure bases.
This is not the most realistic I have ever seen but it is certainly the easiest.

Floral wire is the only material you'll really need for this one.

For 28mm scale figs, I typically take 3 strands of the wire. 4 strands makes a pretty heavy duty cable look, and 2 strands could be used for Flames of war and similar scaled games. You'll want to put your strands together and bend one end of them together with some pliers, to give your drill chuck something substantial enough to hold on to.

Insert the bent ends into a power drill chuck and hold the other side with a pair of pliers and spin slowly until you get the desired braiding effect.     Bad pic but I hope you get the idea.

Once it is all twisted up remove from the drill and cut off the ends that did not get twisted with some wire cutters. I put a dab of superglue on each end of the strands at this point to prevent them from fraying back apart.
Once the glue is dry, wrap your wire braid around something that will give you the correct scale. I used a paintbrush handle. For smaller scales, wrapping around a toothpick might be a good option.

Now just pull off your coil, snip sections off and apply paint as you need them.

Here's a few recent examples of stuff I've used it on.

Quick and simple Trees

Just thought I'd do a little tutorial on how I make trees for my gaming boards. for the longest time I struggled to bulk out the foliage on my trees. I despise trying to glue Clump foliage to trees because it seems to never quite work out right, and I end up with a mess of hardened, throw away clumps. So here was my solution. This is really geared towards a casual terrain maker, not experts. ;)

So first off I grab a Woodland Scenics tree armature. I use these because I have them. I actually think that a nice looking, gnarly old twig would yield better and more realistic looking results, and would be cheaper if you don't already have these on hand.

Next is the stuff I use to make the bulk of the foliage. It is easily accessible from just about any DIY stores.

Now use the gap foam and spray it randomly on the tree armature. Don't go too crazy and put a bunch on as this stuff will get pretty heavy and fall off. Also, remember that it does expand pretty good as it dries. SO, put on less than you would think is necessary. Leave for an hour or two to dry.

 Spray black or Dark green if you've got it. Just so any missed spots aren't glaring white underneath. Unlike other foams, this stuff will take spray paint just fine.

Cover liberally in white glue.

Now, you'll just want to dip it in a suitable mixture of flock. I use two different types of the fine flock from Woodland Scenics. A bag or two will be plenty enough to do dozens of trees.

At this point I realized my tree was a bit on the skimpy side, so I went ahead and added more foam to bulk it out more, and then just repeated all the previous steps.
At this point, you'll just need to base it to match your gaming tables. Spray with a varnish or hairspray and voila! You are done. With all of the drying time this tree took about 2.5 hrs. Next time I plan on assembly lining about a dozen to start making myself some decent sized forests.