Realistic, N Scale Southern Pines

[Anonymous]

My recipe:

Cut furnace filter to shape.
Insert bamboo skewer (pre-painted grey) with a touch of white glue.
Mask trunk with a small piece of paper .
Spray filter material with cheap green paint.
Drop in box of ground foam (dark green or conifer color)
Shake well.
Insert into scrap piece of foam to dry.
Plant trees.

Don't know how much like Southern Yellow Pine the results will be. I'm planting a huge N scale forest and the white pines look a lot like the hemlock which look a lot like the spruce. I think only the N scale loggers can tell them apart.

Wayne

[Anonymous]

I think I need an easier way. I'll need hundreds of trees. Any other ideas?

[leighant]

I don't claim these to be realistic up close, but I like the general effect for creating a scene in the East Texas piney woods.

At the log reload.


I make individual "bottle brush" trees. I have a frame 18 inches long with an open space down the length of it.\, nail at one end to hold a piece of flexible aluminum wire. Cut up cheap binding twine into 2" or 3" lengths, coat several inches of wire with GOO, lay pieces of binding twine across the wire, supported by the frame. Then a second piece of wire goes on top of the strands. I use a hook inserted in a drill chuck to twist the wire into something like a "bottle brush" with turfts of twine sticking out at all angles.
Cut off top and bottom to length for tree, trim with scissors like cutting hair, but cutting a make irregular tree shapes. Spray twine portion but not trunk with spray adhesive and shake up in paper bag full of foliage colored ground foam. Voila, one sort of tree.



The trick to "sort-of" trees is that they are easy and cheap enough to make that you can make a LOT of them. In mass, they are not some bad.
Also, I cut some thin plywood pieces into shape of zigzag tree line, painted green, glued sticked to them, a little foliage material, some glued on ground foam and made a "tree line" in back of individual trees to create impression of a solid forest.

[Anonymous]

Anyone have experience making these? I'd greatly appreciate some help. Pictures would be great.