Well, it’s been a bit rough lately, but everything seems to be going okay now. Reading some of the suggestions in the forums, I'm going to try and keep my rambling a little less verbose and not try to include quite so many things into one article. As it is, I think I've crammed a bit too much into some of them. In this installment, I'm going to talk about building a few set pieces for your field. This is going to be cost effective, easy stuff, which can complement pretty much any game. In particular, I'm going to be talking about making stuff with popsicle sticks. You can go to any craft store and buy massive quantities of these for cheap and probably at your local supermarket as well. I typically go to the craft store because they tend to have the larger quantities of this kind of thing. That, and just walking the isles makes for ideas at times.

The cool thing about making stuff with popsicle sticks is that you can even get your kids involved. It’s pretty safe, easy to do, and its only limited to your imagination. If you can imagine anything made from wood or flat planks in general, you should be able to make it. Usually, it just takes a little bit of planning ahead of time. Your tools for this endeavor include: 1 box/bag of popsicle sticks, white or wood glue, clippers and/or scissors. In this article, I'm just going to talk about making crates, fences, and wrecked shacks. This will cover using an object as a form, a free-form construction, and making use of the stick's own properties.

Popsicle sticks, in essence, are cheap wood. You'll find a bunch of them that are bent or not quite straight. This is good and bad. If you want to make something very clean looking, the bent ones don't help, but if you want to make something more dilapidated, the warped ones help. So when you buy your popsicle sticks and find that they aren't all perfect, don't be worried.

Crates

So, this is simple enough, but works best if you have something to build it on like a wooden block or a small cardboard box. In general, a cube works best but odd shapes are certainly useable depending on how you want to do things. Buying child's blocks helps, unpainted being best. Plain old wooden blocks you can buy at any garage/yard sale or at your local toy store with little cost. You can build this without the block, it’s just easier with it. Take your clippers and cut a bunch of the sticks to the same size as the block. It often helps to just measure the block and then use that measurement to cut the sticks to size. Cut off the rounded ends first, you want every edge to be as flat as possible. Cut them to be flush with the four vertical sides of the block. Glue all of these sticks to the block, being consistent on the four vertical sides to have the sticks go in the same direction. It doesn't have to be this way, but usually looks best. Trim if you need to. Use a knife or the clippers/scissors, to make it as flush as possible. If you want to really go nuts, you can try to sand the edges, but you're typically going to pull a few sticks off that way.

Measure the new width of the block with the sticks stuck to the sides. Cut new slats to this new length and cover the top and bottom of the block so that it all sits as flush as possible. You may end up having to split a couple of the sticks to make it all fit correctly. If it isn't perfect, don't worry about it, covering the majority of the block and not overlapping is the important part, not having perfect edges. This is taken care of in the next step.

Basically, now that the block is covered in slats, we're going to make a frame for each side. To keep this simple and not get into any kind of carpentry stuff, we'll do it the way I first figured out how to do this. Take a popsicle stick, clip off the ends, and place it along the edge of one of the faces. You want just enough of the stick to overlap the box to cover its own thickness. Let's say it’s about an eighth of an inch. Cut the stick at each end at a 45 degree angle so that the point is on your left for both ends and the short corner is on the face of the crate you're looking at. Do that three more times, making a basic frame around that face. Your frame should just overlap on each edge and your corners should match up nicely, meeting at those 45 degree cuts. Glue it all on. Do the same for each face of the block. Now you have a fully framed crate and all you had to do was use clippers and glue and a little planning. Simple, yes?

Fences

Well, lots of options here from the dilapidated fence to the white picket fence. Honestly, there's not a lot to explain here, but let's cover the basics. Details, after that, are up to the individual to determine. In essence, every fence needs the vertical slats that make it a.. uh... fence. Then, it needs a horizontal set of bars that hold it all together. If you want to get more elaborate, you can make the fence posts as well if you're looking to stick this into something like a foam base or want them to be shown for more realism or even to have dug-away portions in a terrain piece.

In any case, I suggest making this in sections and then putting it all together the way you'd like it. Take two or three popsicle sticks and cut the end flat. Place your vertical fence pieces along these sticks, either right next to each other or by spacing them out, and glue it all together. Leave a small bit of the horizontal support pieces sticking out on half of them and cut them away on the other half of the sections. Be sure to be consistent on the placement of the horizontal support pieces when making a large fence so that when you put them together, they'll match up. Best way to be consistent is to place them at specific measurements, evenly spaced.

To make the tops, cut to whatever style you want with the clippers and trim it up with a file. You can go white picket fence with the traditional triangular top, or just keep them round as is, and leave them spaced. Keep them tightly packed and full length for a higher barrier fence. Break pieces off and glue them on for a more broken down fence. Don't feel limited here, go nuts. I have had as long as 36" sections of fence on a table before as a border, just because I had it on hand. To make it more modular, mount these fence sections on a base smaller than the fence section and just place them next to each other and interlocking for entire fence sections.

Shacks, Broken and Whole

This is pretty much the same stuff, except you make a frame like with the crate above, and build a fence on it. With the supports, you can go horizontal or build in angle pieces as well in a Z-style pattern. The frame is used so that you can put it down on the table. Leave a rectangle in a wall face for a door. Generally I don't build tops for these. Either its going to be broken down (most likely) or I need it open to put stuff in it if I want and makes it easier for everyone to see into it. And, it’s also less work, and thus faster to build. If you're so inclined to make a top, I'd just lay flat slats across the top with a brace piece, but you can make an angles roof by simply cutting progressively smaller slats for two of the walls and cut them into a triangle shape and lay the slats to follow that angle, being careful to match both walls. To wreck it, just snap pieces off and leave the ragged edges, break it apart, pull slats off, etc. Gouging the wood works as well.

If you want to make a door, well, I've only made them so that they are stuck in place and not on a hinge. I understand you can buy dollhouse hinges to make that work, but I never bother. The door is just another fence-like piece, so build accordingly and size to the door hole you made. For a door knob, you can use just about anything. I've used beads from my daughters' necklace making kits or just made a ball of putty ("green stuff") on a small paper clip section. An option I've always wanted to try but never used is to simply use a thumb tack (the plastic colored ones) and just cut off a bit of the head and call it a doorknob. Seems like it would work, but I'm not sure how far the shaft of the pin goes into the head, but that's easily remedied with the proper cutting tool (not your flush-cutters) like a wire snip and the like.

Conditioning the Wood

Okay, so you have your pile of set pieces together, but it all looks so fresh and new. You want a different color or for it to look run down. Well, that's where we paint the stuff. Either you can actually paint it with primer, basecoat, dry brushing and a wash or three... or you can "stain" it with just watered down ink, paint, or other products. I say other products because if you look at any modeling catalogue you'll find stuff specifically just for aging wood and metal. Look around, it’s not hard to find, usually goes with model train stuff. Some of the previous links I've given will have some of that.

Wraps it up

Well, that wraps this subject up and gets a few generic things to throw on your table. At this point, we're getting a bit elaborate for a typical table between set pieces, these basic builds, and your own miniature being very nice. Next time, we're going to get back to the miniatures and cover dressing up the miniature on those nice scenic bases you sometimes see with competition miniatures or the miniatures on a manufacturer's website.

I hope this has been helpful. As usual, feel free to ask me questions or make suggestions in the forums for this column. I'd love to hear from you.