Gorram Tracy Island

The sponge bushes had mostly dried and it was time to crack out the crepe paper and pipe cleaners.

Showing that thirty years can give us progress – pipe cleaners now come pre-coloured in brown instead of having to paint them or wrap them in brown crepe paper like the instructions said.

The palm leaves were folded bits of crepe paper cut to the shape and then messily glued to the pipe cleaner. After the first one felt a little weak, I decided to also wrap one of the bits of cut off paper round the leaves to secure them on better. While they fit the look of the original perfectly, I think I’ll have to make several spares cos they just don’t feel like they’ll hold up to much of a battering during gameplay. I used a pointy file to poke holes into the papier-mache to put the pipe cleaners into.

The smaller palms were made much the same way but the leaves were kept in pairs. I then joined several sets of them together with a tiny split pin and bent one arm up to secure them, the other stayed straight to stick into the ground.

All in all, this is mostly done. There are a couple of small things need done; a ladder down to the beach because stairs were too obnoxious and a cave up in the back left corner which links down to a secret inlet on that side (in the show this is where Thunderbird 4 launches from but in our scenario it gives the Good Guys somewhere else to land).

The main thing is going to be the water though. The original didn’t have any because the craft was only the footprint of the island but as a wargaming table, water is necessary. I debated just using some blue fabric but then I remembered watching a Marklin of Sweden video years ago about making water with just glue and toilet paper which matches the spirit of this project perfectly. I’ll start that tomorrow evening though.

For two days of solid work, I’m very happy with this. It is one of the dumber things I’ve done in a while but I giggle whenever I walk into the room so that alone makes it worth it. I went ahead and ordered the minis from Pendraken too… there’s no way I was going to manage another few months before picking them up.