Thursday, March 7, 2013

Flocking Day

Last Saturday was Flocking Day. Given the lingering cold weather, I worked inside.


Everything laid out before I begin. In the recycled (and thoroughly washed) meat tray is my standard flocking material - spent tea leaves. These are collected,  dried out and stored in the blue tin in the background. The texture is fairly coarse but it works well with a little dry brush.



A soldier of the Queen gets glued up. I use a good quality PVA glue to stick the leaves down,


And into the tea leaves he goes.



Also due for some attention are some 15mm Ancient Britons. In either scale, I take care not to get glue where it shouldn't go. I am not too worried about getting flock on the boots or legs as it comes of very easily while the glue is wet and is still fairly easy to to remove once dry.


And onto the leaves they go. I don't press the flocking material down at all just give the base a good dunking. That helps keep the coating light and natural looking - well as natural as massively over-scale tea leaves can look.


And part one is complete. The Martians got the same treatment but using sand instead of tea. Once the flock is dry, I knock off any loose bits. Then using a brush or dipping, the bases get a dollop of PVA thinned with water to which a very, very small amount of dish soap has been added to break the surface tension.   This soaks easily into the basing material and locks everything in nicely. Once this is dry, all that is required is a quick dry brush and you have a serviceable base for your soldiers.




2 comments:

Unknown said...

I like the idea of using the tea leaves. I'll have to give that a try. I use parsley a lot, but I break it up a bit first. And thanks for the tip of adding the dish soap. My PVA always winds up in an unbreakable bead of glue.

Saw you over at Ray's blog. I'm so going to win that contest!

PatG said...

I have enough of the stuff lying around - it seemed a waste.

The wet water and PVA method is an old model railway ballasting trick.

And I am going to win.