I realize that there have been several Posts and Scenery books dealing with various techniques for the construction of deciduous trees. When it comes to construction of 400-500 HO scale trees, one has to be cost conscious and in need of a speedy way to make realistic deciduous trees. I stress the word realistic because most of the techniques that I have seen, produce a forest of uniform globs of green. Most scenery books suggest that one construct glue covered armatures for branches, upon which to sprinkle on (or dip into), finely ground, green foam. Although it is quite expensive, I purchased two bags of Woodland Scenic's dark green, and two bags of medium green spongy foam globs. At first, I was going to follow their instructions of dipping glue covered branch armatures into the bags of foam globs. Then, (by chance), I discovered that I had six used furnace filters that had not been discarded. I sprayed the blue fibers with a flat black paint, and after the paint had dried, I cut the filters into various width strips, (that are slightly smaller than the various desired diameters of the tree foliage. I then cut the strips into rough circles.(1) The wonderful thing about circles of furnace filters is that the filters are layered. A single circle can easily be separated into fairly stiff 1/16in. thick circles (2), that can be pushed onto the sharpened end of wooden meat skewer tree trunks.(3) The tree trunks are constructed of wooden meat skewers, that have been cut in half. I sharpened the non-pointed half length end with a pencil sharpener. I then poured dark oak stain into a paint roller trough, into which I then dumped the half length meat skewers, for a quick mass staining job. The stained skewers were spread on a wire screen to dry.(4) The dried skewers were then pressed into pre-drilled holes in a three inch thick waste strip of Styrofoam packing material. The idea is to have a solid holder, such that the circle of furnace filter, for the lowest foliage will be at the desired height of the tree trunk. (5) Apply a large drop of glue to the bottom of the green foam glob. Press the foam glob so that it overlaps the outer edge of the filter circle. The leaves on real trees are concentrated only on the outer edges of the branches. Glue more globs of varied colored foam,to the filter circle to roughly complete the circle.(6) Leaves on real trees are located randomly, for maximum exposure to sunlight, (and are, therefore, not tightly packed.) Press on another circle of filter fibers, and repeat the process twice more. I then used a wire cutter to nip off the remaining part of the skewer. Finally, one can glue a glob of foam to the top of the nipped off trunk. The resulting model forest should then be very realistic, when the trunks of the various size trees are glued into randomly spaced pre-drilled holes, in the stained forest terrain, covered with the usual shrubs and dead tree branches.(7) Step by step, numbered pictures pictures will follow,this weekend. Bob
Bob- I was sitting here at work trying to follow your steps, but I work in a police dept and I kept getting interupted by people who thought their problems were more important than my desire to leanr your technique! Darn 'em!
Anyway, it sounds like a good process, is there any way you could get a picture of a tree or the forest when you are finished and let me see these? I figure things out much better if I can actually get a look. Oh, just read the pictures will be posted when available---nevermind. I'll be looking forward to seeing them.
I have a few old filters laying around, so I might re-read your post and just tear in to it, just to see what comes out.
Thanks.
Sounds like an interesting twist on traditional furnace filter trees.
The only thing I would suggest is to use new furnace filters so you're not dealing with whatever dirt, mold, etc has been pulled out of the air. They are cheap and you can get quite a few trees our of one. I've seen just the "guts" of filters someplace but I can't remember where.
Rick
I have another economical way of making trees. All that is required is hemp rope, bailing wire, a vice, a pair of dikes, an electric drill, a pair of scissors, green spray paint, hair spray, and Woodland Scenics blended turf. I made 120 trees in less than 2 days with this technique.
First of all, from a spool of bailing wire, cut the wire in 6" to 8" lengths and bend them in half. Next, take a piece of hemp rope (I used 1/4" rope) and with the hobby knife, cut it up into sections of 3/4" to 1". Unravel the cut sections of rope into clumps of small individual fibers.
Take the wire that has been bent in half and secure the ends in the vise. Start feeding the small strands of hemp rope between the two wire halves until there are enough fibers to fill in between the two wire halfs. Chuck the other end of the wire in an electric drill and then give it a whirl until all the short rope fibers are pinched into place by the wire twists. (It will resemble a crudely made bottle brush.)
Release the tree from the electric drill chuck and from the vise. Nip off the ends of the wire at both ends of the tree with the pair of dikes, and take the scissors and trim the tree of any long or out of place hemp fibers.
Once the tree is twisted into shape and trimmed, spray paint it dark or medium green and let the paint dry. Once the paint is dry, saturate the tree with hair spray and roll it in Woodland Scenics blended turf and plant it on the layout. Once you get the hang of it, you can produce a tree in under 3 minutes a piece.....chuck
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
That's just a variation of the "Aggro Tree" which has been around for years. Still very time consuming if your making 500 trees. An even quicker way is to just glue clumps of lichen on the end of pre-stained skeewers and toothpicks. Then spray with spray glue and add your leaf material. They don't turn out all uniform like polly fiber trees.