"Das Rattenloch" – Part 3: ground cover

Another quick update on the (now-(correctly) renamed) “Das Rattenloch” terrain board.  I’ve added the ground covering this evening.  By comparison with the endless sticking of cardboard planking onto the trench sides in my last post, this stage was completed pretty fast.

A while back I’d dyed a collection of old towels dark green and dark brown to provide some “grass effect” ground cover on the Great War terrain boards.  I’ve mentioned before that I really like this way of simulating grass on terrain.  The towelling is incredibly tough once painted with PVA and gives (at least to my eye) a very passable imitation of grass.  Having the towelling dyed and painted in different colours allows you to mix and match to get a varied coverage on a trench board; some grass faded and worn (perhaps having been trampled or where a gas pocket had formed or lingered), but with some grass remaining healthier despite its location. 

I mixed up some more of the dark-brown paint/PVA/Polyfilla combination and spread this over the ground areas of the terrain board.  I’d pre-cut the towels to provide the grassy areas, and suck these down, liberally sprinkling the un-towelled areas with sand and gravel.

 
I did the same for the intact bunker insert, making sure that the edges of the insert (and the insert areas in the terrain board) were free from over-spill of the paint/PVA/Poyfilla combination.

All this took a couple of hours to model this evening and tends to take about 36 hours to dry out completely at this time of year (longer in winter).  While ground effects dry through, I can work on the interior and exterior of the intact bunker, and make more substantive progress on the destroyed bunker insert.

Hopefully, I’ll have a bit more to show over the weekend.  Catch you soon.