HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN TERRAIN:
Coniferous Trees

Method 1
Method 2
METHOD 1
Era All
Scale 10-25mm
Difficulty Moderate/difficult
Materials
  • Spray glue. The strongest stuff you can find.
  • Dark grey or drab coloured spray paint. Make sure it is not a bright colour. Tree trunks are more grey or greenish than brown. Have a look outside.
  • Wooden sticks. Like heavy cocktail sticks of the sticks used to support plants.
  • Fine sifted sand.
  • Heavy electrical wire with a solid copper core. Preferably with grey or brown isolation.
  • Cooker hood filter. These are thick sheets of fibre material. Use the coarsest ones you can find.
  • Ground foam for foliage. Several shades of dark green, very fine. The kind you can find in model train stores. Do not use painted sawdust for this. It is usualy coloured using water based dyes and the colours tend to fade in sunlight.
  1. Cut off a 10-15 cm (4"-6") piece of electrical wire.
  2. Strip 4-5 cm (2") of the isolation.
  3. Pull the remaining isolation toward one end, until it sticks out 1-2 cm (1/3"-2/3"). This is most easily done using pliers to hold the striped end, and use a wire stripper, set to slightly to large a gauge, to pull on the isolation. Experiment until you find the easiest way to do this.
  4. Use pliers to bend the stripped part into a loop, and bend the isolated part perpendicular to this loop. This loop will serve to glue the tree to a support.
  5. Make a point on a wooden stick using a pencil sharpener or knife and cut off the top 4-5 cm.
  6. Glue this piece, point up, into the isolation of the electrical wire sticking out at the top.
  7. Spray glue on the trunk and sprinkle sand on it. Let it dry thoroughly.
  8. Use some old scissors to cut a piece of the filter material, and rip it into a roughly disk shaped piece. This should have the diameter of the tree you want. Make other pieces reducing the size of the disk. You need between four and eight per tree, depending on its size.
  9. Pull the fibre disks over the trunk. The largest one below and reducing the size as you go to the top. Leave the tip bare, but make sure the connection between the electrical wire and the wood stick is covered by a disk. Make sure the trunk can be seen between the disks of fibre.
  10. After each disk is put on the trunk, spray some glue on the connection between trunk and disk. After all disks are in place, leave it to dry.
  11. Use some old scissors to cut off stray strands of fibre and bring some shape into the tree.
  12. Spray paint the whole tree grey or brown and let it dry. Make sure the fibre material is covered adequately.
  13. Spray glue on the fibres and sprinkle on the ground foam until the whole outside of the tree has a layer of green. Do not put on to much. The outsides of the disks should be covered fully, the inner parts of the disks should be more open. Take care not to put much foam on the trunk.
  14. Let the whole thing dry. You can secure the trees with clothes pegs on a piece of card while drying.
To make the bases for your 10-25 mm forest, you need the following:

  • Thick card. 1 mm is about the minimum.
  • Earth coloured paint.
  • Black spray paint
  • Sand.
  • Ground foam. The same colours you used for the trees and maybe some brown.
  • Steel wool
  • White glue.
  • Spray Glue
  1. Cut from the card an irregular shape. Don't make it too large. You should not put more than three or four trees on one base. If you want to make a forest, place more bases next to each other. Make some bases for individual trees.
  2. Paint the card a dark earth colour, and let it dry. Maybe you will need to wet the other side of the card to keep it from buckling.
  3. Glue the trees on the base. Vary the size of the trees on each base and vary some in colour.
  4. Cover the base of the trees and the rest of the base with white glue.
  5. Sprinkle on sand and ground foam and let it dry.

    This gives you good looking forests, but by putting in a little more time, you can make them look even more convincing.

  6. Take some small clumps of steel wool and cut them into scrub shapes.
  7. Spray paint them black.
  8. Spray on the glue
  9. Sprinkle with ground foam and leave them to dry.
  10. Cut them using scissors, so you have a flat side and glue the scrub to the base. Place a fair number of these scrubs on the base, around the tree trunks.
Submitted by Hans Goosen (goosen@duteisp.tudelft.nl)

METHOD 2
Era All
Scale 10-25mm
Difficulty Moderate/difficult
Materials
  • Metal wire. 0.3 to 0.5 mm in diameter.
  • Rope. Made of rough fibres that can easily be separated.
  • Spray glue. The strongest stuff you can find.
  • Dark grey or drab coloured spray paint. Make sure it is not a bright colour. Tree trunks are more grey or greenish than brown. Have a look outside.
  • Fine sifted sand.
  • Ground foam for foliage. Several shades of dark green, very fine. The kind you can find in model train stores. Do not use painted sawdust for this. It is usually coloured using water based dye and the colours tend to fade in sunlight.
  1. Cut off 30 cm (1') of metal wire.
  2. Fold the wire and secure both ends of the wire in the grip of the drill. Make sure they are secure and will not slip out. Use a hand drill or an electric drill with variable speed.
  3. Fold the loop of wire in two and clamp the folded end of the loop in a vice. Again make sure it is secure.
  4. Cut off ten to fifteen, 5-10 cm (2"-4") pieces of rope.
  5. Pull the wire tight and using the drill, carefully turn the wire two to three times around so the wires are twisted.
  6. Put the pieces of rope between the twisted metal wire. Spread them out along the whole length of the wire leaving a part near the vice free for the trunk. The shortest pieces should go closest to the drill bit. If they won't stay put, twist the wire some more.
  7. Twist the wire until the pieces of rope are held tightly.
  8. Unravel the rope and distribute the fibres along the length of the twisted wire. You should now have fibres sticking out in the shape of a corkscrew.
  9. Pull the wire tight and using the drill, twist it until the fibres form something that looks like a bottle neck cleaner.
  10. Release the wire from the vice and from the drill bit. Do this carefully. Strain in the wire might whip it around when released.
  11. Cut the top off the twisted wire so the fibres go right up to the top.
  12. Bend the loop that was in the vice into a support used to glue the tree to a base.
  13. Use some old scissors to cut some shape into the tree. Make sure you have some variations on the `christmas tree' model.
  14. Spray glue on the trunk that sticks out of the foliage and sprinkle sand on it. Leave it to dry.
  15. Spray paint the whole tree dark grey or brown and let it dry. Make sure the fibres are covered.
  16. Spray a liberal amount of glue on the fibres and sprinkle on the ground foam until the whole outside of the tree has a layer of green. Do not put on too much. The trees should have some airy feel to it.
  17. Let the whole thing dry. You can secure the trees with clothes pegs on a piece of card while drying.
Submitted by Hans Goosen (goosen@duteisp.tudelft.nl)

Last Updates
24 December 1996restored
Comments or corrections?