Full trees or puff balls, that is the question


W

West Virginia Midland Man

Member
It's become a standard method of foresting Appalachian mountainsides to use puff balls of poly fiber, covered in coarse foam. Somehow though, except in rare cases, that's always what it looks like to me: a hillside full of poly fiber balls. Still, the thought of planting thousands of trees doesn't thrill me.

Suggestions? Pics too if you have 'em.
 
Here’s some N scale scenery I did using poly-fiber “puff-balls”

mixedtrain.jpg


portal9.jpg


If you’ll notice, I put a lot of dried weeds in among the “puff-balls” to kind of break up the monotony, & give things a “woodsier” look…

In HO scale, though, I didn’t like the way the poly-fiber looked as much, so I came up with this method of using those plastic dish-scrubbing pads, chopped up into big chunks of foliage…

mtc9.jpg


As you can see, I still mix in the dried weeds…what I’m trying to accomplish is to make it look like a lot of trees, but it’s really not that many…
 
Actually the N scale effort was not so bad either. Plastic dish scrubbing pads? I've seen the metal ones. Probably never searched for the plastic ones.

The HOn3 (n30?) effort is close to what I'm looking for. Also thinking of using goldenrod tufts, sprayed olive green and dusted with slightly lighter colored foam for highlights.

Appalachian mountain forests are extremely dense, but the puff balls I've seen look like someone merely tossed a bunch of perfectly round fiber balls on the hillside.
 
I believe those who resort to puff balls, but want the best efffect such an application can yield, take the time to tease them into a more realistic and less dense shape, and they spray them a dark colour so that they don't show the white fibers (you can get black polyfiber). Then, coat them with ground foam, and when they are dry, tease them some more to provide for natural variations in height and density.

I have seen forests that look like painted tennis ball halves all nudged against each other. Blechhh! It is worst when they are sprayed fall colours. Double blecch!!

-Crandell
 
Selector said:
I believe those who resort to puff balls, but want the best efffect such an application can yield, take the time to tease them into a more realistic and less dense shape, and they spray them a dark colour so that they don't show the white fibers (you can get black polyfiber). Then, coat them with ground foam, and when they are dry, tease them some more to provide for natural variations in height and density.

I have seen forests that look like painted tennis ball halves all nudged against each other. Blechhh! It is worst when they are sprayed fall colours. Double blecch!!

-Crandell
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I used the green WS poly-fiber...I did try &make the “puff-balls” into more random tree-like shapes, & I did spray-paint them flat black…This not only hides the green color, but it adds some shadow to the "forest"...
As for the fall colors, that was just an experiment…I’ve always found that the commercial ground foam “fall” colors are WAY too bright & un-natural-looking…I cut all the colored foam with green foam in a blender…I thought it toned down the colors a little better…

West Virginia Midland Man said:
I'd be using the green stuff Woodland Scenics makes, never even thought of using white.
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Use the black stuff Crandell mentioned if you can get it...back when I did mine, they didn't have the black kind & I used the green...I had to spray-paint it black...it worked out ok...I just used the wet spray paint as the adhesive & dipped them in ground foam while they were still wet...
 
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Our customers do small sections at a time when they plant trees. It is overwhelming to try to finish a layout too quickly. One of our customers recently placed an order for 6000 trees with the specifications he only wants 200-300 at a time so he can place and plant his trees how and where he wants them. My suggestion is to add some high trees like pine or birch in amongst the "bushes" and it will give your layout some texture!

Have fun with your layout!
 
WVa Man, this all depends on if you are modeling a forest or only want the illusion of a forest. I also model (Southern) the Appalachian mountains and I use puff ball trees for the distant illusion of forest covered mountains. My hills are just too big to try and cover with anything else; it would take all my time just on trees. Many of my areas that are around a town of buildings, nearby ridge, or close to the viewer have hand made trees made from the Wild OakLeaf Hydrangea bush that you may have in your area.

As Selector said, make sure you spray paint the puffs with a dark color (I use black) to hide any white that may escape the ground foam and also to give a shadow effect. Then I wet down with white glue/water spray and then sprinkle. I also blow the foam into the crevices and underside with a folded piece of cardstock and a soda straw.

Drew: I think yours looks great. Nice work!
 
HI: I have almost 1900 puff ball trees. To get away from the eggs in a carton look, I filled in around the puff balls with WS clump foliage. I used the WS green poly fiber. DJ.

P1040421.jpg
 
Micromark has some nice black polyfiber for a lot cheaper than you can buy it from WS. I've seen Rex's puff ball forest in person and the illusion of densely forested, distant mountains is very convincing. I think the key is to use it for the illusion of a tree covered hill or mountain as long as the viewer isn't too close and the height is varied to add the illusion of contours to the hills. I had a friend that did a whole hillside using plastic netting held up at different heights by bamboo skewers. He teased the puff blls into irregular shapes and then used spray adhesive to cover them with a random mixture of about six different colors ground foam. He then glued them to the netting and, when he was done, it looked exactly like a tree covered hillside. He planted some nice trees right at the bottom of the hill and your brain just naturally assumed that's what was on the rest of the hill.
 
West Virginia Midland Man said:
Rex, do you have a pic of the wild oak hydrangea? I've used sedum, but never hydrangea, I'm not sure what it looks like.
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Here is a link with photos and info http://landscaping.about.com/od/shrubsbushes/p/oak_hydrangeas.htm
We have them growing wild along country roads, usually near the woods edge. After you cut the bloom cluster and let it dry for a few weeks, you trim the little blooms off and shape the limbs. The cluster has seed pods all over them that you leave to allow the ground foam to stick to them. Makes a pretty darn good tree. If you find them later in the spring or happen across the dried up ones now, let me know and I will give you some steps to take.;)
 
UP2CSX said:
Micromark has some nice black polyfiber for a lot cheaper than you can buy it from WS. I've seen Rex's puff ball forest in person and the illusion of densely forested, distant mountains is very convincing. I think the key is to use it for the illusion of a tree covered hill or mountain as long as the viewer isn't too close and the height is varied to add the illusion of contours to the hills. I had a friend that did a whole hillside using plastic netting held up at different heights by bamboo skewers. He teased the puff blls into irregular shapes and then used spray adhesive to cover them with a random mixture of about six different colors ground foam. He then glued them to the netting and, when he was done, it looked exactly like a tree covered hillside. He planted some nice trees right at the bottom of the hill and your brain just naturally assumed that's what was on the rest of the hill.
Click to expand...

You should have gotten a picture of that. That sounds very nice actually.

Is there a source for polyfiber instead of buying it from a hobby manufacture? (Which means its more expensive). Does this stuff have another purpose that its designed for and just happens to work nice for making trees?
 
You can get polyfiber from almost any craft shop. The problem is that it's white and you need to spray it black or dark brown before youo can use it. The cheapest source is probably old pillows form thrift shops, since they are primarily filled with polyfiber. The black polyfiber from Micromark is a little denser than most polyfiber fill material, and it saves you a step. Depending on how many trees you have to do, that still may be your best deal.

Unfortunately, this layout was built about 1970. I actually do have some pictures somewhere in my collection of about 5,000 slides. I really have to go through them one of these days, since there are a lot of western railroad pictures from the late 60's to early 70's that would probably be quite useful for modelers today.
 
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Black polyfiber is sold at Halloween as spider webs I think, if it's the same stuff I'm thinking of. Walmart and the local dollar store should have beaucoup bags of it right after Halloween at ultra low prices.
 
I wish that I could have found colored polyester fiber. I have looked everywhere around here even at Halloween and all I found was white at Walmart for only a couple dollars per bag. Spray painting works, but the fumes and work involved are a PIA.
 
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