Cheap trees

[WitchfinderGeneral]

Anybody can tell me what's the best and cheapest way to do trees?
The usual H0 model railroad trees are too small and the trees for wargames are too expensive. Too expensive because I need loads of them. I'm talking about 30 - 50 midsized and large trees. They'll be used for the modules of a new game table but I don't want to spend 100+ bucks just for the trees.

[PeteMurray]

Could you use pine trees? Christmas wreathes are a great way to get a bunch of material for pine trees. I cut up 25% of an old wreath, and I'll never finish using all that material!

[Argonor]

I don't know if it's the best way, but perhaps use real twigs with many small 'branches', and then glue some reindeer moss - or some rubberished horse-hair, then flocked? If you happen to have a forest nearby, at least the twigs should be free of charge...

[DarkWingDuck]

I spotted this on http://www.tabletop-terrain.com recently.

http://wargamesterrain.50webs.com/tutorials4.html

It's a tutorial on how to make trees using scouring pads (for 15mm tree). I suspect it would scale up well for 25mm size ones as well.

[warrenpeace]

cheap trees...

Yes, most of the stuff in miniature stores and train stores are way too expensive.  I found some big bags of evergreen trees from a German company in a train store in Eugene Oregon that were affordable.  Haven't seen any similar great deals on deciduous trees, though.

Michaels craft stores in my area have been having 40% off sales on Lemax Village stuff, including evergreen trees and leafless birch trees.  I picked up two sets of patches of birch trees on little stands that came out to $1 per patch of birch trees.  There were big bags of evergreen trees available also, but I've already got the bags of evergreens from the German train scenery company that I bought years ago.

There is a chain of stores called "Dollar Tree" in my area which has packets of one or two trees for $1 per packet around this time of year.

If that's still too much to spend, or if those options can't be found, then you could try making trees out of wire, wrapping with tape, painting, and gluing something on to look like leaves.  The train store that I visited in Eugene had bags of tiny wood chips that had been dyed green.  Those look more like actual leaves than the lichen or scouring pad material that's often used.

Warren B.

[WitchfinderGeneral]

Looks like you've got better suppliers for that kind of stuff in the US than here in Germany.
I have enough flock, foliage etc. to do some of the trees. But strong metal wire costs also a small fortune.
Maybe I can combine something, real wood trunk (yes, I'm living near a forest; got some good logs and real stones from there) + wire branches...

Thanks for that link, DarkWing! That scouring pad trees look surprisingly good!

Also a good site about terrain is www.terragenesis.co.uk but unfortunately they lack of a really good tree tutorial.

[Lurch]

This is a picture from Terra Genisis.

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/infopages/page109.html

The trees are made of pipecleaners. I have copied them. They are easy to make and cheap. You need some pipecleaners and this "lichen" what we get as  "Moos" in our shops.

Try it, it makes fun.

[Argonor]

Pipecleaners! Yes, they arent that expensive! Having a father who smokes pipe - why didn't I think of that?? It must be the smoke clounding my brain  :wink:

One should be able to do some convincing swamp/mangrove trees from that...