I'm going to be using real tree sticks and bark(with white mold stuff on it) to give my scenery and more rustic look. Has anyone done this before? I'll being using woodland scenic water and I've read that you should preserve the wood to prevent rot. I've read that epoxy resin helps in that. I've had them in the freezer for awhile to kill off any bugs but now I read that may cause mold once I take it out.Any advice on how to handle using real wood would be great.
The "white mold stuff" is probably a fungus. Frseezing may kill it, but maybe not. It's natural niche is breaking down wood, so it's likely to find an environment that helps it grow unless your layout room air stays very dry.
Sounds like you want to embed at least some of the wood in "water." Just make sure it's dry and if it's encased in any of them popular products and it'll be fine with no further treatment.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
The old trick was spray anything from trees or plants with hairspray to seal them. There might be a commercial sealer designed specifically for the job. I was lazy and didn’t seal any trigs or parts of bushes I used but after several years I haven’t had any problems except that some of the fine parts of a bush I used for trees in winter without leaves have broken off after become brittle. The twigs I have used as tree trunks have not had any problems. I live in the desert so the humidity is usually low so things don’t get moldy. There are not many insects which might want to eat them either.
I was lucky enough to find some unidentifiable brush branches in my backyard that makes (near) perfect logs for my logging flats.
So, I do use "real tree sticks" I guess, but for loads, not scenery.
But I'm not agin it. Might try it sometime. I do have a little spot in mind.
Ed
The latest What's Neat video from Ken Patterson starts with chopping up leaves to use as scenery material. He is uncharacteristically messy as he chops the leaves with water in a blender and dumps them on a screen before cooking them in an oven at 200 F.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Interesting this post and an article in the current issue of MR. Chunks of bark were being used for outcroppings back in the 50s!
I use twigs from some local bushes (no clue as to the species) and clippings from garden plants and flowers to create trees for the layout...
There's some info HERE on how I made some of those trees.
Wayne
Wayne,
Nice shots as always......I'm interested in the color of the deep water in the last two pic's. Not so much the texture.....just how You achieved the color. Looks to be a Grey/Blue in the pic'. Would You mind elaborating on that a bit? You can send Me a PM if You would. I'm usually pretty good at making up match colors, but having a hard time with making one like Yours for My river scene. Could be My eyes, I have Glucoma and shades of color just aren't the same anymore to Me.
Didn't mean to hi-jack thread......
Thanks..
Frank
Just a reminder that if there is a concern about importing "living things" (flora or fauna) into your home with tree bark or sticks, freezing is not necessarily going to kill them; after all, we have plants and insects each spring after a harsh winter. Some time in a microwave is more likely to kill off any invaders.
BTW, I would be reluctant to introduce any form of mold into my home/basement.
Dave Nelson
The best use I ever saw of natural twigs and stuff was on a club layout up in Wenatchee. They had found a weed thingy that looked exactly like a dead fir tree. Which is pretty neat. And when some lucky volunteers applied green stuff on that armature, it looked exactly like a live fir tree. Even neater!
As a consequence, they had whole hillsides of exquisite forests. I am recalling hundreds of trees, here.
I could NOT pry details out of the host.
7j43k...They had found a weed thingy that looked exactly like a dead fir tree. Which is pretty neat. And when some lucky volunteers applied green stuff on that armature, it looked exactly like a live fir tree....
Ed, I'm certainly not claiming that these are great-looking cedar trees, but they are at least intended to represent cedars...
If I recall correctly, they're the flowers from a Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii). Some hairspray and some sprinkled-on ground foam.
zstripe...I'm interested in the color of the deep water in the last two pic's. Not so much the texture.....just how You achieved the color. Looks to be a Grey/Blue in the pic'. Would You mind elaborating on that a bit?....
Thanks for the kind words, Frank.
Here are a couple of pictures which better show the colour of the water, this one of the same river, but slightly upstream of the earlier photo...
...and a different river, but the same paint....
...and that river from above...
The same colour was used here, too....
...and while the lighting is similar in all photos, the camera angle and the surrounding scenery does seem to affect the appearance of the colour...
I don't usually tinker with the camera's settings, as, in most cases, it's a point-and-shoot, but the photo directly above appears to have a different camera setting (and a shaky hand holding the camera ).
I used the same paint for some of the background, too, as on this coved corner of the room, where the low hills in the background is simply a piece of 1/8" Masonite painted that colour, with a little ground foam sprinkled onto the wet paint, then misted with some grey primer from a spray can. Once dry, the Masonite was manually curved to match the curve of the wall, then slipped into a gap between the modelled terrain and the wall...
...and on some white sheet foam (cushion material, I think - I painted it with the same paint using a brush - a miserable job) used for a background tree line. It has a little polyfibre stretched over it and a sprinkling of ground foam...
The conifers here, in the foreground, are the bottlebrush-type trees as used in miniature Christmas scenes, with some added ground foam, but those in the background are also sheet foam (white, and in a shape similar to an egg carton - pointy bumps and pointy depressions in a regular pattern). I used a 2" brush to paint the foam with the dark grey-green paint, then sprinkled on some ground foam....
I think that the use of the same colours (the basic "dirt" colour used on the plaster-on-screen landforms is the same as used to muddy the rivers) helps to bring the different aspects of the scenery to a sort of common base, then highlights, added using various colours of ground foam, create the appearance of diversity.
The paint is Glidden Interior Flat Latex, from Home Depot. I don't have the colour sample, but the can shows it to be a "deep base", and the specifics of the tints are:
Colorant OZ 48 96
AX FE?? Yellow 1 32 0B LAMP BLACK 5 38 0D THALO GREEN 1 46 0
The two ?s in the yellow may be RM, but there's some paint spilled on the label there, and it's difficult to make out. Also on the mix label on the top of the can is the notation: 30GG 10/050 (METROPOLIS) DEEP (35109) GALLONMETROPOLIS may be the name of the colour, but the paint, still useable, is quite a few years old. I can send you a swatch of the colour on a white card, if you think it could be useful to get a match mixed at wherever you buy your paint. If that's of interest, send me a PM with your mailing address.
Thanks for the come-back. The color I would like to try and achieve, is the one in the 3rd pic'. I can see that lighting will make a differance in what the color will look like, I'm experiencing that now.....My blue looks too blue in the light and black with the layout with the building and other structure lights on, which is ok....but I think it would look better with one of Your colors. It's for a deep water river scene, where one end of layout connects to the larger part in the other room through the wall, which will eventually be mountainous. An area that I have put off for many yrs. completing. It was functional though for the double track mainline...just never finished the scenery.
Do You still have the same E-mail address? Mine is the same. I'll just send You a PM with My address.
Thanks alot!
Take Care!
BTW: The Blue in the pic' is sprayed on 1/16'' poster board with clear embossed Acetate called ''still water'' that I found from a MFG. in Spain. The water is removable. Not glued down yet!