It has been about four years since I have been wargaming and I've discovered that in each group there is at least one person who likes to do the table. Our group is fortunate that we have two people who enjoy setting a table, myself and Mike Askins. We both enjoy trying to set a realistic table top and are alwaya bouncing ideas off each other. I came by a bag of chicken grit, from a previous project, at the expensive price of $3.00 for 80 lbs. bag. Not knowing what to do with this stuff I gave some of it to Mike, who is a great doodler, and he came up with a great way to make a stone fence. 1. Get some chicken grit at some farmer feed store. 2. Buy some popsicle sticks and stain if you like. 3. Lay a bead of clear drying glue on the stick, drop the grit on top, pack gently and let dry. Repeat a second time and one stone fence completed. If you wanted to do away with the popsicle stick base, just lay the bead of glue on some wax paper and peal off when dry. The advantage of thia method is no painting required because chicken grit is made of crushed rock. Another quick way to make hasty works is to glue twigs to popsicle sticks. Looks great and it'a cheap. Water Of the things I have tried, water has been the moat difficult to find an acceptable represensation on the table. Blue felt was used for awhile, but I found it lacking in realism. When was the last time you saw a blue stream or river? I was most impressed with the water I saw in the rule system of Fire and Fury. They said that they used thin strips of colored plastic which works well on a flat surface, but tends to break up on a bumpy table. What I have found that seems to work well for us is vinyl sunshade that clings to the interior of a window to cut the glare. It can be found at most home improvement centers. Cut in stripe of 3 to 6 inches, with rounded ends to allow for curves and bends when placed on the table; it has all the properties I like for water. It has a nice sheen to it with a dark brown color and it follows the contour of the table and clings to itself like glue allowing for overlap at the ends. A nice added bonus is when it gets dirty, just wash in mild soap and water. Photo 1. Top row Chicken grit fence. 2. 2nd row is medium works made from bamboo skewers gotten at the grocery store. 3. Bottom row is light works of sticks glued to a popsickle stick. Back to The Zouave Vol VII No. 4 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 The American Civil War Society This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com