In earlier posts I
covered the design approach and then the building of the base board for the
model I’m building to enable a refight in 6mm of the battle at Brécourt Manor
by Easy co on D-Day. This blog post will look at the building of the trenches.
I had cut out and
caulked a basic trench design into the base board and covered this with a layer
of soil and tile mix. This gave me my base floor and colouring. Watching the
Band of Brothers Day of Days episode I picked out a number of elements I wanted
to recreate in my build. In no particular order these included plank walls,
corrugated iron panels, wicker palisades, dug outs, sandbags and trench roofs.
I'm covering the plank and wicker walls in this post.
For the trench wall
where the 4 guns were placed I wanted to make them a more robust feature. I figured that with the blast from the guns
and the extended presence of the crew firing that they should be properly defined
and well built. I decided to make the walls from planks. I used flat tooth
picks cut length ways and thin off cuts to represent the supports. I used wood
glue to stick them together and a coat of strong tone followed by a desert
yellow drybrush.
For the trench
sections I decided these would be mainly wicker walling. Building this was
quite straightforward but a little bit tricky at first. I used cocktail sticks
as the main posts, cut up staples for the middle panel uprights and thread for
the wicker.
I put a bead of
Blutack down about 4mm deep. I then inserted the cocktail sticks about 10mm
apart and then 2 staple pieces between each post. These were painted dark
brown. The thread was tied with a simple knot to one end and using tweezers
threaded in and out. I found that I used between 16 and 20 runs of thread to
make a palisade section about the right height.
I found the thread
sprung back and tried to uncoil every two or 3 runs. I just needed to twist it
at the end of each run to reduce this likelihood. I also left the uprights
higher than I needed them to give me more room to play with.
I didn’t worry too
much at this stage about the exact positioning of the thread. I used static
grass glue to stiffen the thread and once wetted I found I could easily move
the thread up and down the uprights, opening it up where needed and closing it
up as appropriate. The glue, being tacky held things in place while it
dried.
Once the glue dried
the posts were trimmed to size and brown paint applied across the thread and
tops of the posts. A drybrush of desert yellow completed the piece and I was
able to use the points on the cocktail sticks to pin the piece in place on the
board.
Any gaps between the
wicker and the trench wall were then filled in and covered with the basing mix.
Next time its on to corrugated iron, sandbags and the dug outs.
Please wargame responsibly!
Charles the Modeller
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