The frame is made/built up with wires: green ones from out a floristic shop.
The wires I use for HO trees are 0,6 mm for making the branches and 1,2 mm for the ‘core’ of the tree: I use a wire that is almost twice thicker as the wires I use to make the branches . It will gave the trunk more strength when twisting the thin wires around it…
For N scale trees: 0,4 mm diameter wires( branches), for the core: 0,7 mm diam.
The trunk is made by twisting tight some wires around the bottom of the thick(core) wire. On the tree I made I used almost 3 wires ( 12 inches long each)before making the loops for the first bottombranches.
The branches are made by twisting large loops (a litlle bit larger than one inch) .When making a large loop twist the wire at least 5 times very tight around the corewire and than again make a large loop.( if the wire is still long enough to do so!
Continue till the top of the core wire
Of course, because we try to make a fir tree, the loops can be made smaller to the top…
If done so it could look like this:
I added some drops of cheap superglue on the twisted wires all over the trunk…It makes it a lot easier when bending the branches= cutted wires from the loops in the right shape…
When the armature was “shaped” I primered it with sprayprimer. Painting can be done as well.
I used a technique somewhat similar to yours using braided wire and florists wires. The beauty in these is that you can really pile up the number of trees in a hurry… I’d like see more of your trees though.
Simply amazing. Thanks for the excellent tutorial. Think I will give that a try, all I need is the fish tank stuff and that isn’t expensive or hard to get.
Grove Den. Great teaching! I have a question about the filter material. What is it exactly? Is it the type that’s bunched up and placed in a fish tank filter? Is it blue originally or did you paint it blue to get a Spruce like effect? Thanks. I’m going to give your trees a try!
I don’t know exactly if they "are put in/placed in " fish tankfilters…but they can be bought in aquariumshops etc( they HAVE to know what kind of stuff this is! [:-^])
The fibers I used on that tree are blue . but I found some colored fibers for floristdecoration"things" …
The blue filterfibers are more tough than the colored ones. I prefer the colored ones…they are less tough( thin?) and easy to cut and also “heavy” enough to fall over the sprayglued frame!
there is also a kind of filterfiber that is even more thin/smaller than the colored ones but not that thin as cookerhoodfilters: I use these light green thin filterparts to N scale or very detailed HO trees and to imm. dead small branches…
Of course I have to color/spray the blue and light green fibers first before adding the leaves!
Here are some pictures of the stuff I can get overhere…
Thanks very much, Jos! Your trees look fantastic! Now I (we all) have a better idea of what specific materials to look for. I used to have aquariums as a kid so that helps to recognize products. By the way, I’m of Dutch descent myself. My Grandfather and Great Uncle were cigar makers in Amsterdam before immigrating to the U.S. Cheers, Capt. G.
