Frustration with 28mm Hedges

In this 2 part article I shall talk about the making of hedges.

I say 2 part because after several hours of work I have discovered that I have wasted my time...read on...

In the past I had previously used the old green pan scourers, lichen and thin strips of coir matting, but none of these gave me the visual impact I was looking for. So prompted by the recent sales at Modelzone (A UK retailer that has gone into administration) I purchase a significant amount of clump foliage – probably too much.

With this I intended to make the ‘mother’ of all hedges. As most of my readers , followers and friends know I tend to go for quick fixes and easy solutions. This project started out as such but as you read through this post you will begin to realise that this was not the case.

First up I decided I would make around 4metres of straight hedges – each length variable from c5cm to 20cm in length. The base was cut from hardboard. Through this was drilled three holes and bamboo fixing posts opushed through to a height of 1.5cm.

Onto to these fixing posts I glued (PVA) strips of pink foam. I cut the strips using my hot wire jig and made sure that the tops of the foam had a wavy form. This way the hedge would not look too uniform when finished.

All good so far....

Next up I treated the side edges with ballast and sand and then painted the whole think matt black.

All good so far.....

I had bought three colours of clump foliage – light, medium and dark green. The clumps themselves vary from 2mm to 5mm in diameter. So I painted PVA onto the hedge support (pink foam/now black) and bgan to stick by hand the clumps onto the terrain piece. God knows how many hours later I had covered most of the pieces on each side with just the tops to do. I left these to dry. On my return I discovered that not all the clumps had glued securely. So rather than start again I spray soaked what had been done in scenic cement – hoping that this would permeate through and create the bond I was looking for.

Once again I left to dry – the scenic cement had not had the desired affect. So this time I took one piece and soaked this using a brush in diluted PVA (50% water) – did this work?

No – AAARGH ! How many hours wasted – the PVA is just not holding the clump foliage to the boards. I am not sure whether this is a combination of the matt acrylic I have used, the heat (temperatures around 30 degrees) or the porous nature of the clump foliage itself. I suspect the latter.

Did I mention that this lot will now need to be scrapped !

I shall have to look for a new glue and start all over again. by hand....

Come back for part 2 when I have refound my will to live....

Part 2 can now be found at

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-frustration-is-over-28mm-hedges.html

Until next time