How to make simple fir trees for wargaming

Hi all

Been meaning to do a guide on my fir trees for quite a while now... here goes.

How to make Fir trees for wargaming

Materials I used: 

garden twine

pliers

A drill

Some thin wire

a cork

First off, tree making make a serious mess... It gets everywhere so do it in a well hoover-able area

1. First, you need the twine.

2. Unravel it by simply pull 2 of the ends.

3. unravel it even more until it's reduced to individual fibers... Using a brush sometimes helps here.

1. Get your two pieces of wire, hold then parallel and, with the pliers, twist them around each other. This will be the trunk of the tree.

2. Stick the twisted pieces of wire in the cork.

3. Put the fibers from the twine in between the 2 straight pieces of wire. How much you put there is up to you depending how dense you want the branches of the tree to be.

and you should have something like this:

1. Now, slightly twist the very top bit of the wire so it doesn't all fall out.

2. Get you power drill, take the wire out of the cork and put the twisted part of the wire in the drill. Firmly hold the other end of the wire (the top of the tree) with the pliers.

3. Now get the drill up to a slow speed (It helps if you rest the drill on a work bench while doing this).The fibers and the wire should twist around, making the 'branches' more or less even. 

4. Chop the top bit of wire off and cut your tree into the right shape with some scissors.

And you should end up with something like this:

Or this:

They would look much better with some flock PVA-ed on them, but I didn't have any. They are still awaiting a paint job though :) 

Thanks for looking at this very rough guide, I hope it helps someone :)