How to model trenches

 ( I have ben away for a few days, hence the lack of posts for the last week or so.)

I needed some trenches for a siege game I am designing. Various companies produce trench system terrain pieces but they are fairly expensive and I needed something that was really flexible. I have been making models of one sort or another for over 50 years so I had a few ideas...

Materials

The system needed to be cheap. We drink wine and I therefore had a quantity of wine corks. The "composition" corks are better for this purpose than the corks that are a solid piece of material. If you don't drink wine then you can buy wine corks on Amazon quite cheaply. Get the straight ones rather than the tapered type. Craft match sticks are about £4 for a bag of 1000, though you could use ordinary matches if you cut the heads off. The bases are mount board. I use a lot of mount board in modelling.

Basic Construction

 First cut the wine corks into quarters lengthwise. Use a sharp utility knife blade and be careful!

My base terrain system is Hexon II so I make everything to a 4" modular size. A straight trench piece is therefore mounted on a piece of mount board 4" long by 1/2" wide

Notice there is a small space behind the vertical face. Cut the matches into ~11mm lengths and glue to the vertical face using woodworking PVA glue. I use the guidelines on the cutting mat to make this easier and quicker. I also used the PVA glue to plug any large gaps between the cork pieces.

Corners

I already had some outside 120 degree angle pieces (to fit on a Hexon tile) so I made some internal corner pieces to match them. Cut away the excess mount board before doing the next step.

Texturing

Cover the slopes with PVA glue (use your finger to get a smooth coat) and shake modelling sand over the glue. I use a coarse modelling sand available from Pendraken.

If you don't want angle pieces as shown above then you can just as easily make 90 degree corner pieces like this. When making corners ensure that the gap between the inside and outside is the same throughout. In my case I worked on a 20mm gap. You can probably see the reveting better in this photo than the ones above.

More Corners

Completed trenches

Here's a picture of what it all looks like when laid out on the table. You could also make card strips to represent the floor of the trench, particularly if it is boarded rather than just bare earth. Of course, being modular you can reconfigure it into any shape you want.

You can make any shape you want using this basic technique. I thought about making some "T junction" pieces but I decided not to at least for the time being.