"Pine bark chips and cork bark, modular cliff formations" Topic

After gaming for many years, I finally had the space and time to get around to making some modular cliff pieces.

I had always seen pine bark and cork bark used to wonderful effect in places like White Dwarf magazine, etc. I always wanted to have at least a few pieces of it to see how it would actually look.

This project became more involved than I thought it would! Quite a bit messier as well!

I began with two pieces of triangle-shaped MDF board for bases. I wanted two pieces that could be placed at the corners of the gaming board, to create a corner piece, or to create sort of like a mountain pass on one edge of the board that a road could pass through.

I bulked out the shape of the cliffs with packing foam from a TV box as well as pink insulation foam.

Then I shaved down the foam so that it had a bit of a slope to it, so that the cliff wouldn't be perfectly vertical. I then cut my cork bark log into several chunks and glued them to the foam. I bought a huge bag of pine bark chips and glued them in layers to the foam as well. Finally, to finish out the formations, I glued some cut and shaped piece of floral foam with flattened back to the foam.

I realized at this point a flaw in my plan. I couldn't undercoat it in black because all of the foam elements, which would have partially melted. So I just went straight for a heavy basecoat acrylic craft paint of dark gray. I then went back with a smaller brush and painted black paint into any of the crevice areas where foam was still showing.

Down near the base I glued some aquarium stones and gravel, and modeling sand. I then painted the ground level a dark brown.

Currently I have all the base colors done and will then do a final drybrushing over the rocks and the ground:

Pictures so far:

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Very nice! Can't wait to see what you do next.

Dan

Very interesting and very effective.

Thanks for the illuminating post and picture links.

Great job, Those look like you've lifted them from a mountain range.

Jim

Thanks! I'm making Home Depot rich with the amount of materials I've been buying from their garden section, lol.

Excellent results I will have to go to Homebase here in the UK to see if they have the bark.

Everybody should love a new terrain project.Will try to make my scenics far more realistic now.

@Baranovich: GREAT WORK!!!

Over the past year or more I've noted how your terrain projects often parallel my own. You did your awesome river project, using Modge Podge. I had tried Modge Podge at the start of my own big river project, and looking back after I was done using 2-part clear resin coloured with drops of artist inks, I seriously wished I had made the same decision you did! I remember seeing you use quick-drying spray foam from a can to fill in some terrain piece, something else I've done as well.

But garden landscape wood-chips may be the very best of all! They are such a common, relatively inexpensive material, and so useful for rock formations, and rocky hills and/or mountains.

Not sure if you've ever used CORK BARK or not, but that's another great "nature's own" terrain building material. I bought a huge piece on eBay a few years ago, cut it in half as the first step towards building something similar to your wood-chip mountain pass, but never got further than that. Seeing this post of yours may inspire me to go back and try to finish turning them into a pair of mountain bluffs.

Out of curiousity, what kind of glue did you use for the bark-chips? I always use hot-glue for them, since it dries almost instantly and works so well on wood.

Again, GREAT WORK, and I hope we all get to see more!

That looks great. It would be great if you ever gamed the Galaxy Quest universe--Grishnak!

I've never thought about making a corner piece like that. I'll have to give this some consideration.

Grelber

I suspect wood glue would work quite well, for a strong bond.

Not as quick as hot glue, but probably cheaper in quantity.

@Mad Guru,

Thanks for the positive feedback! Much appreciated! It's weird because when I start these types of terrain projects, I have two left hands when it comes how to begin these things.

Yep, actually this project does have cork bark pieces as well as pine bark chips. I love cork bark even more than pine bark, I just wish I could afford to get more of it. I chopped up one log for this project and was able to get like five pretty good sized pieces, so I spread them out over both of the cliff pieces.

Yes indeed, I did use hot glue! It really is the only way you can achieve all the "stacking" that you have to do. After I had gotten several layers stable, I then switched over to Elmers Wood Glue since the pine bark chips on top were laying more of less flat. But for everything underneath it, lots and lots of hot glue. It reminded me of why I love and hate hot glue at the same time. God awful mess!

@Mako11

Yes indeed. I used a combination of hot glue and wood glue, depending on where a rock was being placed. Hot glue for a lot of the lower layers, then switched to wood glue further up.

Wood glue is one of my staples for terrain. I get those big jugs of it at Home Depot, lasts forever. Great for applying flock to the bases of miniatures as well.

I also remember reading on the forums about a year and half ago that wood glue dries more thoroughly in between things like layers of insulation foam or packing foam. Something about the wood glue having a different property from the white glue, apparently the white glue never fully dries when it's sandwiched that tightly between two layers of foam. Was a nifty tip I picked up.

Some pictures of the completed pieces:

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