Okay, for those of you who know me know that I am a stickler for miniature detail and realism. As I looked to see what kinds of commercially available trees are out there I didn't find any that stood up to my standard of realism. It's somewhat surprising to me that none of the big scenic scenery supply companies have made realistic trees. Although I'll give Scenic Express some props as their's are not too bad looking, but still lack the realism I'm looking for.

I happened to be flipping through one of my model railroading books, specifically "San Juan Central: HO Narrow Gauge Railroad You Can Build" by Malcolm Furlow. It's a fantastic book and I had seriously considered building an HOn3 layout because if the SJC. I highly recommend adding it to your personal library. It's been recently reprinted though I was fortunate to find an original copy printed in 1984. Anyway... In the book he described a method of modeling pine trees using a simple method. Hand carved and tapered balsa wood trunks and branches of dried caspia.

Dried Caspia is a seasonal plant, but is often found in florist shops and craft stores. The foliage of caspia is VERY small and fine and nicely mimics the needles of a pine tree! And so here is my first attempt and making one of these trees. It is a tedious and time consuming process, but the results are WELL worth the effort! This particular tree I'm not too fond of as it is no where near as full as I'd like it to be. But again, this is practice. Seeing as I'm aiming to portray the majestic Cascade Mountains of Washington state they need to be much fuller. But now I at least have an idea on the process.

The method, in summery, is you take an appropriately sized stick of square balsa wood to use as your trunk. Cut it somewhere between 6 to 8 inches, though for some I elected to use 9" for height. Then carefully carve and taper the top 2/3rds of the truck and then use sand paper to smooth it a LITTLE bit. After all we don't want a perfect taper or it won't look natural. (Tip: For this use of balsa wood it's good to have slight to mildly warped wood. This can enhance the natural look to the tree) Next I ran the teeth of a hobby razor saw over the truck to simulate bark detail. After that I stained the trunk with a strong mixture of black India Ink and Denatured Alcohol. The goal being a dark grey color for the trunk. After that I took the dried caspia plant and clipped off a number of branches. Having branches between 1.5" to 2" inches long for the bottom branches and gradually going smaller as I work towards the top. I also split the top of the tree and inserted a very small branch with very small leaves to mimic the very tip of the tree. Small holes were drilled with a pin vice to allow the branches to be inserted into the trunk. One would normally glue the branches in, I suggest Mod Podge in their matte/flat version as it dries completely matte and is hard to see when dry. It's like white glue, but much better in my opinion. For this tree though I only glued the very tip top branch. The rest were just suck into the tree to test the construction method. Although there's room for improvement it looks pretty good, don't you think?

Again, comments are always encouraged! Especially if you fave!

PS: You can also get a peek at my Minitrains 0-4-0 I've mentioned previously.