First trees - Colorado Pines

The last couple of days I have made some trees. The five 10" trees probably took a total of 4 hours, maybe less. They are from a kit some by Sweetwater Scenery from Casper WY - possibly out of business. In addition to very good directions, the kit provided five trunks - nicely detailed tapered wooded dowels painted like bark with a nail inserted in the bottom to mount in scenery. Also provided a block of coarse filter material (like a furnace filter) and a bag of fine ground foam.

You pull apart the filter material into small shapes from 2" do 3/4". Important to keep pulling until the fabric is very thin. Then each tree gets 15 to 18 pieces pushed down onto the trunk sequentially and glued in place. Once dry, you trim the odd pieces and stuff that sticks out too much with scissors. Then the fun.

Spray the tree with extra strong non-scent hairspray from below and above. Then lightly sprinkle the ground foam onto the "branches". A final setting spray of hair-spray and Wa-La - a tree.

These will go behind my station although they came out so well I may move them elsewhere. We will see. Have to wait a little - after looking at the Goose Barn on the layout, I have decided that it needs more weathering. In 1950 the color photos show the barn pretty beat up with lots of rust and very thin paint. Once that is done it is on to weed and tree planting to complete the scene.