I am about to change part of my layout to a ski mountain. Below treee line there are a great amount of Evergreens.
Anyone know an issue in MR that deals with a large amount of trees?
Any trees you can suggest thar are reasonable priced?
Any ideas on making your own.
I have made some by using ferns on tapered wood but this time I will need a lot.
Thanks in Advance
Harold
Harold:
You might want to consider making furnace filter trees. Google “Furnace Filter Trees” and you will get several hits including some YouTube links that will illustrate the process for you.
Joe
Also cadpia trees…more time consuming, but more realistic than furnace filter trees. In my humble opinion.
Micro Mark used to have them in large quantities, unfortunately the best I see in the latest catalog I have is 24 for around $24 for 4" to 6" trees. They also have materials to make your own. I have a pair of pliers similar to what they offer, but I haven’t mastered them, so prefer to use a cup hook in my drill, clamped to my workbench. I use floral wire and baler twine. I think using their bristles might make better looking better trees. They say a $14.65 bundle will make hundreds of trees. Floral wire is available at most craft stores if you don’t want to purchase theirs. Even if you botch a few trees as you go along, trees near treeline are often pretty scraggly and weatherbeaten. Once my trees are twisted, I trim them to a clonical shape, spray with green paint (my twine is mostly yellow, not sure the color of their bristles) and shake on some fine turf. If you want to add more turf, you can respray with hair spray and sprinkle on more turf. Probably a shot of hair spray on the finished trees would help hold foam in place, whether you had added any more or not.
Have fun,
Richard
What type of evergreen trees??
Firs and certain other pines have the classic x mas shape, cedars look a lot different, Ponderosa, Sugar pine and the larger firs such as white fir are different… Redwoods and northern varieties of pines different again…
The wire armature method works well for the x-mas shape…there are a variety of methods for this…
The Ponderosas and other types are more problematic…the bare trunk at the bottom is a large enough percentage of the tree that it has to be modeled correctly for the tree to look right. The foliage is thin enough that you can see the trunk all the way up the tree…
I just made 100 of these trees and the trunks drove me crazy. I used the furnace filter method with some tweaks…I decided that they make good medium distance trees and I will still have to build a few like the ones in Byron’s post for the foreground…
Google the following:
Ken Larson - His article in the Sept (?) 2006 RMC on Ponderosa pines is excellent.
Paul Scoles has a large number of big trees on his layout as well.
Joe Fugate and Charlie Comstock also have big trees on their layouts…Joe has some tutorials on the subject…There is a thread over on the MRH forum on furnace filter trees as well…
Tom Beaton is also known for his trees.
I would decide how thick the forest will be. If you go dense you can get away with less good looking trees in the background with a few keepers up front…
Good luck with the project,
Guy
Hi Harold,
I can suggest a MR article. Check out the November 2012 issue on page 33, “How to make tree covered hills; Tips for making quick and inexpensive trees for any scale” by Brooks Stover. He shows you how to make both background and foreground trees and then blend them together to make it look realistic.
There is also this for pay download.
http://www.kalmbachstore.com/mrpdf011.html
And as already mentioned, hit up youtube. There are a lot of videos dealing with trees. Look esp. for Joe Fugate.
Keep us updated with some pics
Derek
Check the eBay HO scale listings. There are some Chinese companies that offer fairly good deals on trees in quantity.
This is my HO Ski & Skate hilltop resort. The ski lift and skating pond are animated commercial products from Walthers. I used HO size figures for skiers and skaters, that are actually in motion. I used Scenic Express Super Trees without foliage, to represent Winter season. Evergreen trees can be purchased in large quantities, quite reasonably priced, from walthers. For quantities of evergreen trees on a narrow ridge, I cut a zig-zag pattern from a sheet of black packing sponge. Paint it various shades of green and layer it on the op of the ridge. It makes an appearance of a deep canopy of trees, that is actually only 1"deep. Click on photo to enlarge it. Bob Hahn
Good question about the type of trees. I have not got a clue. The new scene will be in Northern New Mexico but the mountain is a take off of Mt Hood Oregon. As my layout is not a winter layout I picked Mt Hood as they ski all year. The new mountain will now go where the picture of the red mountain was until the afternoon when it was removed. The bottom half will be the trees and the top half will be above tree line with a lodge and ski lift going another third up. The mountain will extend up to the curve you see at the top.
The mountain will cover the two upper tracks to form a tunnel. My Layout is HO but I am thinking of doing the scene in N scale to create a forced prosective. I did this with the building you see on the other mountain. Any ideas are greatly welcome.
http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd51/Hwolf_photos/2012%20Wolfcreek/IMG_2709.jpg
http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd51/Hwolf_photos/2012%20Wolfcreek/IMG_2724.jpg
Harold
For trunks I put dowels in the drill and held a piece of really course sand paper around them with a leather glove and eye protection on. I ended up with these for trunks. I think using balsa for trunks is something I will investigate for my next batch.
These are my first effort. They are furnace filter trees made quite quickly. Practice gets them better, so these will go in behind as filler eventually. The dead tree in the foreground is various sizes of wire twisted in the drill and then I dipped the whole thing in a bucket of Plaster Of Paris. Painted it and sprinkled ground foam on it.
Check out Agro Trees
For masses of fair looking commercial trees, I use this Busch 100-countpine tree assortment. It’s out of stock at the big W, but also on sale for ~$36. They get more in regularly, probably just the sale took 'em all right now.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/189-6499
You can see them against the backdrop and mixed in with some Heki trees I also use.
Depending on the size you need, you can get up to 6" ones from Architrees for cheap and they look nice. I personally use them for background trees but they could go forground on most peoples layouts (my forground are modified Senitare, a long defunct company).
I “rolled my own” from wire and twine as descfribed by “cowman” above, for my old East Texas piney woods layout. My results:
and during dismantling…
I lucked out at a train show I picked up 70 or so trees for $5
For background trees, I would suggest large “bumpy chanelle” cut into pieces or “bottle brush” type trees.
You can make trees by trimming actual bottle brushes, but the cost of the brushes might be prohibitive.
To make a “bottle brush” type tree you take a piece of stiff wire about four times as long as the tree is to be tall. Then cut up some twine into lengths at least as long as the tree is to be wide. Fold the wire in half and clamp the open end into a large vice. For the next part you are going to need a drill and a hook that can be inserted into the chuck. Put the hook into the chuck and loop the hook throught the end of the wire. Put twine between into the loop formed by the wire. The amount of twine inserted will determing how “full” the tree is. Turn on the drill and twist the wire around the twine so that it tightly holds the twine in place. Once the twine is secured, unhook the drill and remove the loop of wire from the vice. Trim to shape and paint the tree.
To make it easier to hold the twine in place before twisting and to make the tree more durable, consider coating half of the length of wire with superglue before placing the twine.
The trees can be finished with paint and ground foam.
Good luck with the trees.
