Hello I am fairly new to model railroading. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to make supertrees and what are the best materials to use such as the adhesive and painting and so forth. Thanks.
To make a super tree, you need a plain mild-mannered tree. He goes into a telephone booth (remember when they had telephone booths?) He put on a red cape with a “T” on it, and flies out the door… SUPER-TREE, with abilities far exceeding mortal trees… Look, upin the sky… “It’s a Bird”… “It’s a Plane”… It’s SUPER-TREE!
OK, LION must settle for a plain mortal-tree, this one is pure Woodland Scenics, armature and netting.
These were built by the LION himself. Him went out into the backyard (our back yard is three square miles) found some vegitation that looked like ti might make nice trees, and stretched Woodland Scenics foiliage nets over them.
No adhesives or anything. The shrubs are lumps of Woodland Scenics foiliage clumps.
Occaionally these foilages must be replaced. So what’s the matter with that?
ROAR
I usually don’t bother to treat the Supertree material with matte medium or anthing else prior to use. For largter trees, I use gel CA and accelerator to add pieces of the Supertrees to sagebrush or other armatures. I spray the finished assembly with dark gray primer from the home center.
I then use either extra-thick hairspray or 3M Super 77 spray adhesive to secure leaves. You can use whatever foam you like. For HO, I prefer to use coarse foam for leaf texture most of the time.
This tree uses Scenic Express Spring Green coarse foam. I filled spaces between the larger foam chunks with fine Woodland Scenics Green Blend. I used several applications of hairspray as I went to ensure everything stayed in place.
These smaller trees were mostly made the same way, although some dispense with the sagebrush and are simply Supertree material by itself.
Tony Koester had an article a couple issues of MR ago on building Supertrees quickly. It’s worth a look.
Welcome to the forums.
Are you aware that Super Trees are a product that you buy. They are natural plant materials that you use for tree armatures. They are sold by Scenic Express. I think Walthers carries them, some hobby shops have them or you can order directly from Scenic Express. If you do not have much scenic material, I understand they have a Starter Kit with most of what you need to make them into nice trees. If you already have scenic material (ground foam and the like) they have some bulk packs as well as smaller packs. You might want to try a small pack, then if you have a lot of trees to make go for a bigger pack.
There are a number of online videos on working with the super tree materials.
Good luck,
Richard
I plan to use some Scenic Express Supertree materials but have not arrived at that point on my layout. I’ve saved some prior threads (in Favorites on the right) and am particularly interested in the straightening process, perhaps using the steam method shown in one of the replies in the first thread below:
They make great deciduos trees. Hair spray or spay glue work, but the spray glue is a bigger mess.
Any ground foam will work. The key is to vary the colors.
My favorite is to use leaf material, either by Noch or Woodland Scenics. It make a more realistic tree.
The idea of gluing supertrees on the ends of a good sagebrush armature makes agreat HO Oak tree. It takes a long time. A few out front makes a dramatic scene.
I tend to use them right out of the box with either foam or Noch leaves.
Thanks for the reply. I have purchased the starter kit, I am just a little confused on which method to use to make the trees. It seems there are multiple ways to do them and everyone uses a different method. They all look great though.
As long the method you choose results in something that looks like a tree, you did it right.
I just made up two boxes of super trees last weekend and this was my method…
seperated the pieces into piles of straight and crooked ( mostly crooked )
used the steam method of straightening the crooks and it worked as well as the dangling from a line while drying method and a whole lot faster.
planted my bare trees in leftover styrofoam and hit them with a shot of gray primer / brown camo paint from a spray can let that dry a bit.
then dunked then in matte medium for a few seconds and promptly applied leaf material. coarse turf as well as some of the new super leaves that I picked up. Both turned out looking like a tree so I was pleased.
replanted them into stryo to dry a bit …then hit them with a spray of scenic cement ( some use hairspray ) to lock everything down and let them dry overnight.
It took me about 6 hours or so to do two boxes over the weekend.
The sage tree armatures turn out real neat looking trees, just take a little patience to get the branches glued on …zap kicker helps alot with CA.
Enjoy…
Bart
There are a few different ways to do them and alot of them work fine but I have found out that the best way to finish them is to spray with cheap hairspray when finished, works much better than a matt medium spray, and you would think it would be the other way around. I think it is because the hairspray is lighter during the crutial application phase.