[:)]
Take a look at this!
A Google search “Making of HO tress” will give also good results.
Bruce, I have used twigs to make trees from before, but not any longer. They are brittle and harder to work with. One that where worth keeping have held up for around 5 years now with no problems.
On pine tress try a keyword search for Furnaces Filter Trees here on the site. I made around 65 of them and some came out pretty darn good.
Cuda Ken
For tall, straight pines the posts I have seen agree with furnace filters on skewers. Some posts have said bamboo skewers take stain differently than other wood types, might want to do a little experimenting.
Good luck,
I make pine trees from hemp rope and wire. You’ll need a few items to get started.
The first thing I do is get a piece of hemp rope and cut it into 1", 2" and 3" pieces and unravel it into the differently measured piles.
Next, I take some thin wire from a wire spool (welding or thin bailing wire works good,) measure it about a foot long, bend it in half and clamp the two ends into a vise at the bend in the wire.
Next, I’ll slide the different sizes of hemp rope from the shortest pieces toward the top of the tree to the longest in between the two sections of the wire that are protruding from the vise, and then chuck the wire into an electric drill and give it a good whirl. The wire, when twirled with the drill, will bind the hemp rope in between the pieces of wire (sort of like the way a bottle brush is made.)
The next to last steps are to trim and shape any stray pieces of hemp rope away from the tree with a pair of scissors, paint the entire tree with moss or hunter green rattle can paint , and wrap the wire at the bottom of the tree with masking tape to form a trunk. (Add some white glue around the masking tape so that it won’t unravel) and then paint the masking tape trunk with gray and tan paint.
The final step is to spray the tree branches with any brand of “super hold” hair spray, roll it in a bag of woodland scenics ground foam while the hairspray is still wet, (shake off the excess ground foam back into the bag) and plant it on the layout.
I can do about 10 trees an hour using this method…
this isn’t really a good picture, but most of the trees are the “bottle brush” type
Hi Bruce:
That’s exactly the reason, among other things. You can also attract creepy-crawly creatures with certain other natural materials. Most natural materials that you would use should be treated somehow to render them more permanent.
If you search on the handy-dandy Internet (invented by Nobel Prize winning, former V. P. of the USA, Al Gore, as everyone is already aware) you’ll find any number of sites for tree building, as well as vendors who will sell you an amazing rendering of a Southern Pine, if I remember correctly.
I forget exactly who it is, though. Sorry.
-Ed K
One of the reasons there is such an availablity of artificial products for scenery on a MRR pike is due to the fact that except for treated and sifted and heated dirt, natural things will disintigrate, deteriorate, crumble and loose their color after awhile. Nature sees to that for unliving things.
There are excellent tree making threads of all kinds available here if you do a search for them here on the forum’s search engine.
Thank you all very much for your helpful suggestions.
I was looking out of my window yesterday and thinking about tree models and saw all these varying sized twigs and small tree branches around my yard and thought that perhaps these may be ideal to use to make the Southern Pine tree models I need for my layout. You, know things like size and texture are already in place so why not use what nature has provided. But there must have been a reason why this is not a universally accepted method for modellers to use and you guys have told me why and offered some very helpful alternatives.
Thanks again, I do appreciate your help.
Bruce
You can use natural materials for making trees you just have to prepare them first. Once you get all of the armatures shaped as you want, then dip them in a mixture of 50% water/50% matte medium. Soak them for about 3 to five minutes each then shake them out over the ground, or if indoors, some newspapers. Hang them on a line strung up like a clothes line. Let them dry over night. If you want to straighten some of them out, clip a clothespin on the end of them also. You can tape or rubberband some weights onto the clothespin if needed. The matte medium will seal them and prevent decay. It also provides some stiffness to the armatures. Once they are dry you can color them and add your foliage.
CW C.
By the term ‘hemp rope’ would that be the same as vintage baler twine? I have handled both std twine & ‘green’ (no relation to the power movement) synthetic twine, & can see the benefits of both.
I’m hoping this is just a local confusion of terminology, if not, please instruct me as to what to look for.
I hope this doesn’t seem sarcastic, (as I proof read it, it seemed cold), but I really want to know if the local terms are compatible or totally different?)
Creek or Crick?
Pop or Soda?
Yeah, like one of those things, Dude…
Thanks!
Some Astilbe flowers make great tall thin pine trees. They need to be dried. Spay adhesive and static grass applied with an applicator gives the long leaf look.
These are not the Astilllbe but show the static grass look.
Here are the Astilbe without the Static Grass.
The 2 main ways to make conifers are the bottle brush method and the furnace filter method.
Both make excellent trees. Furnace Filter works best for Ponderosa/Lodge pole pine and similar looking trees. Bottle brush looks more like “christmas tree” style though I hate that description, because it is unfair. They look very very good, just a different type of Conifer.
Bottle brush has been described above. Sisel twine rope available at pretty much any hardware or home supplies place, some thing masking or floral tape, Floral wire, or if in bigger scale, I’ve heard electric fence wire works well.
You cut small sections of the rope (think Monty Python bit) and unravel them.
Take floral wire about 2.25 times the size of tree you want. Fold it in half.
Take a piece of tape slightly shorter than your folded in half wire. Place the indidivual sisel fibers on the tape in a manner you like. Then fix the tape in between the wire halves.
Place the 2 ends of the wire in a firmly clamped wooden block with a hole big enough to fit them. Bend 90 degrees.
Take a 1.5" or longer finish nail, bend it into a hook shape (could use actual hook) and chuck it into a power drill.
Hook the free end of the wire into the hook and use the drill to tightly twist the wire around.
Use scissors to cut to shape. Paint and flock.
Furnace filter trees are pretty simple. Take Bamboo skewer or other appropriately sized trunk. Stain.
rip up sections of the filter to appropriate size and shape…generally irregular circles work. make them thin as possible.
feed these bits of filter on to the skewer use some white glue to fix in place. Use as many as you like.
Trim up any errant bits of filter
Paint and flock as desired.
A 3rd method that was recently outlined in RMC for making Douglas Fir style trees is to use natural capsia moss that’s been painted and flocked. I’ve yet to try this met
hemp rope = siskel rope (the tan colored kind many of the boy scout troops use) not the “hemp” used for medicimal purposes in California . 
…chuck
Piinob is right about preserving natural materials. Matte medium seems to inhibit decay, and certainly prevents the brittleness. Keeping your train room at about 50% relative humidity also helps.
If you don’t want to use matte medium, glycerin is another option, but more expensive.