A Return to the Terrain Tiles

A couple of weeks ago I received my hot wire foam cutter so I can commence production of tiles without making a mess with polystyrene off cuts - eliminating comments from domestic control. I bought this from China through WISH and it is a really nice piece of kit consisting of a bow cutter and two wands with a mains power supply, 10m of spare wire, and they threw in an adaptor plug to convert the Euro plug to a New Zealand socket,  all for the cost $47 (including postage). I had looked at local suppliers and while some cheap battery operated bow devices were available, devices of similar quality to the one I have bought came in at around $100 for just a bow cutter and another $100 for a single wand, with combined bow and wand set (that matches my Chinese set) upwards of $150, so I am very happy with my purchase.

A week before this I took delivery of another batch of  frames and my first goal has been to finish off the river sections which entailed making four straight pieces…

…two bends (one with a wide bend), both of which have marshy spots at the bend. In the wide bend section the dead tree is made from twisted wire for a project some 15 years ago and later damaged when the box they were in was accidentally crushed (a few more of these damaged pieces will be similarly repurposed in future tiles)…

and one straight section into which my previously shown bridges fit…the stone bridge…

…and the wooden bridge.

While most of the river tiles have been made with relatively deep banks, two of the strait sections and one of the bends have shallower, gentler banks, but they still represent a difficult obstacle to cross.

There are thirteen river sections completed now with only one more to make, one that is the confluence of a stream and the river. That piece will wait until the next order of frames, but still to complete from the current batch are 22 plain and plain with road tiles, although I only have enough 20mm polystyrene to make five at present, so there will be a bit of a delay on these.

Also finished are the first of the scatter terrain pieces. I want these to be able to be used to line the banks of the rivers and streams, but also to help conceal the boundaries of the tiles. These are not designed as pieces of cover, but rather just areas of vegetation that break up lines of sight and disrupt tidy formations.

As the basis for these I bought 25 trees for $15 from China (above). The trees as they arrived had a weird plastic flock foliage that needed to be softened with some foam flock. When mixed with other clump foliage and some old trees repurposed these should make around 2.5 linear metres of  scatter material. Here is the first 600mm.