I'm planning on making a Dio based on the Hedgerows & need some help making the hedgerow itself. I've made trees before with mixed results, but I've never had much success with bushes and whatnot. Does anybody have any tips or links showing how to do a hedgerow? I presfer to try to scratchbuild the materials myself rather than buying all the misc fake trees & bushes. Thanks for any & all assistance.

Sean

Something that might help -if there are any Sunflowers growing near you, they should be dying off soon, and the roots make great small trees and bushes. Just rinse off any earth sticking to them and let them dry.

Sean, you picked one tree that is a P.I.T.A. to do but they really are worth it when done. Roots are your best bet to start with as Pat said. Pop them in your micro wave for a good heat blast to kill off any bugs and their eggs. Most of the time you can use them as they are, or you can add branchs made of thin wire twisted together and branching out as you go forming small branchs. Add bark where needed with diluted putty. Fun time. I use woodland's leaves, glued one at a time. Start at the bottom inside and work your way out. Then paint as the dyed ones will fade to browns in time. Remember to space your roots real close together to form the thick hedgerows. If you look at the trees in mine ( 2nd try for the valley) you'll see an example of this method. Hedgerows are just shorter and more densely packed together. Hope this helps.

Down here in south florida Ihave not been able to find much in the way of good roots to use yet. I'll keep hunting for them though. I've heard about using steel wool & sponges, but haven't found a good "how to" article about it. From checking out pics of hedgerows there's such a wide variety of misc stuff growing on them!!!!!

P.I.T.A!!!! That's great. took me a sec!!! but God does it sum this type of project up!!!! Thanks for the help so far.

Hi

Jon Haywards diorama build in progress shots may be of help.

Big Jon

Alan

Alan,
Thanks for that link. what an outstanding piece of work. too bad it doesn't have a finished pic or a "how to" in the thread. That was some seriously nice work he did!!!!

sean, when I lived in Fla. roots were a problem. Try to find sapplings about a foot or so tall and dig or gentily pull out, you want to save the base and small tenticals. If you have a problem finding them P.M. me and I send you a care package of them. Send roots via the mail, now I've seen it all , Here in Indiana I've got more than I could ever use. About steel wool, It has a tendicy to rust out bad. Try using the filter from a furnace, pull apart to thin a bit and spray paint, then glue in place and instant small branchs. My computer skills are seriously lacking in the photo area but if you go to the A.M.P.S. national show (2008) you can find in the pic's my hedgerow dio ( gonna pick us a fight son ). It may help you in seeing what I mean. Anything worth while takes time so a P.I.T.A. project is always cool when done.

Bob,
Thank You very much for your offer, I may just take you up on it. I'll hunt around a little more 1st just to make sure I didn't overlook anything down here. But it's slim pickings around my place. I looked for the AMPS show photos, but couldn't seem to find them online. Do you have a link by any chance? I think I've got a pretty good mental image of the final layout, so I think it's gonna turn out good. THe P.I.T.A. factor just makes it that much more rewarding! Thanks again for the offer & help. I'll be in touch if I can't find anything here.

Sean

Not sure if this will help you Sean but you may want to give this a try. Look for either lichen moss sold at most model railroad shops or hunt around shops like Body shop or other women beauty care shops for a loofah. The first one is probably easier, the second..well....you may need to be accompanied by a female companion to minimize some funny looks. Personally I prefer the loofah which is the dried fibers of a melon-like fruit. It has a more open structure. In a way it looks a wee bit like a sponge but with more thin fibres and a whole lot more holes. Sorry no pics.

Either way, stretch out the lichen or the loofah to give it a more open structure. Slap on a slightly diluted PVA and water mix. Sprinkle dried tea leaves. You may have to recoat it with PVA and sprinkle more tea leaves more than once. Leave it overnight and spray paint or brush in shades of green and brown.

Not a very good closeup but here is a pic of the groundwork of a 1/48 dio I did ages ago. You can just make out the hedges on either side of the road.

Beachbum,
Thanks for the tips! That's a nice looking base. A Luffa huh, good idea. I'll have to raid the masters, I mean wifes, supplies & see if she has one. I've tried the Lichen moss, but it eith falls apart to easy or looks to artifical. Thanks again.

Loofah are these for anybody that's not sure



Alan

Sean,

Bear in mind that the Normandy hedgerows were such a pain because under all the scrub was an earth & stone bank up to 6 feet high & six feet wide that had built up over centuries of plowing! Adding such a steep bank with the vegetation on top really adds to the drama of the scene.

Tom

I'm keeping that in mind, that's what's giving me fits. It's such closely packed & dense vegataion on top of the Hedgerows that's making me scratch my head & wonder what I got myself into . The main thing i'm concerned with is having the wide variety of foliage that appears in the hedgerows. it seems to be more than just some thick bushes & trees & it's inspired a hunt for diversity. That seems to be the key to making a good hedgerow & just some off the shelf bushes & trees just are not going to cut it. Thanks for the help & tips. I'd be curious to see a tutorial on the Luffas if anyone has one.

Sean

Hi Sean,

The pic by Alan is pretty much how a loofah looks like.
1. To get a more, irregular bush like structure you will have to cut off a piece, say 5 cm. cube.
2. Stretch in all directions so you get a tangled, mess, like a bush
3. As mentioned earlier slap on some slightly diluted PVA or just straight from the bottle.
4. You can before brushing on the PVA glue choose to paint the loofah. It takes acrylics pretty well and I suppose enamels as well if you think the color is too light for branches. Mind you the tea leaves you sprinkle on next pretty much covers it.
5. Sprinkle dried tea leaves.
6. Repeat #3 and #5 after 10-15 minutes and as many times as you need to get volume.

As for variety, just look for twigs or check out your local dried flower shop for dried flower stalks. Brush on PVA glue again and sprinkle either tea leaves or herbs. Oregano works well. Plant these in between your bushes and you should be able to get enough of a tangled mess close to a hedgerow.

Here's a pic I did using oregano and tea leaves over dried flower stalks for small trees. The lot below probably took me about 10 minutes or so to coat without painting.


Oh yeah, this may give you a rough idea how the loofah works. Here I've used only bits and pieces of loofah and very little tea leaves as I wanted to simulate desert scrub. But you can vary the density of the bush by how much you stretch it.


Good luck and good hunting.

Loofah huh. I better keep my eyes open in the shower. And I thought the only thing worth looking at in there was my wife, oops, hope she dosn't read this.

That makes 2 of us!!!!

CK, Thanks for the mini tutorial. Gives me a pretty good idea on what to do!!!!

My only other question about scavanging for dio materials is why it doesn't lead us to looking in victorias secrets more often??????? I mean seriously, if we have to hunt in womens stores for their shower supplies.......

http://www.sceneryexpress.com sells products for model railroading and they have a product called 'super tree' which is dried branchlets of some kind of plant with a very fine structure. You just clip off sections of branch, spray with adhesive and shake on your favorite leaf material. In 1/35 these make great bushes and growth for hedgerows. They also sell sections of sage brush called 'super sage' - obviously great tree material. That link doesn't work, but the store is Scenic Express, and I just discovered that the product is actually seafoam and is discussed in another thread here.

If you have any craft shops near you,(Hobby Lobby, Michaels, AC Moore,Rag Shop) pay them a visit. They usually have tons of dried flowers and other floral items that can become very convincing bushes. The best tree trunk armatures I have found are roots. I pulled out some small bushes and trimmed and saved the best ones resembling trees.