I’m one of the last guys you’ll unusually find endorsing any product, but I’m so impressed by this one that I think it worth passing on my opinion.
As many of you may have noticed from recent ads in MR and elsewhere, MRC is marketing the line of JTT Trees. Most of you have seen examples of my own scenery work here, so will appreciate that when it comes to scenery matters, I pretty well know what I’m taking about. The JTT ads and their packaging carry the slogan “Only Mother Nature makes better trees.” With that I will concur, at least with regard to the hobby’s other affordable examples.
JTT is listing an impressively broad range of tree types and sizes, together with some done in realistic autumnal hues. The trees are available either RTR, or as kits. But for the price, the RTR is probably the best choice considering the amount of work it must go into making each individual tree.
Below is a photo of the trees (the foilage is really darker than it appears here) I received today. In close-ups like this you can see some evidence of the complex wire armatures employed, but from a normal viewing distance the trees appear smooth and are outstandingly realistic looking in my opinion. If you are interested in realism for the foreground trees on your layout, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend that you look into this product.
I posed the question about a month ago concerning the JTT trees. I went ahead and purchased one of the Beech trees and I have to agree, it looks great. While doing a forest of them would be a little costly, for the foreground scene I was doing it was exactly what I needed. Now if they would only do some Cottonwoods…
As an example of how mileage varies, I recently received a set of birch trees from them (as part of their free sample promotion), and I was disappointed - the bark color was not at all what I was looking for. Overall not a bad tree, but I don’t think won’t be picking up any more.
I gather that you anticipated receiving “white birch”, or one of the other types of birches with white trunks. There are also several members of the birch family that have cinnamon-colored, or darker, bark. This is apparently the type represented by JTT’s birch trees.
Need to look what they have on line. Ones that you posted the pictures of look pretty good, one on the right looks like the trunk is twisted with the wire. That I do not like. what kind of money are we talking anyway?
Have any of you looked at the Bachmann tress? I have 10 or so and they look good.
I did. I live and model New England, where the vast majority of our birch trees have the white/silver trunks. I’m no arborist, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a non-white birch.
I was certainly hoping their trees would fit the bill for me, but sadly that’s not the case. I’m not disposing of them, but I think I can come up with a pretty similar armature from the Supertrees materials for a lot less money.
As I said, mileage varies. Were they only silver birch…
They run about $12.50 for a box of three. I just picked up a set yesterday at my LHS. I think they look fantastic and will be using them alot around my small shelf layout.
I think they are great. I have a couple dozen of them on my shelf layout as foreground trees. I have the pines and redwoods, but I especially like the oak trees.
A couple of things:
There is some significant color variation between the batches of trees I bought in 2007 and the ones I bought in 2009. So, next to each other as I increased the “density” of my forest, the trunks and foliage don’t match well.
They are hard to mount, as they don’t have a good base, they are impossible (maybe?) to cut the trunk. So, I don’t know of any way to “pin” mount them. I get out the power drill and have to ream out the hole for the larger trunks. Very messy, and the trunks stick way down below the layout … hope I missed all of those wires … anyone have a better way to mount them? If you have a couple of inches of foam you are probably OK, but I have a plywood base.
JTT’s “Wire Foliage Branches” are I think reasonably priced for the volume you get and are a distinctive product that others do not offer in the same form. I need a think underbrush of saplings and sumac and these will be perfect. In common with some other JTT products they are marked “Made in Vietnam” by the way.
