I’ve made lots of trees for my HO layout, both conifers and deciduous, but I am stumped on how to make inexpensive Weeping Willows for along side my river and swamp areas. I use mainly weeds, twigs and lichen for my present trees and bushes.
Anyone have any ideas? Photos would help too.
Here’s some of the trees I’ve made with weeds.
Great question up_santafe! only hopefully I can apply it to N scale. Seems growing up we always had a weeping willow in the back yard. Hope to see some ideas.
http://www.discounttrainsonline.com/Noch-Trees-Weeping-Willow-11cm-High/item528-21770.html
That seems to be the only company that has weeping willows commercially available. Personally I don’t think they resemble any weeping willow I have seen (a dreadfully messy tree at that). It seems that it would be a difficult tree to model. You would have to get that flowing in the breeze look along with the small leaves. I sure it can be done and if you can figure it out, let us know.[:)]
Smitty
I’ve never done it myself, but knowing the tree…basically the leaves grow along branches too weak to support their weight. Those branches seem to grow in clumps close to the ends of their support branches.
So I would think if you could find an interesting tree (the wider the better) and paint it a light grey (or better, a white wash)…
Use light tan string, dip it in glue (but leave a little undipped at the end), drag it through some finely ground foam (I’d use lighter colors, there is typically a lot of dead stuff hanging on in there), then glue your scenicked string in clumps to the ends of the bigger branches, glueing the dipped end so that you’ve got some bare string hanging down to give it that wispy look (you would probably trim this to taste later). Might want to flip the whole thing upside down when you’re done and glue in some extra foam to the bottom side of the string where it meets the branch, if you look at any weeping willow you can see those branches trying to point up but the weight of their leaves pulls them down, resulting in an almost umbrella-like appearance to the whole thing…the extra padding underneath your clumps should help give your branches that realistic spring.
I wish I had the materials to do this right now, I’d go home and try it out and post pics so we can all see if it works. I’m just using my head and to me it seems like this method would produce a decent looking tree…
The trick is to use foam or flecks that are fine enough so you can kinda see through, the tree linked doesn’t look that realistic, it would probably have turned out better if their leaf material hadn’t been as coarse or dense. I’m thinking something as fine as a coarse, colored sand would be just about right.
This was just on the Yahoo Scenery forum. It is for a larger scale but the principle could be applied to smaller scales:
Hope that helps
Harold
I think actionplant nailed it, looks like that is what the link that hminky gave.
Good idea, I wonder if it would work in N scale?
That’s my problem. It’s is such a beautiful and unussual tree, and none of these models even come close. I am still looking. I hope someone can figure it out. Where is John Allen when we need him?
I thought that was a dreadlock tree! [:D]
I had the same thought.
green “silly string” might work
Yeah, really [:)]
I don’t like it; it’s WAY too sparce to be a willow. My family’s fam got something like 25 weeping willows on it, and most of them have leaves and branches that extend all the way to the ground. The Noch willow looks much better, and I’ve thought about picking up a few (being an Illinois modeler, I don’t need that many).
If I were to scratchbuild one, I think I’d start with a basic wire armature, and cover it with Durham’s Water Putty. Once the basic trunk was sculpted and painted, I’d use hay rope, frayed to it’s individual strands, to create the basic leafing branch network. I’d then soak the twine in a dilute white glue solution, and add Noch or Woodland Scenics bright green static grass to represent the long, thin leaves.
Of course, I probably read an article somewhere which described this whole process!
If you can’t find fine enough thread, use brownish hair, Human is pretty fine, but horse mane or tail hair is ideal. dip or spray glue and sparingly add really fine ground foam bits until you are satisfied with the look, then glue it to the tree form and let droop naturally!
I seemed to recall a magazine that had an article on this recently, but when I looked in the magazine index this is all I could find:
Trees: from Aspen to Weeping Willow
Scenery for Model Railroads, Dioramas and Miniatures page 79
( SCENERY, “SCHLEICHER, ROBERT”, SCRATCHBUILD, TREE, WOODLANDSCENICS, CONSTRUCTION )
Don’t have need of one. Don’t want one but I had a thought. One of the fiber optic strand lights may be the trick. If you could find one at a garage sale or a broken one at a mall it could be the basis of the branches since they seem to have a crown and then hang down. Just a thought.
I did a follow up using just the word “willow.” Not having access to any of the cited articles, I’m not sure if any of the willows are weeping willows, but would think that the ones on the riverbank would be. They sure were in the Southern Tier of NY.
Simple Scenery: Willows For the Riverbanks
Model Railroading, May/June 1986 page 41
( RIVER, SCENERY, TREE, WILLOW, MRG )
Riverbank Willows, in Color
Model Railroading, October 1988 page 11
( RIVER, SCENERY, TREE, WILLOW, MRG )
Trees that grow, part IV: elm and willow
Railmodel Journal, November 1999 page 34
And part V: cherry, cottonwood, oak and sycamore from Noch, Scenic Express
( ELM, SCENERY, “SCHLEICHER, ROBERT”, SCRATCHBUILD, TREE, WILLOW, CONSTRUCTION, RMJ )
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
I haven’t modelled a willow tree yet but I have done some passable elms. I think that the idea of using a wire armature would be a good starting point and it would help to have real tree or a photo of one to help get the shape right. It’s not necessary to model all of the branches, just enough to get the upper shape of the tree. Then use Woodland Scenics poly-fiber, stretched extremely thin (probably several pieces are best - one piece might look a little too uniform). Use this to form the shape of the crown of the tree and then pull some of the strands down towards the ground. If needed, add more poly-fiber to fill in the area where the stuff is hanging near the ground. It’s important to not make this area too dense. Spray the whole thing with cheap extra-hold hairspray from a pump applicator and sprinkle on some appropriately coloured ground foam - I think that coarse light green would probably look good. You can re-apply hairspray and foam to “plump up” the crown of the tree but I think that the dangling strands near the bottom should be kept rather sparse. This is pretty much the technique that I use for the elm trees, although I use a weed armature and medium and light green coarse foam. The dangling branches, although fewer than on a willow, look quite convincing. Hope this is of some assistance.
I made an HO scale willow a few years ago using twisted wire-looks quite good. Use plenty of the thinnest wire you can get (brass wire out of phone flex works well)Remember to cut it longer than for a ‘normal’ tree to allow the branches to hang almost to the ground. You can twist a thicker piece of wire into the trunk to ‘plant’ it on your layout.Leave enough wire at the bottom to twist into rootsand cover branches with fine foam.
Good luck
Phil.
Yeah, I found all those too, but eliminated them because they weren’t weeping willows. Willows in the general sense are basically the bushes that grow all along any waterway. We have them in the irrigation ditch behind the house.
Walking through my local craft shop the other week, I spotted a most unusual item, and it inspired me. My wife was putting together a floral arrangement for something or other (if it’s not about model trains, I tend not to pay much attention when we’re in the craft store) and I saw this huge, six-foot branch marked a ‘UVA Branch’. It resembles a huge feather and has a bamboo-like base. She saw something cool to have in a tall vase in the corner of a room…I saw hundreds of willow trees. So we bouth two, one for her, one for me to dismantle and make into HO scale willow trees. It took a few tries to get the technique down, but you basically take a straight twig, make sure it’s the proper color, then coat the top 1/3 of it in some fast-drying craft glue. Working from the top, you stick each twig onto your trunk, slightly turning it after each placement. This way you can quickly decide just how think you want your willow. That’s all there is to it. Oh, one last thing, something I discovered after making a few…make sure to paint your branches before you build your trees, otherwise you’ll have some very interesting trees in the most delightful day-glo colors.