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 Post subject: A rough guide to making fir trees
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 11:24 am 
Loremaster
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Been meaning to do a guide on my fir trees for quite a while now... here goes.

Materials I used:
garden twine
pliers
A drill
Some thin wire
a cork



Image

First off, tree making makes a serious mess... It gets everywhere so do it in a well hoover-able area 8)



Image
1. First, you need the twine (or it might be called something else actually, :roll: )
2. Unravel it by simply pull 2 of the ends
3. unravel it even more until it's reduced to individual fibres... Using a brush sometimes helps here.



Image


1. Get your two pieces of wire, hold then parallel and, with the pliers, twist them around each other. This will be the trunk of the tree.
2. Stick the twisted pieces of wire in the cork.
3. Put the fibres from the twine in between the 2 straight pieces of wire. How much you put there is up to you depending how dense you want the branches of the tree to be.


and you should end up with something like this:

Image

1. Now, slightly twist the very top bit of the wire so it doesn't all fall out.
2. Get you power drill, take the wire out of the cork and put the twisted part of the wire in the drill. Firmly hold the other end of the wire (the top of the tree) with the pliers.
3. Now get the drill up to a slow speed (It helps if you rest the drill on a work bench while doing this).The fibers and the wire should twist around, making the 'branches' more or less even.
4. Chop the top bit of wire off and cut your tree into the right shape with some scissors

And you should end up with something like this:

Image

Or this:

Image




They would look much better with some flock PVA-ed on them, but I didn't have any. They are still awaiting a paint job though :)

Thanks for looking at this very rough guide, I hope it helps :)

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Last edited by SidTheSloth on Wed Apr 10, 2013 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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 Post subject: Re: Fir trees - A rough guide
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 12:08 pm 
Loremaster
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Thanks sid!
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 Post subject: Re: Fir trees - A rough guide
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:15 pm 
Loremaster
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That's awesome, affordable and relatively fast. I LOVE it.

How, oh how, though do you paint it once twisted? It would seem to me that when you have it still in cork, top twisted and all the fibers laying relatively flat that would be the time to prime it, spray the fibers dark green, highlight them a little and apply some glue/flock if desired. Then hook up to the drill and do the twist.

What have you found best for finishing these up though?

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 Post subject: Re: Fir trees - A rough guide
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:56 pm 
Loremaster
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Beowulf03809 wrote:
It would seem to me that when you have it still in cork, top twisted and all the fibers laying relatively flat that would be the time to prime it, spray the fibers dark green, highlight them a little and apply some glue/flock if desired. Then hook up to the drill and do the twist.

Aye, I think you might be right there. These are only very prototype-y kind of trees (the first 2 I have done) so the method is somewhat unrefined.

Beowulf03809 wrote:
What have you found best for finishing these up though?


On tree No.1 (the thinner one) I tried just sloshing on some very watery green paint and then sticking static grass on with watered down PVA... the paint helped a bit but the branches are too thin to see it really. The grass looked ok for a while but then most of the patches on the outer branches fell off =/ I reckon coloured sawdust or flock would do a much better job though, adding some good solid colours and making the branches a bit thicker.

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 Post subject: Re: Fir trees - A rough guide
PostPosted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 11:04 pm 
Kinsman
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Thats great,

Can't wait to try this, Nice Job
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 Post subject: Re: A rough guide to making fir trees
PostPosted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 6:34 pm 
Ringwraith
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I've only just spotted these and they look brilliant. Nice job and it's great to see home-made alternatives to the more expensive commercial ones.

Nice Job 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

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