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| Well, I've decided to hijack Adam's corner
this week, so I've got the old boy nicely bound and gagged. It wasn't
an easy task, mind you, what with him having an extra 20 or so kilos on
me, but it's the only way I could put in my two cents' worth. |
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No doubt by now you'll have seen a few photos
of the layout showing the trees we've thus far made. At the AMRA
show this year, I took an opportunity (one of very few made available
to me by the ever-wandering Adam - I still believe he was trying
to impersonate David Copperfield) to have a chat to Brian Hutchison
from Trackside Trees. |
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| At an AMRA show a couple of years ago, I
must've rolled in glue because I was stuck to his stand for a couple of
hours learning how to make trees. I want to thank Brian for allowing me
to share the techniques that make Trackside Trees so realistic. |
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What you'll need:
- Welding cable
- Sidecutters or scissors
- Solder & Soldering Iron
(large trees)
- Selly's "No More Gaps"
- Water
- 2 Paintbrushes & pallettes
- Acrylic paints
- Heki Micro Fleur in the
colours of your choice
- Polystyrene or block of
wood with pegs screwed in
Let's get started…
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We use welding cable to make the armature for
the trees, this you can pick up from BOC or the like. Welding cable
is particularly useful for this exercise, as once you strip the
housing, you are left with a bunch of very thin, uncoated copper
wires. The amount of wire you use will depend on the size of tree
you want. |
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| When you work out what height you want your
trees to be, allow an extra couple of inches on the wire you cut. Eg,
if you want a tree to be 6 inches tall, cut your wire to 8 inches (for
weeping willows, allow an extra third of the height). Remember, once you've
started, you can always trim the wire to make it shorter, but you can't
stretch it to make it longer. As for the number of strands, you'll have
to judge that by eye, as it'll depend on the thickness of the trunk you
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| want to have. The first step is to take the wire
and start twisting it from the base, working your way upwards. Once
you are happy with the height of your main trunk, split the bunch
of wire into two. You can either split it evenly, or make one thicker
and one skinnier, depending on whether you want your tree reasonably
symmetrical or a bit lopsided. |
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Twist one bunch around the other one or two times
to stabilise the split. As you go along, you need to keep splitting
the branches in this same manner until you have only 3 or 4 (maximum
5) strands left per branch. Twist these a few times, and leave the
excess wire separated. |
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| If you're doing a gum tree, once you've done the
entire armature, use side cutters or scissors to trim the separated
excess wire to around half an inch in length. If you are doing any
other type of trees (eg. bottle tree, weeping willow, oak etc) leave
the excess wire to help form a base for the greenery, or in the
case of the willow, to form the hanging branches. |
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At this point, if you are doing a large tree,
you will need to melt some solder into the armature to give it more
stability, otherwise you will find your tree will end up sagging.
You can do the same for smaller trees, but I find it's not really
necessary, and only slows down the process. |
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Once you've completed the wire armature, you need
to anchor the tree so that you can work hands free. I use either
polystyrene or a block of wood with some pegs screwed in to stand
the tree in.
The next thing to do is to try and make this wire contraption resemble
a tree. |
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Squirt some Selly's No More Gaps out onto
a palette (my version of a paint palette is a plastic throw away plate
or cup) and add a little bit of water to it. You don't want it too runny
(unless you wish to use one thousand and forty seven coats to get the
job done) - about the texture of slightly melted peanut butter is great.
Using a paintbrush, apply the watered down Selly's to the entire armature.
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I cover it from top to bottom, including the
separated branch tips, as I find that the paint adheres to the Selly's
better than just the wire itself. If you want to fatten the tree
up (especially if doing bottle trees etc) you can add another coat
after about an hour, otherwise let the armature dry for a day before
painting. |
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| The best paints I've found for this job are the
tubes of Kaiser or Chromacryl paints that you can buy for around
$2 or $3 per tube from a cheapie store like Crazy Clarks. But any
acrylic paints will do the job. The colours to stock up on are black,
white, and various greys, browns, tans, offwhites and greens. |
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When painting, I squirt a little of each colour
out (I use about 3 or 4 colours per tree, and choose the colours
by the end result I wish to have
- eg for gums I'd use light tan, white, grey
and black or dark brown). I like to still see a distinction in the
colours on the trunk, so when I "mix" the colours, I only do a couple
of swirls with the |
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| brush between all colours (this I find especially
effective on. However, you can mix them to your own liking. |
When applying paint to the tree, I ensure I don't
lose the distinction in the colours by doing as few strokes of the
brush as possible to cover the white No More Gaps.
This is an especially useful technique for gum trees. If you wish
to obtain a more uniform colour with less variation, you can mix
the paint more, but be weary of mixing it up too much as it will
look too bland. |
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Once the paint is dry, we can start adding the
foliage. I use Heki Flor
# 1550 (light green) for gum trees as it is very close to the
real thing.
There are also other colours available that are suitable for Queensland:
# 1551 Middle Green
# 1552 Dark Green
# 1553 Pine Green
# 1554 Spring Green
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The Heki Flor foliage is the most realistic that
I have found, as they are two-tone, meaning the hairs that hold
the Flor together are darker than the main colour. This creates
a beautiful realistic effect on the completed tree.
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To create your foliage, dab the branches with
PVA glue before applying the Flor.
I apply the foliage in small patches for the gum trees, however
when doing other types of trees you can also use one big patch of
the Flor to cover the entire canopy in one go. |
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| Once the foliage is dry, you can sprinkle a bit
of fine burnt grass material over the existing foliage, and set
it in place with a bit of cheap hairspray. Best to do this outside,
otherwise the fumes are quite nauseating. |
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| When doing weeping willows, coat the long
single strands of wire with PVA, then use the left over bits that have
fallen off the Flor to create the effect of long branches with leaves.
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And there you have it. A beautiful, realistic
tree to plant on your layout.
I guess I'd better release the old boy now.
Then again, the house is a lot quieter this way.....
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