A short post today as we embark on the proper Jungle build, applying the lessons we learned with our test run.  I have mentioned what I’d do different several times over this series of articles so far, but now I thought I’d put them all in one place for ease of reference. So here we go…
Firstly, drill holes with a suitably sized drill bit and glue in the palm trees with a hot glue gun.  I used a Number 3 drill bit for mine.
Secondly, drill holes for the ALL of the plastic plant vegetation.  You may recall here that I did this in two phases previously, firstly for the standing vegetation with a Number 2 drill bit and secondly for the low-lying vegetation.  Now I simply use a Number 1 drill bit for all.  Line up your bases and fire away  with LOTS of holes.

The next phase is simply sticking all of the standing vegetation in place and adding the cocktail sticks which will be the anchor positions for the low-lying foliage.  With these you can go to abut 2/3 to 3/4 of an inch protruding from the base as anything protruding (and there won’t be a lot) will simply look like a pointy plant frond.  Where the holes were too small, I simply gave a quick twist with a round ended file and enlarged the hole to fit the plastic plant.  This was MUCH quicker than drilling individual measured holes which I did on the trial build.  The cocktail stick all fitted the Number 1 drill holes perfectly but I do advise a small hammer to tap them through or your thumb will be like a pin cushion by the end of the process.  Remember, use Superglue for this stage, the hot glue is only for the big trees.
This phase is a bit industrial as there is lots to do, so ideal for listening to a TFL Oddcast or similar.  This lot took me about an hour.  The drilling stage about twenty minutes. so it isn’t an absurdly long process.

Finally, with all of that in place, I added PVA and a layer of Sharp sand.  Normally this would be finished off with a top coat of weak PVA mix to hold it in place, but not this time.  I will be adding more stuff on top so that will suffice later.

With this done, we can now spray the lot black as an undercoat and then slap on dog poo brown house paint as the base coat.  However, I’m not photographing that.  That will be a slow dry in this damp winter weather, so no more today.  I’m going to do some more work on my MDF buildings and sort out my figures ready for painting.  I’ve been enjoying my research and have been focussing so far on the battle for Hong Kong, digging up some first hand accounts from both sides as well as reading the British and Canadian official histories.  I am now moving on to Malaya and Singapore which is the period I want to start gaming with.  But more on that another time.  That’s all folks.  Look out for the End of Year Oddcast later today folks.