I like what I've seen resulting from the furnace filter method, but I haven't screwed up my courage to try it yet. I'm now doing structures, and thinking about the topographical parts of scenery. Trees can wait a bit.
azrailNo one makes a good Ponderosa Pine..which is the most common conifer in the drier parts of the American West.
-Matt
Returning to model railroading after 40 years and taking unconscionable liberties with the SP&S, Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads in the '40s and '50s.
No one makes a good Ponderosa Pine..which is the most common conifer in the drier parts of the American West.
The furance filter on a stick method is the preferred one at my club. Mine come out terrible, oh well.
Might I suggest that for those 120' trees you will also need to decide how fat a dowel to use. A six foot diameter tree calls for a 3/4 inch dowel. You might be able to step dowels up and then taper using spckeling compound.
Make sure you don't fall into the toxicodendron diversilobum!
The trouble with real materials is they don't last except for dead fall. Had a great many of them. Even super trees have their issues over time but are fixable as long as they are not glued in.
More and more great tree examples. Thanks guys. That last video, the bark on that balsa wood trunk is amazing when the guy adds the weathing paint highlights. Honestly it looked exactly like Douglas fir bark. As for the foliage, I really like the look of branches made with the asparagus fern leaves.
I had no idea there were so many good methods out there for making really authentic looking trees.
I've always really enjoyed Luke Towan's tutorials. He's this likable Australian guy that keeps his videos moving so you don't get bored.
This is my favorite tree one of his.
https://youtu.be/TGlTTOuTGBc
HO trees. It may be a bit more of a challenge but I think it would be doable with a visor for N.
Actually this is the one I was originally looking for. I hadn't seen the first one I posted yet
https://youtu.be/Hztif1KoJ-g
For N scale I would think you could skip the step of adding the bigger trunk.
TF
That's hilarious Peter. Dumpster Diving eh?
Reminds me of when I was at this 4th of July Carnival during the day down from where we live. There was this freaky tree that I could not identify but the bark looked like miniature fine detailed cliff rock. I was picking the bark off with my fingernails and loading up my pockets.
All of a sudden I noticed people were stopping and looking at me with this dumbfounded look. Kind of like when a dog turns his head sideways looking at you in confusion. It was only then I realized how ridiculous and crazy I must have looked. The only thing left at that point was the two guys in their white suits to come and take me away. It got even better as a few hours later my hands broke out into a rash as I was allergic to whatever that tree was.
I've been meaning to put some gloves on and go back down there with my pocket knife sometime when no one is around
Man those trees that Rodney Fry made look like they're actually growing. That sure sparked up my interest and I wonder if he or somebody else has a tutorial on those?
ndbprrtrunk out of balsa or some other wood tapered and drilled holes for branches which he made from asparagus fern
Sounds similar to Joel Bragdon's Finescale Forest Trees. Built some trees with his fern-like material in the early 90s, think I used balsa for the trunks. Makes for some good looking trees, fun, but time consuming. After a year or so the branch material began drying out and curling, bringing them back to life required misting with a glycerine/denatured alcohol mix.
Trees made by Rodney Frey with Bragdon materials on his 'Little Logging Railroad' HO layout. Photo by Rodney Frey
TF, funny how the model railroad mind works. Seeing cake trees at a retirement luncheon had me suddenly thinking about how to fix them up for use on the layout. After the luncheon a co-worker thought I was nuts when he caught me 'garbage can diving' for the little trees.
Regards, Peter
Best trees I ever saw were by a master Modeler in the 1950s named Jack Work. He made the trunk out of balsa or some other wood tapered and drilled holes for branches which he made from asparagus fern. Incredibly beautiful. He lived in Vancouver and modeled the tall trees in that area
crossthedog @Mr Beasley, at my very first swap meet ever, last fall, someone was selling bags of quality trees for cheap, and I took note but didn't buy them because I was focusing on other things (turnouts, Tortoises, particular locos, etc.). I've been to two subsequent swap meets and didn't see any trees for sale. I'm hoping they'll come round again. rrebell On a side note I have an address for the trees from the Philippines, don't know if it is still valid. By all means, let me know what that address is. Worth looking into. And your spackle method seems like a good one to try, though I also think the scraped wood would look pretty good. @Selector, the example of the large tree you posted looks really good. Thanks. Helpful to see how people's experiments turned out.
@Mr Beasley, at my very first swap meet ever, last fall, someone was selling bags of quality trees for cheap, and I took note but didn't buy them because I was focusing on other things (turnouts, Tortoises, particular locos, etc.). I've been to two subsequent swap meets and didn't see any trees for sale. I'm hoping they'll come round again.
rrebell On a side note I have an address for the trees from the Philippines, don't know if it is still valid.
By all means, let me know what that address is. Worth looking into. And your spackle method seems like a good one to try, though I also think the scraped wood would look pretty good.
@Selector, the example of the large tree you posted looks really good. Thanks. Helpful to see how people's experiments turned out.
San Miguel, Bani
Pangasinan, Philippines
Got this from one order that was drop shipped.
crossthedog @Fiddler, wow! For trees that started out as cake decorations, those finished conifers look stunning! Nice!
@Fiddler, wow! For trees that started out as cake decorations, those finished conifers look stunning! Nice!
I have made what I call up front trees. I start with a cedar shingle, then split them into long strips, round them off a bit with a wood rasp.
Then take fine tooth saw blade and run it up & down to make vertical groves. Then stain them o a color I like. For the branches I use Aspergrass fern treated with glycerin, water & green dye. Soak the fern in this mixture for a week or longer. This will preserve the fern.
I then drill holes into the cedar trunk, then glue the fern into the holes.
lots of work but it makes a very nice tree, not for back ground use, up front where you can see it.
trainnut1250You can reach me by googling "tule fog music guitar" and following the contact link there.
Thanks all for so many good ideas and links to good ideas. I hope I responded to everyone, but if I didn't, thank you for contributing your experience... I do read every reply, and I consider things seriously even if I don't get back to everyone.
[And I'm sure most of you don't care a FARThing whether I respond or not, you're just happy to be of service and share the modeling love. That's why you guys rock.]
Good morning
Nice thread Matt. Making trees is a great pastime and there sure is a lot of informative information here. I especially like the video you provided of that Tree Guru making trees out of floral wire loops and static grass. I'm gonna have to try that out sometime.
Some impressive examples of trees modeled here gentleman
What an exquisite layout is all I have to say Guy. I enjoyed looking at your site and you are quite the Craftsman.
I got a bag of cake trees once and saw potential.
Quite toy like but wanted to try to make use of them.
Cut layers for different tree heights.
Deformed them with a heat gun and took out a snip here and there and strung them on dowels.
Painted the trunks raw umber with another near color. Took a flat forest green spray paint directed to the undersides and an olive drab to the top. Then flocked them with two different colors of fine ground foam while the paint was still tacky.
They look better from a normal view then a close up but here's a close-up anyway.
Well, ...They're trees and they're free. They turned out pretty decent from what was there to work with. If the trunks get buried all the way I think they'll look like a spruce. Not real happy with the top looking nubs but found some floral stuff. I think one can snip the nub off, drill a hole and glue this small foliage in the top for a better look before paint and flock. Haven't tried that yet as it's on the back burner.
Somehow acquired a whole box of these cake trees so there shouldn't be any shortage of spruce trees on the layout. I'll probably learn to share some.
Matt,
You can reach me by googling "tule fog music guitar" and following the contact link there.
Guy
see stuff at: the Willoughby Line Site
trainnut1250Matt - (and anyone else) if you want more info on the trees and a copy of the article I mentioned send me a private message (presuming that function still works).
Thanks for the kind words about the layout...
Wayne - there has been more work completed since the video was shot but it gives a good representation of where I am at. I finished the Groveland engine house and the Yard at Willoughby was a pandemic project that is pretty much done as well.
Matt - (and anyone else) if you want more info on the trees and a copy of the article I mentioned send me a private message (presuming that function still works)...
That's a great looking layout that you have, Guy, and it's far more extensive than I had originally imagined. Very nicely-done.
Wayne
@Guy, your trees are amazing, and yes, I know how tall the conifers grow in the northwest and that's why I've been disappointed to see the manufatured ones topping out at 8 inches. I keep seeing references to this furnace filter method so I will have to check it out. Thanks for the link to your video. Again, truly stunning work.
Quite impressive with the video and detail used.
Modeling the east, we have trees that are often far less tall and dense.
The species you chose for examples get really big as trees go. In HO these trees would be between one to two feet – (80-150 feet) depending on the tree species. Most of the bottle brush/spin the wires into an armature methods wont work. These trees really don’t look like the typical X mas tree shapes common to high elevations in Ca or Colorado either.
You really have a couple of options – one is to buy them – check out Canyon Creek (pricey but nice) the other is to make them. Making these trees is not super difficult but it is time consuming – I speak from experience having made over 100 big trees for my layout.
I would suggest that you search out “Furnace filter” trees on Youtube. There is a great article by Ken Larson in RMC August 2006 and there are several tutorials by Luke Towan on making these types of trees.
You really have a couple of options fro construction - one is to build the armatures of branches by gluing fiber material to a trunk by skewering cutout rings or stars like a shish kabob and then hacking them back into realistic shapes – the other is to individually glue the branches to the trunk and build up the trees that way. I have done both methods and found that while the limb-by-limb method looks great – it is too time consuming to be practical in large numbers.
The other issues with these trees is that there is usually a large portion of the trunk visible at the bottom of the tree – necessitating modeling a convincing tree trunk – the Larson article has some great tips on that.
I could go on but I won’t - I hope I have given you some ideas….To see my work search out “Willoughby Line – TSG videos” to look at the trees on my layout – scroll to midway through the video to Mather.
Good luck with the project,
rrebellOn a side note I have an address for the trees from the Philippines, don't know if it is still valid.
On a side note I have an address for the trees from the Philippines, don't know if it is still valid.
selector I will echo rrebell's post. He must recall the aggro-tree technique posted by aggrojones (miss him) in 2005, probably some time after the mid-summer. He took cut-out disks of the turquoise natural fiber furnace filters that were being sold widely across N. America by Wally's, teased apart thinner disks from those, and skewered them on the larger kabob skewers or on thin tapered wooden dowels. I believe Joe Fugate contributed to that discussion and advised using a razor saw to run up and down the side of the 'armature' to make it look like bark. He even suggested taking individual strands of the fiber and gluing them into the armature, pre-drilled with a pin-vise-type hand drill, to simulate the bare drooping lower branches found on many conifers. Then, spray the disks carefully with 3M Product 77 or whatever the number is, sprinkle on some smallish flocking or fine ground foam, then overspray with cheapo hair spray to fix it all in place. Oh, the armatures had to be stained first....before any disks and sprays. An example I made in 2006 is the large tree rising from the low ground at right:
I will echo rrebell's post. He must recall the aggro-tree technique posted by aggrojones (miss him) in 2005, probably some time after the mid-summer. He took cut-out disks of the turquoise natural fiber furnace filters that were being sold widely across N. America by Wally's, teased apart thinner disks from those, and skewered them on the larger kabob skewers or on thin tapered wooden dowels. I believe Joe Fugate contributed to that discussion and advised using a razor saw to run up and down the side of the 'armature' to make it look like bark. He even suggested taking individual strands of the fiber and gluing them into the armature, pre-drilled with a pin-vise-type hand drill, to simulate the bare drooping lower branches found on many conifers.
Then, spray the disks carefully with 3M Product 77 or whatever the number is, sprinkle on some smallish flocking or fine ground foam, then overspray with cheapo hair spray to fix it all in place.
Oh, the armatures had to be stained first....before any disks and sprays.
An example I made in 2006 is the large tree rising from the low ground at right:
Every now and then, I'm at a train show and some dealer has a good price on conifers by Grand Central Gems. I pick up a few bags. I don't have large forests on my layout, so a few here and there look fine. I also spend my model RR time on structures and ground cover, so I prefer my trees ready-to-plant.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
FRRYKid, rrebell, thanks for the wreath idea and the Architrees idea. I'll follow up on those. And Robert, all good. Thanks for the links. Very helpful. However, I would think my spouting Latin would signal the exact opposite, that I had no clue what I was getting myself into.
Hey Matt-
I hope I did the right thing by sending that link . . . horse, here's the water . . . but then you tossed out some old Latin names and I figured you knew what you were getting into. I also have a need for a bunch of conifers. A whole bunch. I have a 17' by 5' mountainous peninsula that, at the moment, is pretty much bare rock and I don't want to cover it with hundreds of store-bought green tapered bottle brushes lined up like cloned soldiers standing guard duty.
I live in the heart of the Intermountain West, in the high desert of Wyoming, where all our trees have needles (with a few scattered beautiful groves of aspen here and there) and all our bushes have thorns and/or stiff scaley leaves. So I know what you're talking about.
Oh yeah . . . I model N Scale.
Good luck.
Robert
LINK to SNSR Blog