Bocage

Last weekend, I was going to play a WWII game, and thought maybe I'd do some late war Shermans and Germans battling it out in France.  That was when I realized that I hadn't seen my hedgerows for quite some time, like maybe a decade or more.  

After doing a pretty intense search, I've concluded that they have left the building.  A few years back, I found that my tray of Pz Is and variants hadn't come home from the last WWII convention game that I ran, and I'm thinking that the hedgerows might have gone with them.

They were just the Woodland Scenics lead hedgerows, left over from a work project back in the 1980s.  There weren't that many of them, and for years, I had "planned' to make a bunch of hedgerow sections, but never got around to it as it took decades for me to finally build American forces for WWII.  

So, instead of playing a game, I decided to make some hedgerows for bocage country.  I did a little research, finding that there is a wide range of variation in the characteristics of hedgerows.  I found some dimensional info, including some cross-sectional drawings and whatnot, decided on the size and what elements to incorporate in my hedgerows, and started building.

I decided to make the earthen bases from EPS insulation scraps that I have setting around, based on thick sheet styrene, and to finish them off with various (mostly) Woodland Scenics foliage and fluffy stuff.  Here are some pics of the process and results:

I started out with the styrene bases in .08" thickness, scribing and snapping the styrene in the 1" wide by 2", 3", 4", and 6" lengths to accommodate my modular terrain, and make breach sections to replace full hedgerow sections with as they might occur during games.

 

Next came cutting strips of foam into 1 inch wide segments to glue to the bases.  I used 3M Styrofoam Spray Adhesive for this task, as if doesn't really have much over-spray, and offers a fast solution as compared to any type of PVA or other glues that don't attack the foam, and dry much more slowly.  If you are worried about the longevity of the adhesive, I have terrain dating to at least the later 1990s  with no instance of delamination yet. 

After the rough cut lengths of foam were glued to the bases, the ends of the foam were trimmed in a small mitre box.

The basic profile of the hedgerow bases is 1" wide, by 3/4" tall, with the sides sloped to a 3/8" wide top.  Marks were drawn on top of the foam indicating the 3/8" top, 

The sides of the foam were rough cut with small hand saw, leaving a loosely pyramid shaped cross-section.

The corners of the base were rounded with a Tuff-Grit sander, so that the sharp corners of the styrene won't poke into other terrain pieces.  Then the sander was used to bring the foam true to the profile dimensions.  Lastly the sander was used to create a compound slope on the sides similar to that of a Jersey Barrier.  You end up with a sort of six sided triangle in profile (not pictured, as I failed to hold the camera still).

The foam was then shaped with Tuff-Grit sander to give variation to the shape of the hedgerow section onto which, foliage and trees were eventually added.  

Once all of the shaping was done, the hedgerow bases were dusted off, and painted with a couple coats of acrylic paste to make the surface of the foam a little more resistant to damage. 

The sections were then given a base coat of paint, in this case a dull earth brown with artist's acrylics.

The next step was to flock the bases. I used a mix of Woodland Scenics fine and coarse flock, "glued" with artist's acrylic matte medium.  This was my set-up for adding the flock, which consisted mostly of seven colors and sizes.

Once the flock was dry, bushes and a few trees were affixed to the bases.  Bushes consisted of a couple applications of tufts of WS foliage clusters.  Trees are the plastic armature type with more tufts of foliage clusters, also from Woodland Scenics.

Once everything was try, I sprayed several coats of clear matte spray sealant from Windsor and Newton on the hedgerow sections.

The photo above shows examples of the different lengths and types of hedgerow pieces that were made, including and an end piece next to the breach section

And a view of a few hedgerow sections on a piece of roadway terrain with a 15mm M4A3E8.

I ended up with 86 hedgerow sections. After thinking about it, I should have made a few corner sections and will probably go back and do so next weekend.