Santa's Workshop

Walled Orchard

Ok guys, here it is - The next installment and the first project that I'm going to write about. Some of you actually got to see this thing- its the walled orchard. I scratch built the entire thing from top to bottom. The materials that I used were for the most part inexpensive: corrugated cardboard, wall spackle, Elmer's glue, balsa wood, sand, Milliput, various colors of paint, railroad terrain items.

Usually before I start a project, I make a rough sketch of what I have envisioned (vision is important, but it never comes out exactly what you think it should). I also add some rough dimensions for size. After this, I cut a base out of corrugated card that measured 8x11 inches. Then I cut out wall sections which I measured against a 25mm figure, and glued the sections into a rough triangle onto the base, after guesstimating the area that I needed for the trees inside. I left two 2½" spaces on opposite sides for gates.

At this point some planning ahead was necessary. I thought through the entire building process so as to do the project with as little frustration as possible. Therefore I decided to do the brickwork on the walls next. For these, I cut strips of thin card with scissors into decent proportion individual bricks. When doing brickwork, the idea is to represent groups of bricks, not every single one, unless you're doing something specific like a chimney. I glued groups of two and three bricks onto the walls inside and out. I then cut bricks to cover the tops of the walls to both give a brick impression and to conceal the interior of the corrugated card. These I laid in a row on top- its not as hard as you think.

The next stage of the project was the trees. I didn't want to buy commercial trees, so I decided to make them- something that I had never done before, so it took some experimentation. I settled on using the thin wire technique, an old modelers technique. I took between 11 and 14 thin wires which I had cut to length. I then started by twisting 2 wires together in the middle like bread ties, then adding other wires one at a time. I only twisted them enough to make an appropriate trunk length, about 1" to 1½". I then took the wires at the bottom, which were left shorter, and splayed them out like roots into a base for the tree to stand on. The tops, which were longer, I took in pairs and twisted together and formed limbs. I did 9 trees in 3 hours while watching TV. At this point I spray primered them.

The next step was to glue the trees down to the base inside the walls. Once dried, I used Milliput and molded the trunks up to the base of the limbs, and then molded around the base. At this point I textured the walls. After years of experimentation, I've finally come up with a good way of doing this. I took a dollop of wall spackle and slowly added water and mixed it until it becomes a creamy consistency. This I brushed on the walls. It textures and fills holes, cracks, etc. and softens hard edges.

Then I decided to texture the ground. My favorite method is sand. Basically I just took Elmer's glue watered down a little and brushed it over the base, and sprinkled the sand on. After it dries, shake the loose off. Once that's done, I painted it. I won't go into details on colors, but one tip is using a dark base coat, and when you drybrush lighter colors onto it, leave a small edge line of the dark base where objects meet- such as at the base of a wall. This gives a defining break in the lighter colors and is very pleasing to the eye.

The gates I made by cutting strips of balsawood with a knife and glued them together to fit the gateway. Finally, I used model railroad bushes glued to the limbs to finish the trees.

That's it for this article, next time will be on painting horses, an article that Ron asked me to do while we were at Cold Wars.