Fields of Fire

Well it's actually flock in this case not fire. A chance conversation with Phil Steele from the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society brought me back to a project which has been on hold for a while.  That project being the making of some Ridge and Furrow fields for the Medieval to 17th Century period.  Phil needs some for the 1469 Edgecote Battlefield model the Society is currently displaying at events.  I had what I thought might be just the thing, courtesy of Hobbycraft.  Its a brown corrugated rubber/plastic sheet, A4 size.  The ridges are about 3 to the centimetre and stand a couple of millimeters high so ready made ridge and furrow for smaller scales.

Sorry about the sideways image.  This is the Hobbycraft sheet.

All that is really needed is to cut the sheet to the required size and then glue some flock to the top of the ridges.  Of course as with a lot of my projects I needed to go back an additional step and make my own static grass applicator before I could do the flock application! It was a really easy job using an electric fly swatter and a small seive as the main components.  The trickiest part is the soldering of the wires coming out of the circuit board of the fly swatter to the sieve on one side and a length of additional wire on the other.  Mind you if I can do it anyone can so not exactly rocket science.  I'm not going to provide any detailed instructions as there are any number of good tutorials only a Google search away.

The completed applicator.  Its a bit Heath Robinson but it does the job.

I was a bit concerned about getting the flock to stick to the corrugated sheet.  I needn't have worried it stuck fine. Simply place a thin strip of PVA on the top of the raised ridges and sprinkle the flock and Bob's your mother's brother!  Well not quite, the thin school style PVA does tend to flow down into the grooves rather than stay where it was meant to be, but the strands do stand on end!  Still its part of a learning curve and a second test with woodworking PVA was more successful.  I will take some photos of the finished article when its, well, finished!

Its off to the wars for me this weekend.  The Sealed Knot has its largest event of the year just outside Scarborough this coming bank holiday weekend so I will be shooting at the ever romantic but commonly wrong supporters of that man of blood Charles Stuart for a couple of days.