I use the husks of Mexican husk tomatoes (tomatillos) and sawdust to make Boston Ivy vines on the sides of buildings. Here is what I do (see pictures below).
1. I have friends who grow these tomatoes on their farm. After harvesting most of the tomatoes there are many husks with heir intricate web-like matrixes left on the ground. They let me collect some.
2. I boil them in water and glycerin, adding fabric dye for colour, in this case green.
3. I cut out a section of the matrix and glue it to the wall(s) of interest. Here I am adding the matrix to a wall of an N scale house scratch-built from coffee stir sticks and a shale roof. The shale is from the shores of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.
4. Then I add bits of sawdust for leaves and the Boston Ivy is complete. I dye my own sawdust, in this case with green fabric dye in boiling water.
No offense intended, but wouldn't all of these posts be better viewed in a personally maintained blog or website?
Do you have a link?
- Douglas
Doughless No offense intended, but wouldn't all of these posts be better viewed in a personally maintained blog or website?
I model seven days a week, two of them full modelling days. Thus, my productivity is very high. I also have a very large collection of Model Railroader magazines (and others) to fuel my imagination.
The Forum has hosted extensive build threads like this before, and someone always raises concerns about their appropriateness. The answer is, if it's about railroad modeling, it's on topic, and if you don't like threads like this, don't read the OP's threads.
--Steven Otte, Model Railroader senior associate editorsotte@kalmbach.com
Ivy is actually damaging to your wall, be it brick or wood. The roots or maybe they are suckers want to corkscrew into everything. That said, you might want a more run down look to the house.
The tomatillo web reminds me very much of a sea fan, from my scuba diving days. Real ivy is more branching than spider web - like. An xacto blade would take care of that.
It's a novel use of a product most of us would not think of, I see no problem with this thread.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
That's certainly been my approach in the myriad of threads started by the OP. When I see his name as the OP, I just avoid them.
I certainly think they are about model railroading. I only asked in this particular thread because I was simply thinking that when someone starts 5 threads and 90% of the responses are from the OP, I was just curious if Kalmbach felt like they were hosting a blog for free.
Thanks for graciously answering my queston, and I'll move on as usual.
BigDaddy Ivy is actually damaging to your wall, be it brick or wood. The roots or maybe they are suckers want to corkscrew into everything. That said, you might want a more run down look to the house. The tomatillo web reminds me very much of a sea fan, from my scuba diving days. Real ivy is more branching than spider web - like. An xacto blade would take care of that.
Now these are very thoughtful and constructive comments. I will follow this advice on future houses! Cheers.
Doughless That's certainly been my approach in the myriad of threads started by the OP. When I see his name as the OP, I just avoid them. I certainly think they are about model railroading. I only asked in this particular thread because I was simply thinking that when someone starts 5 threads and 90% of the responses are from the OP, I was just curious if Kalmbach felt like they were hosting a blog for free. Thanks for graciously answering my queston, and I'll move on as usual.
As a retailer who strongly supports Kalmbach publications, and I am the librarian of our extensive collection of Kalmbach publications, we will respond to your comments soon.