Tree glue

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

What type of glue do you use for trees ? I’ve tried white glue and spray glue (3M etc) and find that alot of the clump foliage has fallen off the next day. Thanks, Marty

2

Marty,

Try Hob-e-Tac (sp?). When it dries, it becomes VERY tacky. Paint your tree armitures with it and let it dry completely. (Completely = clear in color) If you don’t, the ground foam will just soak up the Hob-e-Tac and fall off the tree. You should be able to find it at your LHS.

Tom

3

I use contact cement.

4

I use the cheapest el-cheapo hairspray.

5

I’ve been using Hob-e-tac and things seem to work well. Here’s what I do:

  1. Apply Hob-e-tac to tree

  2. Allow to dry so there is no white color (approx 15-30 minutes)

  3. Roll tree in pile of foilage

  4. Allow to sit till next time I can get to my train room

  5. Mist with cheap pump hair spray (If I don’t do #4, then when I spray the hairspray I seem to have many clumps of the foilage fall off due to either the force of the mist or the weight of the liquid. If I do #4 it seems that extra time gives the Hob-e-tac extra time to be more sticky.)

  6. Sprinkle on Woodland Scenics fine turf (various colors)

  7. Mist again with hair spray

  8. Allow to dry

  9. If I am making a larger tree, I found that I need the foilage to be clumped even more, I’ll spray the tree with a can of sticky-spray (don’t know what it is called), and then I’ll roll in pile of foilage again. This method seems to be good for beefing it up.

Randy

6

Here are some more (and better) pictures of my almost completed trees - I still need to add some coloring. But first, let me clarify a couple of things in my prior post:

  1. In step 6 when I mention the sprinkling of fine turf…the foilage which gets attached to the tree initially is all one color. I’ll sprinkly on a variety of the fine turf colors, greens and browns, to help the tree look that much more real. In the below images, all of the trees except one (and it is noted) are waiting for their covering of the fine turf.

  2. In step 9 when I mention ‘sticky-spray’…it comes in an aerosol can and is used for general craft projects. You spray it on whatever material, paper, cardboard, and it sprays a wet/sticky material that can be attached right away.

Here are the photos. I use a cardboard box as my work area and a convenient place to put the trees.

The big tree in the right of the following shot is one which I sprayed the sticy-spray with and added more foilage. It did a good job of beefing up the greenery on the branches.

Below are some of the smaller one I made. Not all of these trees, once on my layout, will be this tall. I make the trunks longer than needed because it makes placing the trees easier - when attaching them to the layout I push the trunk deep into my ‘ground’ and glue it in place.

This large tree has a sprinkling of the fine turf (earth blend if I rec

7

Randy, those look really good. What do you use for your tree trunks? They look like trimmings from a bush. Are there particular types that are especially good?

Thanks

8

Thank you. Marty

9

Right before this past Christmas I was at Old Time Pottery with the wife getting Christmas decoration stuff and I found this broom. Taking a close look at it I realized it would make good tree trunks. It is made of natural things - bush, grass, or roots I am not sure. But I clip off small sections that look like it would work good and go with it. The downside is these ‘trunks’ tend to be flat (meaning that…like, if you were to take a 3D thing and squash it in a book). Sometimes I can bend parts to make it 3D again, other times (for bigger trees) I superglue additional branches.

Here is a closeup.

All in all they I am very happy…the colors are natural (because the product is natural!).

Randy