Removing foliage

[dknelson]

SouthPenn

Does anyone know a good way to remove the foliage and glue from Woodland Scenics ready made trees?

Thanks 

Repeated fairly light passes with a stiff wire brush (or failing that, an old tooth brush) should remove most of the glue and foliage; the WS armatures are strong enough to withstand that.  I'd brush the debris into a box for possible re-use.  The debris will tend to gunk up the wire brush unless  it too is brushed clean, perhaps with an old tooth brush.

Dave Nelson

[SouthPenn]

riogrande5761

I like the improvements you made.  Maybe another thing, while the foliage is off, paint the trunks with flat grayish dark brown to get rid of that glossy shiny look 

Thanks, I never gave painting the trunks any thought!

[riogrande5761]

I like the improvements you made.  Maybe another thing, while the foliage is off, paint the trunks with flat grayish dark brown to get rid of that glossy shiny look

[SouthPenn]

Thanks for your reply.

I usually make my trees from kits. But I haven't found armatures that are 8"- 9" tall. Trees grow very tall so I like to add a few to my layout. [ I have two trees on my lot that are twice as high as my two story house ~50' tall.] So I buy the ready made trees and modify them.

The trees out of the box look like they have giant green cotton balls just stuck on the ends of the braches:

So I redo them with multiple shades of green to something more pleasing to me:

Just for comparison:

Most of these large trees are not for the back round. Therefore they need to be a lot less dense.

I did soak them in water after removing the bulk of the cotton balls. It made the remaining green foliage easier to remove.

[doctorwayne]

I'm not personally familiar with those trees, but they don't look too bad in the photos I've seen.

I'm curious, though, why you'd want to remove the foliage...most ready-made trees can be improved by adding either more poly-fibre and ground foam or even by adding only more ground foam.
I use unscented hairspray in a pump-type spray dispenser for attaching the ground foam, although most of my trees are on twig or weed armatures.

These are the cheap bottle-brush style of conifers (accent on the "cone") used for Christmas scenes.  With a little random trimming and some ground foam, not too bad as cedar trees...

For pretty-well everything else, homemade with poly fibre and ground foam, on twigs or weeds...

If you really want to remove the foliage and glue, I'd suggest trying with just one tree, and let it soak for a while in a bucket of water.  If it floats, tie it to something heavy to keep it submerged, as the glue is likely water-based.  The foam should float to the top.

Wayne

 

[SouthPenn]

Does anyone know a good way to remove the foliage and glue from Woodland Scenics ready made trees?

Thanks