Woodland Scenics' The Scenery Kit

8/19/2019 Woodland Scenics' The Scenery Kit

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Home -> Reviews -> Woodland Scenics: The Scenery Kit

Woodland Scenics: The Scenery Kit

by Andy Slater

Although I've used anumber of WoodlandScenics products overthe years I wanted to trya few more, and have ago a doing an entirepiece 'The Woodland

Scenics Way'. "TheScenery Kit" presents anopportunity to do this ina single package as itcontains pretty mucheverything you need,except the locomotiveand figures, to createthe little scene show onthis page. I got mine from ecScenics (who also stock all of the variousmaterials separately).

In this review I'll concentrate my efforts on a few personal insights,opinions and things I discovered along the way, rather than giving adetailed step by step.

Instructions

Full instructions are included with the kit (and they're pretty good too)however there are a few video tutorials on the Woodland Scenics websitethat are also worth viewing. Don't rely on them entirely though because aI will explain, I have my doubts about the usefulness of some of them.

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/infopages/page3.htmlhttp://www.ecscenics.co.uk/http://www.woodlandscenics.com/http://www.woodlandscenics.com/http://www.ecscenics.co.uk/http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/infopages/page3.htmlhttp://www.terragenesis.co.uk/


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Woodwork

Various wooden panels are supplied to make up the box and these areeasy to assemble. You'll need some PVA glue, sandpaper, and black paint

Okay, so not everything is included in the kit but would you really wantthe added cost of including stock items like that? Me neither.

Plaster Casts

Two components of thekit come pre-cast inplaster: the culvert andsome rock faces.

There's not much to say

about the culverthowever the rocks are abit more interesting: whyuse plaster rock faceswhen you could sculptthem or use real rocks?Surely it's just a way forWoodland Scenics tomake more money byselling lumps of plaster,moulds, or at the very


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least the materials tomake your own mouldsand casts?

Well actually, no it isn't.There are a number of reasons why these rock:(pun intended)

1. Sculpting is great if you can do it butthese have lots of excellent rockydetail with zero skillrequired on yourpart.

2. These are much lighter than real rocks.

3. You can stain these in different colours using the Woodland ScenicsEarth Color Liquid Pigments (more about them later), whereas you'dhave to paint real rocks.

Of course the down side is that if you use the same cast over and overagain it might be easy to spot the repetition on your terrain; but that's noan issue here.

Plaster Cloth

There have been a number of occasions when I've used jute scrim (from builder's supplier), and plaster to make models and support jackets forlatex moulds, and it's a very messy job. I'd not used commerciallyproduced plaster impregnated bandage before and I have to say thatalthough it's more expensive than scrim and plaster, it's so much lessmess that it's well worth it and I can certainly see myself using it again.The Woodland Scenics Plaster Cloth also comes in a nice 8" width that is


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great for landscaping.

One thing to watch outfor is that when you dipit in water, as instructed,it goes from relativelystiff to ultra-floppy in afraction of a second. If you're prepared, you'll

be holding it by twocorners, so it doesn'tstart getting folded upand sticking to itself asyou lift it back out. Thekit contains a little morethan you need to makethe model but there'snot so much extra thatyou can afford to be wasteful.

Lightweight Hydrocal Plaster

Once, years ago, I tried Lightweight Hydrocal for casting and didn't like iThe normal procedure when mixing plaster is to add plaster to water, butLightweight Hydrocal floats making it a swine to mix without getting airbubbles and lumps. On this project it's used for sticking the pre-castpieces in place, patching up, and for additional landscaping. Consequentlybubbles are not really an issue (and if you're not worried about bubblesyou can beat the lumps out of it). It does the job, but it's still horriblestuff to mix.

TrackBed

The kit includes a lengthof HO gauge track and alength of trackbed foam,however you could useanother gauge of track(if you have it), replacethe track with a road, orsimply omit it altogetherdepending on what youwanted to display on thefinished piece e.g. amilitary vehicle. In factwith a little sawing youcould easily change theshape of the woodensides of the displaystructure and create ascene with very differentcontours.


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The locomotive that Iwanted to display wasHO guage so I used thetrack however I omittedthe trackbed foam. Thefoam is intended toreplace the traditional cork underlay used by railway modellers to reducenoise and vibration. The instructions on using it were an addendum to thekit's instructions and, having done a little more research on the web, Iconcluded that proper use of it would have made the application of theplaster bandage more complicated. Given that reducing vibration is not a

issue on a display piece such as this I decided not to bother.

Earth Color Liquid Pigments

These were one of the products that I had not used before and wasparticularly interested to try. I'm pleased with the results and have sincegone on to obtain a Woodland Scenics Earth Colour Kit (a full set of thepigments), so I can try them for other things.

The instructions talk of mixing 1/4 teaspoon

(1/8 for black), of thepigment with a numberof teaspoons of water. Ithat makes sense to yo- fine. If like me you'rewondering "How on eartam I going to measure 1/4 teaspoon?" (nevermind how you'll get itout of the little pot) the

just be aware that it


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translates to diluting thpigment 1:16 (1:32 forblack), and, having

realised that you can measure it out in drops, brushloads, or anything elsthat comes to hand. I found those ratios too diluted, but better too weakthan too strong. You can always apply more but as this stuff works bystaining the plaster you'll have problems if you overdo it.

Another thing to bear in mind with this colouring technique is that you'llneed to be extra careful not to get glue or anything else that will affectporosity onto the plaster... unless that's your intention. The technique fordoing the rocks is to use a couple of colours on the plaster (to stain it),then seal it with Scenic Cement, and then apply a black wash. The blackwash gathers into the nooks and crannies much more than the initialcolours because of the sealing stage. The whole thing is then sealed withmore Scenic Cement.

Note that the model needs to be allowed to dry in between each stage so

patience is definitely a virtue if you're to do this stage properly.

Scenic Cement & Scenic Sprayer

I've already mentioned the useof Scenic Cement for sealing theEarth Color Liquid Pigmentshowever it is also used for fixingvarious scatter material in place,and for fixing clump foliage totree armatures. Scenic Cement

was in fact the mainproduct/technique that I wasinterested to try because whilewe TerraGenesists tend tosprinkle scatter material ontowet PVA, the Woodland Scenicsway is to apply your scattermaterials and then spray ScenicCement to fix them. Theadvantage of tho WoodlandScenics method is that you can


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apply your various grades andcolours of scatter and, if it's not

going well, you can tip (orvacuum) it all off and startagain. You don't fix it until you're happy with it.

Of course if you do need to start over then you waste some material butin fact if you engage your brain and follow the guidance in the instructionthen you'll probably achieve a good result the first time around. It'sreassuring however to know that you can start over if you need to.

As for the product itself, the Scenic Cement works rather well, however Ihave big issues with the applicator.

I have to confess that initially, sillyme didn't notice the tiny symbolsmoulded onto the nozzle of thesprayer indicating that it has two ofpositions, one for mist, and one forsquirt. Thus I assumed that it worklike a typical sprayer and the firsttime I used the thing I blasted mycarefully applied ballast all over theplace. Having recovered from this Iperformed a number of tests; whos

results baffled me until I finallynoticed the symbols. As aconsequence of this I used up all ofthe supplied Scenic Cement beforefinishing the kit and had to buy som

more.

New bottle in hand I completed the model however my experience of thesprayer is that it has a very inconvenient tendency to splatter when youwant it to mist.


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Something I tried along the way was to put the Scenic Cement into anordinary sprayer that I obtained for a couple of quid from a garden centrThis worked much better however my cries of "Eureka!" were fairly shortlived because when I came to use it again the following day it had cloggeup and was destined for the trash can. Perhaps another garden sprayer,rinsed out between uses, is the answer. As I said, I now have anotherbottle of Scenic Cement and will report back if/when I find a better way oapplying it.

Hob-e-Tac Adhesive

While we're an the subject of adhesives, I'll also say a few words aboutHob-e-Tac adhesive starting with: I don't like it.

I used it to stick the track down and sprinkled ballast onto it and it willhold scatter materials that are so applied, but it's not great. It will of course only grip the scatter material that comes into good contact with itso you still need to apply Scenic Cement. It's also the case that while it'seasy enough to apply to large areas it's rather more difficult to apply insmaller amounts. It's also used to attach clump foliage to tree armaturesand to attach field grass but as I'll explain later, I wasn't impressed withit's ability to do either. In fact the only thing that it was any good for wato stick down clump foliage that was being used as bushes.

Talus & Ballast

Theinstructionssuggest thatyou can apply

the scattermaterials inany order andif fact there'sprobably somemileage inswitching backand forth. Ichose to applythe talus firstas I wasconcerned thatI might needto addadditional EarthColor pigmentto match it inwith the plasterrocks. I didn'tbecause I'dalreadysucceeded in


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my effort to match my treatment of the rocks to the talus.

Ballast is one of those weird model making products that looks right eventhough it's way out of scale. Given that I'd displaying a HO gauge traineach of these pieces of ballast would be as big as a man's fist in my scaleworld; but it looks good, so who cares?

There's not really a much else I can say about these products; they dowhat they're supposed to and look good. I said above that I manage to

blast them with the sprayer and my recommendation is to use a pipette (plastic drinking straw will do), to apply drops of the glue to things liketalus and ballast rather than spraying.

Turf

The kit contains six different colours and textures of turf. The suggestedtechnique is to apply Green Blend Blended Turf first (there is more of thissupplied than any of the others), and then use the other colours foraccenting. The image below shows the model at this stage i.e. after theapplication of accenting colours but prior to the application of bushes and

scrub.

The kit has good quantities of each product and although I used most of the Green Blended Turf, I have enough of the accenting colours left overto do another half dozen models of this size. Various applicationtechniques are described and tips are given about what colours to use onwhich areas. In a nutshell: you use darker greens in hollows and places


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where you'd get a good amount of moisture and more yellowy colourswhere it would tend to dry out. The "Woodland Scenics Way" is basicallyto keep on sprinkling until you're happy with it and then spray it with gluto fix it.

I have used Woodland Scenics Turf before and I like it. I really like theWoodland Scenics method of applying the material and then spraying it. II can just find a decent reliable way of spraying the glue...

Trees - Armatures

The Woodland Scenics tree armatures were something of a surprise to mOf course I'd seen them before, looking all flat and kinda plasticy brown itheir packets, and wasn't at all inspired to give them a try, but they reallare a delight to use. The plastic is kind of weird in that when you bendand twist it, it stays exactly where you put it. I'd also anticipated that I'dprobably want to paint them but found that, after bending them to shapethey caught the light in an entirely different way to when they were flat,such that they no longer looked like brown plastic and didn't need paint. did find that the Scenic Cement made them a bit glossy but a coat of ma

varnish soon sorted that out.

Trees - Clump Foliage

I've used this stuff before for bushes and scrub and it works great for thapurpose. Using it to make trees was a new and not entirely pleasantexperience. I love the end results, but not the method.


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I mentioned before that there are some instructional videos on WoodlandScenics own site and you might be interested to note the following pointsabout the one on making trees:

1. After applying the glue the guy sets it aside to dry while he proceedswith one that he did earlier. At the top of the process it describes theprocess as "Fast and Fun". I found that it takes a couple of hours for theHob-e-Tac adhesive to dry. I guess my definition of fast is different totheirs.

2. The guy then dips the armature into a tray of clump foliage. Have a

guess whether or not that is likely to achieve even coverage. If youguessed "not" then my experience agrees with you.

3. Observe how carefully he puts the trees down and take a guess wheththose little dabs of glue on the ends of the branches are going to hold thfoliage, or whether it'll all start falling off in a few minutes?

Now in fairness, withrelation to the last pointthe written instructionsdo suggest to give it agood spraying with

Scenic Cement to fix itall in place. However thimage to the left showswhat it, in myexperience, a typicalmorning after scene. Asyou can see, quite a bitof the foliage has fallenoff and there are ends obranches showing.


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Of course the wayward clumps can be reattached with more Hob-e-Tacadhesive and I found that after 2 or 3 reattachment sessions and 3 or 4applications of Scenic Cement the three trees that I used in the trainscene were pretty robust. Not sling 'em in a rucksack and haul them dowto your gaming venue kind of robust, but robust enough that they'll stanbeing nudged when placing figures near them.

Fast? Fun? I thought notso I asked on the

TerraGenesis forum,scoured the Internet forinformation, and boughtanother pack of trees ina bid to figure out abetter way of doing it,and here, I think, is theanswer:

The tree in the image tothe right took about 15

minutes to make, andthat's from bending thearmature to having theclump foliage SECURELYin place. As you mayalready have guessed, I did it by dabbing thick superglue onto the ends othe branches and applying clumps of foliage one at a time. Additionalclumps can then be added by sticking one clump to another with moredabs of superglue.

Poly Fiber

This was another surprise product because I really didn't like the look of in the pack and thought I might leave it off. However I figured that thewhole point of the kits was to give the things a try, and I'm glad I did.

In the pack it looks, well, how can I put this politely, erm, pants? Itdoesn't look a whole lot better when you pull off a piece and tease it aparas directed in the instructions. The situation improves somewhat afterapplying it to the model, spraying it with glue, and pressing it down. As itbegins to hug the ground it starts to look rather interesting and aftersprinkling on some fine turf:


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A pair of nail scissors came in very handy for snipping off waywardstrands and made it look much more plant like. I think the results speakfor themselves and I'll definitely be using this stuff again.

Field Grass

This was another surprise item. I've used it before and liked it howeverthat was with terrain that had a polystyrene substructure and only thethinnest coating of plaster. The Woodland Scenics instructions say to get bunch of hairs, dip them into glue, and apply them to the model. That


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doesn't really work for me because I think that the clumps end up lookintoo tightly packed. I had been used to laying a few hairs onto the surfaceand punching them into it using a specially shaped needle (made bycutting a sewing needle across the eye to make a forked end). While thispunching method works great on polystyrene, it clearly wasn't going towork with a layer of plaster as thick as that created here. In the end Iresorted to 'planting' the hairs one at a time by dipping them into a dropof superglue and placing them where I wanted them to go. Laborious, buworth it I think.

Another aspect of this stuff were I disagree with Woodland Scenics is thathey suggest cutting the hairs to length before adding them to the modeIn my experience this makes them hard to handle so I applied longerlengths and trimmed them down with nail scissors when the glue haddried.

Additional Details

The loco and figures are notpart of the kit of course but

just in case you arewondering:

The body of the Loco was aneBay bargain and I mounted iton a chassis and bogies that Imade up using a Dapol kit of a Deltic. I had to shorten thechassis by about an inch andmess about with a few otherthings; so it's not accurate

however it satisfies mymemories of these thingsthundering past on the trainline near where I grew up.

The figures (shepherd, dog,sheep, deer, fox, and hare arefrom two Noch kits which Ialso obtained from ecScenics.I repainted them becausealthough they come ready

painted they were not quite tomy liking (the shepherd hadbuttons on his waistcoat that stood out like sore thumbs and the sheepwere a bit too 'yellow' for my liking. Much better though than thealternative of having an ork herding squigs.

Conclusion

If you've read all of the above rather than just skipping down to theconclusion you'll already be aware that I liked pretty much all of thematerials with the exception of the Lightweight Hydrocal and the spray

http://www.ecscenics.co.uk/http://www.ecscenics.co.uk/


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bottle. The kit is a great way to try them all and could easily be converteto depict anything from a military diorama to a band of dwarves andhobbits setting out on a quest for dragon's gold.

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