River

This is my first attempt at making a river for my wargames, first I made some quick sketches to help me figure out how to construct the rivers I started into making them.

I planned to build the bases of river out of hardboard which would make the them quite sturdy for gaming with, so with a sheet of hardboard I drew the planned pieces of the river onto the hardboard, which I then cut out with my jigsaw and sanded down he edges.

With the bases cut it was time to make the banks of the river, I simply cut 1/2 inch wide pieces of polystyrene in the required shape to fit the bases and glued the polystyrene banks onto the bases with PVA glue (you could easily use corrugated cardboard instead of polystyrene to make the banks of the river). When the glue was dry, it was time to make the banks a little bit more real looking, so using a hotwire cutter I trimmed and rounded off the polystyrene banks making sure to leave the ends of each piece flat so they can join on to the next piece, with the banks trimmed, I applied a layer of plaster filler onto them to add texture to the banks, being careful not to get any filler onto the actual river area, as I wanted that area to remain clean for the moment.

After the filler had dried I glue an assortment of small stones on the river pieces to add a bit more character to them.

Now the rivers had been constructed it was time to paint them and for this I simply painted the banks, the stones and grounds around the river and medium to dark brown and then highlighted the banks and stones with lighter shades of brown, I didn't worry about highlighting the ground as I was planning in covering this area with flock when I had finished painting. As for the river itself, I painted this dark green to represent a deep river and tried to add some movement to the river by mixing in some lighter areas of green.

Once the paint was dry the river pieces are quite usable as they are, however, I wanted the water to have a translucent and reflective look about, so painted several layers of PVA glue on the water areas that when dry added that touch that I had been looking for.

Once all the paint was dry it was time to flock to the river, as I just painted PVA glue onto the areas that I wanted flock on and then coated the glue in flock and left to dry before removing the excess flock.

The Bridge

Now that I had a river I needed somewhere to cross over it safely, so I think about it and sketched down several plans for crossing the river from simple ford's to large metal bridges, however, for this first attempt at make a crossing I decided to make a rustic wooden bridge. The river section itself is made in the same way described above except that the base is made slightly wider to accommodated the bridge.

To construct the bridge I used wooded craft sticks (ice lolly sticks) or you could wooden coffee stirrers, balsa wood strips or any other thin wood. First I measured and cut the two main support beams of the bridge, then cut enough shorter planks to cover the main beams and glue them all together with PVA glue. I also made two shorter pieces to act as ramps on and off the bridge. With main parts of the bridge assembled I was able to use them a guides to cut the support beams that would hold the bridge up, so with these cut they where glued onto the base.

Once the glue on all the pieces was dry it was time paint the bridge, I had decided to paint the bridge before it was glue into place, making it easier to paint hard to reach areas like the underside of the bridge. When the paint was dry I glued all the parts of the bridge onto the base