What the FLOCK?!?!?

So, sometimes gamers get bored. Or they're looking for a new challenge. Or they're just cheap. Whichever one of them you are, well this might be for you. So I got to thinking a few weeks ago "Maybe I'd like a bunch of flock to flock minis." My club mates can attest to how big a deal that is since I have 9K-ish points of Space Marines and not one of them is flocked. But I don't want to spend a lot of money on flock. So I decided to start making my own. And here's how I did it!

Tools:

containers (cheap and/or probably around the house)
stirrers (old brushes, pens, whatever)
cookie sheet ($1.50)
strainer ($1.50)
tea leaf ball ($1.50)

Ingredients:

sawdust: sawdust from a wood shop or mill would probably be best, especially from sanding or a lathe, but I grabbed a plastic bag full from Home Despot around the corner from my apartment. They pay to get rid of it so they really don't care.


paint: Actually, some thoughts on that... Don't use GW paint. There's not enough and it's expensive. :) You want to get a cheap acrylic or tempera or something. Kids paints are the goal. Lots of paint, really cheap. Each of those bottles you see there cost about $2 each. I use the acrylics on buildings and such but I got the tempera just for flock. Just make sure you get paints that are much brighter than what you want to flock to look like because the brown of the sawdust will make it much darker.


water: you have a sink, right?

And now, to the work!

Step 1: mix paint and water

Mix paint and water in a container. Simple enough. You don't want it to be translucent but as you experiment (assuming you'll make more than one color/batch of flock) you may want a little more or less paint. Be prepared to maybe mix paints if you want something specific. I also happen to have a cheap ass blender. You could use that too, but I think if you want to use an appliance, a mixer would be better than a blender, but that's not important right now.

Step 2: stir in sawdust

Put in sawdust a little bit at a time and stir. Keep adding more and keep stirring until it starts getting a little hard to stir. You don't want liquid and paint to be left over. If you see the color and it's off, you can add more paint, but you don't want to if you don't have to. If you do, make sure you mix it all in throughly.

Step 3: spread it out flat and let it dry

Spread the gloop out on a cookie sheet fairly thinly. It'll probably look something like this:

...and it will be wet and sticky so be careful what you touch. Once you've done that, you want to put it in a warm dry place and let it dry out. Lately, it's been a little rainy around here so I instead have opted to put it in the oven. If you do that, you don't want it very hot. The warm setting should do the job. You could even go as high as 200 degrees, but you don't want it to be too hot. This is wood, after all. Either way, oven or sitting out, let it dry out.

Step 4: Put the dry mixture in another container and get ready to strain

If it's all been done correctly, the gloop, as it dried, should have broken apart into its constituent particles. It should all come apart easily. If it dries as hard pieces, toss it aside and start again, though I've yet to have this happen.


Take your strainer and strain out the big bits. Keep them for rocks and big bits or toss them. Either way, you should end up with something like this:


This is a fairly coarse flock that, while not the quality of professional flock, looks pretty decently like grass. The tea leaf ball is better than the strainer so when you're left with just the coarse flock, use the tea ball to strain the coarse flock and you'll end up with this:


It feels really soft and fuzzy. There's a lot of this finer stuff in with the coarse flock, but I don't have the need or the patience to get it all out. You, however, can get all you want.

And that's it! Thus far, in three days, I've made two batches, one green and one yellow (which looks a little like dead grass), and have just pulled a third out of the oven for straining tomorrow.


And there's a lot of it! Of course, the "big cost" is the tools, but some of these you probably have around the house. I bought everything and I have made these three batches for less than the cost of two bags at a store. Now that I have everything, the only real cost is more paint and that big $2 bottle should make around 15 batches. That's a crap load of flock. In fact, when I'm done flocking my minis, I'm going to flock my hills and some of my other terrain, but that is a story for another article...