Ground surface materials?

Forgot about those.. Good one, Spud..

Wooden coffee/tea stirrers liberated from your local Starbucks or Mc Donalds are good for those planks too.

Once glued down, rough them up a bit with a wire brush (this also removes any glue thats on the surface) and give them a rub with them with some woodstain, I use jacobean oak.

For 1/48th, the craft sticks are kinda wide as is... The planking needs to be about 1/4-3/16ths inch (using the Mk I Eyeball) in 1/48th, so you'd need to score them...

Another idea is using popsicle or ice cream sticks that are sold by the bags at craft stores for a buck or two. Cut and glue the strips to the base. You can color and weather the wood with oils. Then spread some Durham's Water Putty mixed with white glue and earth tone craft paints (very cheap) up to the wood strips so it looks as if the wood is embedded into the ground and not just sitting on top of the terrain. While  the putty is still wet, I sprinkle Woodland Scenics thingies to add vegetation. I also like to use kitty litter, crushed to get a variation in ground texture representing small stones, etc.

Well, the Germans were pretty meticulous in their construction projects...Even "temporary" projects were done well enough to last for years... The hardstands would be leveled off, then a gravel-bed applied to facilitate drainage and keep the wood from rotting, and then the planking installed... 

Yes, something similar to that, although what I have in mind, the planking won't be as neatly aligned, there will be gaps with some grass growing through. 

Aggieman wrote:

I'm in the early stages of planning my next build, which will be the Tamiya Me 262 with the Kettenkraftraud. ... What materials do I need?  How do I get these materials to adhere to the wooden surface?

I'm assuming that you plan on something akin to this FW 190 hardstand? 

 

Personally, I'd make the planking from strip basswood and glue it directly to the base, then put the groundwork down around it's perimeter and doing a "skim" of the ground material over the planking in order to fill any gaps in the plaking, as well as to allow some grass to poke up here & there.  Make suure you seal the basswood with a varnish of some sort to keep the moisture in the groundwork from warping your basswood (I don't use balsa. It's too "open-grained". 

Another way to make the hardstand is to build just a section of it from basswood, then make a mold of it and cast as many sections as you need for the entire hardstand.  This method is my preferred way to do those things, as well as for rock and brick walls, since I can use the mold on other dioramas as well instead of having to build a "new" one from scratch every time.

The wood-plank hardstands I've seen 262s on are the ones that are tucked back into treelines with the aircraft under camo nets and were built near the Autobahn that doubled as taxiways & runways rather than permanent bases. 

They (the hardstands) were also used extensively on the Ostfront for the Schlactgeschwarder units, since they moved practically as often as the Infantry did...

 

 

I'm assuming you have some documentation for wooden parking spaces for a 262. If so, balsa or basswood strips stained with a dark gray to get the effect of weathered wood will do the trick. For the basic ground, you could use any number of products, Celluclay, paster of paris, etc. to get a more natural organic feel to the ground. For grasses, take a look around Scenic Express.

To secure the 262, I'd drill a hole in a couple tires and insert some brass rod and drill matching holes where you want it on your base. Superglue  the rod into the holes. Superglue or even white glue will work for  the Kettenkraftraud.