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Palm trees are not commonly seen on wargame tables. They are a little
more labour intensive and slightly more expensive then the other trees,
but you rarely need many of them.
- Cut or saw off a trunk sized piece of pipe. 7-10 cm (3"-4") should do.
- Palm trees are never straight. To bend the pipe, put the electrical
wire into the pipe. This will ensure the pipe will not crack but
stay round when bending. Alternatively you can try filling the pipe
with sand.
- Put the plastic pipe in boiling water or hold it over a light bulb
to warm it and soften the plastic.
- Gently bend the pipe and let it cool. When it is cold, you can pull
out the wire or pour out the sand. Metal pipe can be bent by hand.
- Put the nail though a piece of card and put the pipe over the nail,
so you can hold it.
- Spray paint the trunk dark grey or brown.
- Put glue on the trunk and sprinkle on the sand.
- Using scissors, cut the fluffy part off the feathers and trim them
into a palm tree leaf shape.
- Glue a number of the trimmed feathers in the top of the pipe till
you have a good looking tree.
- Paint the feathers with a slightly thinned paint. This will make the
individual fibres of the feathers stick together like the fingers of
a palm leaf. The trees look especially convincing if some feathers
are folded to hang down along the trunk and painted light brown,
instead of green.
To make the bases for your 10-25 mm forest, you need the following:
- Thick card. 1 mm is about the minimum.
- Earth or sand coloured paint
- Sand
- Ground foam. Some green colour, like the one you used for the trees and maybe
some brown. You can also use some light brown fibres, to simulate fallen
palm leaves.
- White glue
- Cut from the card an irregular shape. Don't make it too large. Palm
trees tend to clutter in groups of three or four, trunks almost
touching at the base. You should not put more than two or three of
these clumps on one base. If you want to make a forest, place more
bases next to each other. Make some bases
for individual trees.
- Paint the card an earth or sand colour, and let it dry. Maybe you
will need to wet the other side of the card to keep it from buckling.
- Put nails with large heads through the base, with the point upwards
and glue them in place.
- Bend the nails, so the tops of the trees will be vertical.
- Put some glue on the nails and slide the trees over them. Vary the
size of the trees on each base and put them together in clumps.
- Cover the base with white glue.
- Sprinkle on sand and a little ground foam and leave it to dry.
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