I have been thinking about woods again

My planned participation at the group’s annual week away has been thwarted when my wife fell ill on Monday night. Thankfully her condition has stabilised and I may be able to get down for the last couple of days provided that I am satisfied she is fully recovered.

But the time I am spending at home, between hospital visits (thankfully the hospital is only five minutes from home), has bee fruitful. I have turned my attention to the issue of woods. Now woods have always been a bit of a problem child for our group going back for 35 years. And the problem was of my own making because in a set of rules I created back in the mid-1980s I incorporated the concept of woods as defensive zones. The concept itself was not bad in that a wood was a specific size and could be occupied by a single unit which once inside was free to move within that zone without limitation. Where multiple zones were adjacent units could just move zone to zone, forgetting movement rates. The problem was that defensive zones then morphed into fortresses that I didn’t like and I moved away from the concept.

This in turn introduced a whole series of additional problems for me because all of the woods we have are groups of trees fixed to bases an it is an absolute pain in the butt to represent fighting lines because placing the figures Is awkward and there are always arguments about which stands can fire in which direction. So I have decided to return to a form of modular bases, but with some differences.

I decided to make the new bases from 3mm MDF. My first thought was to make them as half hexagons and contacted a local laser cutting company, but when they did not respond beyond the initial correspondence I decided that I would have to undertake the work myself. Without facilities for precision cutting hexes were out of the question, but thankfully a local craft store stocks some precut 3mm MDF in 240mm squares. I decided that my base module size was going to be 240mm wide by between 100-120mm deep with a constant width at the ends (where pieces join end on end) of 110mm. That meant I could get two pieces from each 240mm square.

Another problem I am trying to solve here is storage. Pre-built woods modules can take up a lot of space, but what if the trees could be mounted on disks that could be dropped into the base? This allows the trees and bases to be stored separately in a more compact way. But how could they be sunk into the base? The answer was simple: use two sheets of 3mm MDF laminated. Using a hole saw I could cut the hole in the top layer and the disk that is cut as a result can be used to mount the trees.

So I marked up a sheet of MDF and with a jigsaw cut two sheets together so that I could keep a similar shape for both layers of the base. For the top layer I cut it again trimming 5mm off the front edge.

Next took a 35mm hole saw and cut three holes irregularly spaced. The first hole that I cut almost ended in disaster when the saw jumped and tore off a reasonably sized piece of my thumbnail. There was a lot of blood but no serious damage or pain and the rest of the job proceeded without incident. The cut pieces (complete with bloodstains) are below with the front edges beveled with a rasp.

The top and bottom were then laminated and left to wait for the glue to set under a heavy weight. The laminated piece (with disks in position) is below.

Two pieces aligned back to back...

...and end to end.

Next I applied a polyfiller to the front edge to provide a smooth transition between the layers and when that was set I coated the surface with PVA and applied a coarse sand, a few stones and a couple of rock pieces that I cast from a model railway rock mould. When the glue was dry I sprayed the whole surface black. I then dry-brushed various tones of brown and green, painted the rocks before attaching several types of flock and a few twigs as fallen logs.

And the finished item with trees in position...

...the two pieces together...

And with a battalion of Russian infantry in lurking within.

I am pleased with the outcome although I want to make an alteration that will enable me to secure the trees with magnets. I have started work on some end pieces and have a few other ideas to test.

So how am I going to use these pieces? That is a discussion for a other day.