After a lot of frustrating trial and error I think I finally got some bark on the tree to be planted outside of Vickis Veggies that looks more-or-less like bark.
The trick seemed to be to coat the armature with generous dollops of Golden Molding Paste and use a fairly stiff, 1/2" wide paint brush to shape the glop into a bark-like mass. In earlier attempts I was far too stingy with the paste, and didn't have enough on the wire to shape or properly cover up the under structure.
I also lengthened the support wire that will root the tree in the layout. The short stubby thing wasn't going to properly support the massive tree above. I took 3 lengths of 18 gauge wire and then wire wrapped them to the original root, followed by a generous application of white glue to help hold the whole thing together.
So, now it's onto painting and foliage. The end is in sight!
Years ago, I followed an RMC article about creating trees from cudweed. Was it Lester Jordan? He had me treating my weed/trunks with a putty called Liquid Steel which came in a tube and was dark gray. I can't find this product online now, although some items come up with the same name. I didn't like the bushy tops of the dried cudweed and just used the tree structure without the tops, adding other Woodland Scenics foliage instead. The liquid steel also allowed me to mold some roots, better if it was done after planting on the layout. Les Jordan's layout was set in autumn and his bushy-headed cudweed trees looked stylized, though acceptable. Once in a while, I see published photos with what appears to be cudweed trees, although they're usually mixed in with other makes.
ReplyDeleteI do seem to recall Liquid Steel from a long time ago, but like yourself I haven't seen it in years. Although, now I'm on alert for it. I don't know what cudweed is. It might have some other name here. I'll have to see if I can find that RMC article.
DeleteIt was in an autumn issue of RMC, Les Jordan, author, I think. Probably after 1982 but still in the 80s. Not to be confused with goldenrod, cudweed has a thistle-like top to it but a wonderful, but thin, structure. Les collected his in the fall, bound them together and spackled on Liquid Steel. He kept his thistle-bushy tops and that became his foliage. He made it look good but I preferred the Woodland Scenics foliage.
DeleteThanks for the followup information. I'll have a look for the article.
DeleteOk, I found it!
Delete“Cudweed deciduous trees”, Les Jordan Jr., RMC, Oct ’79,
and in the same issue, “Trees of Autumn”, also by Mr. Jordan.
Then in the February 1982 issue there’s this Les Jordan article, “Sawdust bushes”. That’s all I could find for him in the 1980s.
And this being 30Squares while I was looking for the above I stumbled across “Toward a model railroading aesthetic” by Conrad J. Obregon in the Dec ’81 issue. Although I previously mentioned the article here:
Deletehttps://30squaresofontario.blogspot.com/2020/11/full-observation.html
I should re-read it in light of:
https://30squaresofontario.blogspot.com/2023/12/book-talk.html
Cudweed has provided great trees for my N scale work. I drill a bunch of holes and start planting them with a little Elmers. As I go, I use WS foliage spread thin to create underbrush along with many downed branches. After that's initially done (or partially done), I start weaving in foliage from the top and bring it down with a pointy wire (like the end of a darning needle), anything to push it precisely where I want it. After it's roughly in place, I bend down to "scale height" and adjust it to wherever it looks correct. I don't think I've ever applied glue at this stage; the thin trunks are close together and hold everything in place.
ReplyDeleteI remember when someone bought the wooded land next to my parents' house and chopped down every tree. I asked why they couldn't have kept any of them as it looked so bare now? Turns out that when trees grow so close, they stay quite thin and their support is the trees around them. By themselves, they're too thin to stand alone. My model forests are supporting like that.
Variety is still necessary on our layouts, so I included trees of other construction methods like stranded picture-wire trees and bumpy chenille pine trees. In HO scale, I also made bottle brush pines.
The cudweed could look really good as winter trees, too, in groups. They don't really spread out wide branches, though. The picture-wire trees are good at that.
That sounds like a very good follow up article to Jordan's. I'm wondering if the old Liquid Steel is today's J. B. Weld, or a product made by that brand. I was using some J. B. Weld epoxy yesterday and it seemed to remind me of that old product, or maybe my mind was just primed to look for a similarity :-)
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