trees

Hi everyone,

Looking at ebay for various bits and have seen sellers offering tress what looks like good prices. I would like to hear from anybody who has successfully brought trees, (and lighting) from this source.

Regards

Colin

leave them alone unless you need a large wooded area and you could hide these among better trees.

Why bother when you can make them quite easily. The forum Index is loaded with help, from individual trees to whole forests.

Some of the cheap Chinese trees are not too bad if you are prepared to tease the branches out accordingly, repaint the trunks, add more fine foliage or give them a light spray of another colour/tone. As stated previously, they do make excellent fillers, but the trick is to mix the varying heights up, to give a far better natural look.

Cheers, Gary.

As Owen and Mikey said earlier, wehonest have (had?) some reasonable quality trees. I was particularly happy with the weeping willows I bought from them as they are one of the hardest trees to model convincingly (picture below).



Some other trees and many from other sources are really fairly crude but ideal for forests and woods. On a much earlier layout of mine I had a wooded area with the good quality trees at the front and various others hidden behind, including two bits of a plastic Christmas tree to plug 'holes' in the woods near the backscenes.

I had a bargain from 'Everydaygoodz' on Ebay last month.

20 trees listed as 1/72 scale military, train, trees. £9.95 for the 20 including P & P.

They arrived in 6 days securely packed in a cardboard box.
Good quality clump foliage on a wire trunk. Bit garish, but easily sorted with an airbrush. I used very cheap liquid acrylics, diluted with tap water to single cream consistency.

First picture, straight out of the box:




Sprayed with a red/brown mix:




A grey/green mix:




Finally a forest:




They work out at 50p each - I could make trees for less, but not up to this standard. I think they are well worth it.

Shaun.

They certainly look the business Shaun and at 50p each, who's grumbling …………:roll::roll::thumbs

G'day gastwo,

Whilst the paint is still wet, sprinkle the foliage with some fine flock of various colours to represent leaves. This method brings them right upto scratch.  I'll upload a photo comparison soon.

Cheers, Gary.

I agree.

i have bought a lot of things from this supplier, Trees lights, bulbs etc.. Very good stuff.

I bought some of these and with a little work find them great value for money. I added flock in various colours, by putting the flock in a polythene food bag, sprayed the trees one at a time with a spray adhesive, dropped them in the bag and shook it up. As Gary said youi need to tease out some of the branches as well. Given the initial price it's a cheap and cheerful way of aforestation ;)

They can also be used to make quite good hedgerows by "dismantling" individual branches and/or laying them flat after tweaking the branches

The pics show the flocked trees, then some of the trees planted with a hedgerow which disguises a join in the scenic cover over my fiddle yard, third pic had a cottage added plus some "bushes" also from bits of trees. Some different flock colours sprinkled sparingly, or dabs of acrylic paint will make flowers  bloom too.

Thanks Mike, I like the look of those trees and the idea of using them for hedgerows too. I'll have to llok at that site you got them from 50p each looks like a bargain to me.

It's not just cheap trees form China Ebay, I just rerceived 2 packs of 10 gas lamps, for less than half the price I saw for identical items at a recent show. These are 40mm which equates to about 20' full size ones were between 15' and 20'.

OK they are somewhat basic again, but a bit of time and thought can make a useable item. I found that the top could be pulled off, complete with wires, thisz allowed me to slde some plastic tube over the lower part of the metal tube, then a very thin piece of a larger diameter tube that was a close fit on the first piece of tube, some MekPak to secure it a bit of careful filing to make a rounded bulge of the larger bit of plastic tube; next a spiral of thin wire held in place with superglue (34SWG sold in hobby/craft shops among the beading supplies 24 yards for under £2). Finally another small piece of the smaller diameter tube at the top of the "pole", feed the wires back down the "pole" and refit the top, but before mekpaking the small tube in place a piece of slightly thicker wire one and a half turns immediately under the lantern with the ends bent out at 180 degrees for the ladder rest, now mekpak the small piece of tube to the lantern which should hold the ladder rest in place.

Before and after pics, the green will not be the final colour, I just slapped that on to cover up white plastic and shiny wire; when I plant them methinks I will bury the larger diameter bit of the base.

Lampa is as out of the bag, lampb is after the addition of some plastic tube and wire.

        

Another tip for these cheap Chinese made trees is -

Using a product such as 'Selleys - No More Gaps', or similar, mix with a little water (yes, it is water based), approx 65% gap filler to 35% water. This will enable you to paint the wire trunks and 'thicken' them up substantially. Apply a few layers, but make sure you allow the layers to dry adequately in between coats. Once all dry, paint the trunks with acryllics. To add a little texture to the trunks, add some fine sawdust to the last application of gap filler.

Cheers, Gary.


PS… Here is a link to cheap trees on ebay ; http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/Trees-/161985/i.html 

Good tip Gary. Thanks for that.

Shaun.

Just off the Chinese subject, Howard Scenic Supplies have some great specials on at the moment.

Check them out : http://www.howardscenicsupplies.co.uk/ 

I have just purchased the Heki Tree Kit 1533, for just Â£11.33. This kit will make 10 trees at 18cm in height. With postage of  £4.95 GBP (to Australia), that equates to just under Â£1.63 per tree, not bad I say !

Cheers, Gary.