How to Make Durable Trees

 

 

 

In past posts I’ve mentioned that one of my goals was to remake all my jungle terrain. They look decent, but I cut a lot of corners when making them so there’s a lot of room for improvement. One of the things that could be improved was the trees I used.

You can see an example of the type of trees I used in the picture above (right above the BTRs turret). Just cheap plastic trees purchased off eBay, they hardly even look like trees and seeing them triggers me immensely. So step one of remaking the jungle terrain will be to make trees that actually look like trees, but not just any trees, these will be invincible trees. Wargaming gear gets jostled around and handled a lot so I need these trees to be robust and durable.

First, I got some seafoam, or Aristata Teloxys, these are commonly used for tree making by model railroad and diorama folks. What they often do is just flock the seafoam, which produces good looking results, but it’s not durable, so I’ll not be using that method.

Instead what I’ll be doing is trimming off bits of the seafoam and using contact glue to attach them to the trunk and branches of some tree armatures. Many people make tree armatures by twisting wires together and coating them in plaster, but I’m too lazy for that so I just bought some from Woodland Scenics.

Once that’s done, I water down some liquid latex and dip the tree into the mix. This would coat the entire tree in a thin layer of rubber, making it a bit more firm and sturdy. I’ll let the trees dry a bit and dip them once more into the solution, just to make it a bit more tough.

When pulling the tree out of the liquid latex, it’s important to blow out any bubbles that may form between the branches or seafoam to prevent cobwebbing.

Once that’s dry I spray paint the entire tree in various brown colors.

Now I can start flocking. Using spray can matte varnish as the adhesive, I start dumping coarse foam flock onto the branches. Using matte varnish as the adhesive adds another layer of protection to the most vulnerable part of the tree, the flocking.

Once the tree is fully covered by the coarse flock, I take a brighter green fine flock and sprinkle it onto the top of the tree. This adds highlights and recreates the effect of the top layer of leaves having more chlorophyll due to being more exposed to the sun. Once the fine flock is done I spray the entire thing with another layer of matte varnish.

Almost finished, I now need to just hit the trees with 2 or 3 layers of watered down PVA glue for that final layer of protection. I used a pressure sprayer instead of a squirt bottle because I have so many trees to do.

(I’m also using the same technique to make some pine trees)

Once the PVA glue drys, all that’s left to do is to actually base the trees. Otherwise, these guys are now done. On top of looking good, they’re hard as a rock and incredibly durable. I’ve whacked them against a table and chucked them at the floor and I barely lose a few specks of flock.

These were really fun to make, I really enjoy the arts and crafts aspect of this hobby. I should have more trees than I’ll ever need but who knows, I may make some more. Until next time!