Cry me a River

I recently looked at my river stock and realised that it is all in 28mm. My small gaming group decided to do some ACW for February and I suggested that we do First Bull Run as a starter. It was then that I realised that my current river stock would not do and we would need a reasonable amount for First Bull Run. As we play Americian Civil War in 18mm my 28mm stuff would not do. Fire and Fury being the rules of choice here.

I had some 3mm MDF left over and quickly cut it into sections roughly 30cm long and 5cm wide at the joins. I would suggest that a dust mask be used if cutting MDF as the sawdust is extremely fine. I am still cleaning it up!

I used a mixture of poly filler, green paint and some PVA glue to sculpt river banks and allowed them to dry before painting the river a darkish blue. I decided that a piecefull blue river would look best on the table. I know that most rivers are browish but I think the blue evokes a better reaction.

A bit of texture was painted in and the river banks painted a darker green. I did notice that the sections warped while the paint was wet but completely flattened out after the paint had dried. It did cause me a moments panic.

Once the sections were dry I used Vallejo water gel that I applied with a thick brush and textured into peaks. One thing about the Vallejo gel is that you do get a bit of shrinkage but I had learnt that from a previous project and applied the extra to counter the shrinkage. I used about half the jar in filling the rivers

It dries clear with a high gloss and is flexible and durable.

The edges were then flocked with Heiki Summer grass as I use that on all my bases and other terrain pieces, I thought about putting reeds and the like in but decided not to. Perhaps I will do it later but if I am being honest probably not!

This particular project took about 3 days total. Most of it was waiting for things to dry. The most expensive part of it was the gel at about $20 for the pot, but as mentioned I only used half so probably some ponds are on the cards. MDF was about $7. I have made about 5 meters of rivers which should do for a start.