Building Brecourt Manor ...Part 7

More of a general update, this post. The sandbags have been painted;

At the moment they are probably 'nearly' finished. Once the ground work is completed I will see how they look and maybe add some more detail, to the colour. I airbrushed the airbags which speeded up the process; first Vallejo Air, 'Khaki Brown', then 'Sand Yellow'. I then applied a wash borrowed from Forge Worlds 'Modelling Masterclass Volume 1'. This consisted of mixing Vallejo Flat Brown (substituted for Scorched Brown, which I have run out of), with Brown and Yellow Ink. The book does not give a ratio so a did roughly one third of each*. Then added Klear floor polish (so beloved by aircraft modellers, for use on their aircraft not their floors!*) to thin it out. N.B. Klear is now called Pledge Multi Surface Wax in the UK.

Never used the original 'Klear', but this new version works just the same; dries clear with a slight gloss finish. Its basically a cheap gloss varnish! Don't worry about the nice fresh pine smell that wears off once it has dried. The sandbags were then drybrushed with Vallejo 'Dark Sand' and finally a glaze of 'Flat Earth' was applied over them. The glaze was to pull the colours together. The base area around the sandbags was tidied up with the base colour to hide any over zealous airbrushing.

The ends of styrofoam which will serve has the base for the hedge row banks have been capped off.

I used thin plasticard cut and shaped to fit. I did have to slice away a thin piece of the styrofoam to fit the plasticard. Which was glued in place and then filler applied to hide gaps and act as another adhesive. I should have do this earlier, but had hoped that covering the ends in filler would protect them from wear and tear but was not entirely happy with that option.

I've also added in some more tree bases. These will be for the Woodland Scenic tree armatures approximately 2-3" in height to give variety. The cuts made in the styrofoam have been filled and painted with the base colour. Finally all the boards have been pretty much covered in watered down PVA glue to give them protection. I say pretty much, since the only pieces not covered in it were the sandbags and the crates/boxes etc..

   
It has left a 'shine' on the boards still painted in only the base colour. But this is not evident on the board which had been airbrushed. Not sure why? Not that it really matters, since more paint is to be applied. The PVA has left a sheen on the wooden boards which were not made from balsa.

I can only guess the balsa being more porous soaked up the glue better. Again not that it matters, I intend to do some more detail work on the trench floors and sides. So that its for now, more to follow.

* This mixture made a dirty yellow/green colour. With hindsight I should have added more brown to darken the colour and make it a richer green. The effect is to create a moss like colour which you can see on old sandbags left to the elements.

*Maybe they do use it on their floors aswell. I don't really know!