Best of both worlds

Great technique - you really get the best of both worlds with a realistic thick trunk and a lacy canopy.

Memory problem solved

Great idea.  Looks realistic.  Plus it hides the tendency of the plastic branches to return to their original flat design.

I know this works

because I use large deciduous armatures from WS and glue their Fine LEaf Foliage to the trunk using CA. makes great oak trees!

Another Hit!

Yet another great idea Charlie, those tree armatures look great!

One thing I wondered is there any way to see larger images than what I am getting reading the embedded edition?

I've got to try this for myself.

Did you try zooming in?

Photos in the embedded edition should not pixelate up to 200%. Zooming in should in effect give you much larger, more detailed images to study in the embedded edition. Standard edition images, however, will pixelate if you zoom in.

Random thought

The plant part being grafted onto the root stock is called the 'scion'.  How many folks drive the car with the same name and have no clue what it means?

Anyway, your choice of 'scion' material is grea, but I'd like to have seen some alternatives, however, such as candy tuft or other craft-store natural florist material.  Spending the money on the super tree material, I'd be inclined to use it as directed...and find an alternative for 'kitbashing' a tree.  But I suppose if you really want a great foreground tree this is one approach that'll work very well, as your results show.

Question - why not use contact cement to adhere the branches instead of drilling all those holes?  Or CA with a shot of 'kicker' to harden it in place?

Galen

Zooming

Now why would I try that?  Duh, thanks Joe.

Kitbashing Trees

Assuming one is using Supertrees for various other vegetation, employing the materials as Charlie did helps to achieve a consistent look and increase realism.  Note that Supertrees also sells "Super Sage Trees," which essentially uses the same concept, including sagebrush for armatures to which the regular Supertrees material is to be attached.

One of the guys in my area has been building a lot of trees using sagebrush and other natural twigs for trunks, attaching the Supertrees with CA and accelerator.  I've helped build a few of those for his layout and it works great.  I don't see a need to drill holes in the armature in most cases since the joints are sufficiently strong and hidden in the finished product to render that additional step unnecessary.

use as directed

They actually do direct you to use the Super Trees material in this way, just in a different kit.  

The Scenic Express 'Super Sage' tree kit is almost the same concept as Charlie's method except it uses pieces of dried sage plant instead of WS tree armatures.  The kit consists of a bunch of clippings of the seafoam plant that you get in Super Trees kits along with the pieces of sage.  They direct you to cut parts off the Super Trees material and glue them to the ends of the sage piece to make a larger tree with a more substantial trunk.  So Charlie really is 'using as directed', just with a slightly different material for the trunk.

I recently made some trees very similar to the ones in this article.  I found that I could attach the Super Trees material to the WS trunks using CA and setting spray quite quickly and effectively.  While not quite as clean as Charlie's method, after painting the trunks and adding foliage the glued on branches weren't noticeable, especially for background or clumps of trees.

EDIT - I see Rob wrote pretty much the same thing as me while I was writing my reply, haha!

Hot glue?

I wonder if anyone has tried using hot glue to attached the branches to the armature.  It's fast setting as sticks well - although the hot glue "strings" can be messy.

Rick

read the directions?

Why would you go and do a crazy thing like that?

Interesting.  I have been hanging on to a super tree starter kit for years now and have only opened it to examine the contents and read the instructions.  But even then I was imagining I'd add some sort of putty or filler to the trunks to give the trees some age.  Using a nice starter trunk like the WS armatures makes sense.

I made some trees years ago using twigs collected from my yard (some sort of hedge/shrub) and likewise, drilling holes and inserting candy tuft.  I had to go back and put white glue on the joints to fill out the connection between branch and trunk since these were foreground trees that would stand closer scrutiny. 

At one point I even wrote up an online 'clinic' for my old website and had a girlfriend help me with the pictures and the tree making.  This was pre-digital camera and I did scan the pictures. I looked on archive.org and couldn't find the tree page so I'll have to dig around in my files and see if it's stored somewhere...

But most recently I bought an on-sale VHS from Allen Keller featuring Bill Henderson's Coal Belt.  In fact, I was just watching it last night.  Bill demonstrated some of his tree techniques and seems to use exclusively contact cement to adhere the branches to the trunk material.  I've yet to try it, but having been down the drilling zillions of tiny holes route, I'm more than willing to try something new (or old, as the case may be).

Now I'll have to go back and take a closer look (zoom) at your trees...

Galen

Hi res bybrid tree article photos

Kevin,

The MRH genie grants your wish. Hi res versions of the photos from this article are now available as part of the October bonus extras.

Regarding why I did these trees the way I did?  Someone in one of the other threads mentioned doing something like this. I use a lot of Woodland Scenics Fine Leaf Foliage when I do scenery and they include a plastic tree armature in each container of the stuff. I have lots of super tree material laying around (I use a lot of it, too). One thing led to another and I tried drilling lots of tiny (some with a #77 bit) holes in a plastic armature and fitting branchlets in it. It worked well enough I did another and took pictures which became a Scenery Scene.

I've tried using zip-kicker and I don't like the stuff. It's smell reminds me too much of various toxic substances. By drilling the holes I could just dab a branchlet in a small puddle (drop) of ACC, stick it in the hole, and it stays in place while the ACC sets. No kicker needed.

I do have some Super Sage in a box but I haven't gotten around to opening it up and giving it a try yet. One of these days I'm going to do that.

I've also thought about dousing the ends of the branchlets with hair spray (or paint) and very lightly dust them with static grass (to much and it will look like a fur lined tree -- ZZ-Top style I guess). One of these days ...

Charlie

MRH Genie!

Thanks Charlie, and thanks to Joe also who pointed out what should have been obvious to me, duh!

Gotta love the MRH Genie, bending over backwards for the subscriber, kudos!

This really seems like the better way to do this.  A mechanical connection is always a good thing.  Besides, think how much neater these will look after the leaves are off in the fall! [wink]

Re: Charlie

I don't mind it when it saves me work, but then again maybe I just like to live dangerously.  Building a tree with CA and accelerant is a great way to unwind after washing down a Big Mac with a large Dr. Pepper, so what do I know?

One of the best modeler benefits of living where I do is the abundance of dead sagebrush armatures.  Given how much most scenery suppliers charge for a few branches, it's worth the gas money to make a scenery materials run every now and then and stock up.  Eastern Oregon has quite a supply too, and the drive over might make a nice day out (hint).  Also, all that Scotch broom that went wild along roads in western Oregon and Washington has potential as well, if you clip off the long shoots.

Re: Kevin

I was a little surprised when my buddy Bill started making his trees using only CA and accelerator, but they're a lot more solid than you might think.  The Supertree material will break long before you'll see a failure of the CA joint, which is all but invisible on a finished tree.

Thank you, MRH Genie!

Nicely done, especially after looking at the close-up shots.  Looks like a scrub oak, with tiny little leaves well represented by the fine foam.

Galen