Making Trees

[77railer]

Well Gang,

I finally took my first swing at making trees. The end result didnt turn out to bad for my first attempt. I used a whisk broom from Michaels and some adhesive spray from wal-mart, as well as some home made ground foam. Hope to get some pictures posted this afternoon. Just wanted to share a little of what I have done.


77Railer

 

[77railer]

Pictures

Well here is a few pics of the trees...can yall give me your opinion/suggestions. A friend stopped by to steal the show...that steamer is such a camera hog,lol.


77Railer

 

[sds888]

They look good to me but what do I know my father use to make the trees for me. Oh and thanks 77 for replying to my upstate question it is good to know someone is a least somewhere around.
Stephen

 

[ezdays]

Nice looking tree, thanks for sharing how you did them.

 

[CBCNSfan]

Hi Railer, pretty nifty tree. One look at my layout and you'll see I could use a lot of them. Can you give us a few particulars on how it was made and the materials you used.

Willis

 

[77railer]

Not a problem this is what I did. Got the nexessary supplies from Michaels and Wal-mart also used a product called BranchBunches from ScaleTree.com which is on sale right now for 2.70 it says that a bag will make 8 or 9 trees but the trees they make are freakin huge...pics below...those trees are big big big....Im figuring a tree the size of my first one...which in my opinion looks more to scale...should be able to get 30-40 out of a bag easy. Anyway...you pull off a small almount...real small and pull it apart till its about to fall apart then you drap it over the dried broom twig..(dont know what its called) and spray it with adhesive...then sprinkle ground foam on it. Thats pretty much it...maybe over the weekend I can do a step by step.


77Railer

Gotta give props to scaletree.com they were one of our sponsors on the mayewood project...great bunch of guys.

 

[77railer]

Just read on their site they are going out of business if you want some you should get it
77Railer

 

[Tileguy]

Great trees, there are times for those large beasties and times for the other.
Huge differance between the amount of time and detail work spent for a front of the layout piece (or compliment to a particular building scene) and the Tree line in the back.

A trick for that back tree line of course is to make a dozen trees like your first and then just add the tree trunks (and a stump or 2)mixed in amongst them to make a forest.

 

[zedob]

I made some trees out of weed roots. Not all roots are created equal, but there are some that are very convincing. they even look like they have bark on them.

The ones I used were from some weed found in LA. I haven't checked out the ones in New England.

I simply pulled them out of the ground after a rain, rinsed them off and let them dry. They dried to a convincing tree trunk brownish gray. I added WS's turf mesh stuff and sprayed it down with cheap hairspray and then sprinkled on ground foam.

If you form and pin the root down while it's still wet it will dry that way.

 

[77railer]

Thanks...I may have to try that...also wanting to get my hands on some crape myrtle
77Railer

 

[MasonJar]

The ScaleTree looks great! Trees in real life are often huge, but for some reason (probably space restrictions and selective compression ) we don't often model them full scale on our layouts.

Their website actually says they are going into hibernation, so maybe they'll be back in the spring? Seems kind of funny since winter seems to be the real modelling season...?

Andrew

 

[77railer]

They are closing scaletree to venture out into another business that they hope will allow them to re open scale tree at a later date...way in the future. Sure gonna miss those guys...and the trees.

77Railer

 

[Tileguy]

Tomato plants have some good roots when dried up. pull them in the spring or very late fall. Convincing stumps for the larger gauges. Nice for trees with roots crawling over rock ledges etc

 

[Pitchwife]

Just read on their site they are going out of business if you want some you should get it
77Railer

Thanks for the heads up. Just went there an almost cleaned them out. :thumb: :thumb:

 

[77railer]

I looked across the street and my next door neighbor has tons and tons and tons of crape myrtle trees/bushes...she said I could have all I want...took four clippings gonna make a tree this weekend with one and see how it turns out...should be about the same but with thicker branches.

77Railer