Cut Stumps

Stumps of felled trees

A stump is a detail that can give a scene a story faster than anything else. A wood looks the same after a hundred years as after ten, but a row of stumps along a rutted track says at once that logging went on here recently and that somebody drove through. That is precisely why stumps suit scenes that seem to have nothing to do with forestry, from military dioramas to suburban settings.

Number of pieces in the package

The package holds 14 pieces. The shapes differ from one another, so the stumps can be placed side by side without the repetition catching the eye. For one clearing of ordinary size that is more than enough, and the rest can be scattered over the remaining area of the scene, where individual pieces look even better than a continuous row.

Where stumps belong

• A fresh clearing where new growth has not yet had time to come up.
• The edge of a forest track widened at the expense of the trees.
• The bank of a watercourse, where timber is usually felled first.
• Ground being prepared for building, still surrounded by standing wood.

Credibility rests on two small things. The first is height: stumps should not be leveled into one plane, because a logger cuts where it suits him. The second is the surroundings; around every cut there are chips, bark and trampled soil left behind, so it pays to bury the foot in foliage and add a few offcuts. Stumps can be painted according to the kind of wood, with a fresh cut markedly lighter than the sides exposed to the weather.