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Ever evolvin dio. ft. 'THE INDESTRUCTIBLE TREE' as ft. on youtube.


Badder

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1 hour ago, RichO said:

Love the look of the new door!  Also, it dose not need to be reworked, by the way the photos look online anyway. Vote #1

Thanks Rich,

Thanks,

And your vote may be the one that swings it!:D

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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Just now, Major_Error said:

Your door looks wonderful!

Perhaps the door have been left open by somebody?

8-D

Hi Major,

I was thinking of leaving both doors half open, but now I'm not sure. I won't have to decide until I have to stick the building to the base.

Rearguards,

Badder

 

Just now, Vince1159 said:

Fine thanks mate,a stonkin' job on the door and glad you managed to sort the light bracket out...

Thanks.

I'm not surprised the old bracket curled up and shrank so easily with the small amount of heat I applied. The plastic is so soft and thin that a passing gnat's downdraft can make it wobble about.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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My vote would be for the original door. Having seen the inside of a lot of old French properties, the last thing that they seem to let in is light. Gloom prevails! BTW. Just caught up with this. Absolutely brilliant work.

 

John.

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I think I'd go for the original door too.

I like the new one but it doesn't seem to

suit the 'style' of the 'barn doors' which is

where valuable stuff would be stored?

Still, your model, your choice.

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6 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

My vote would be for the original door. Having seen the inside of a lot of old French properties, the last thing that they seem to let in is light. Gloom prevails! BTW. Just caught up with this. Absolutely brilliant work.

 

John.

 

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I think I'd go for the original door too.

I like the new one but it doesn't seem to

suit the 'style' of the 'barn doors' which is

where valuable stuff would be stored?

Still, your model, your choice.

 

Thanks John, thanks Pete.

Having played around with the doors for a couple of days I have come to the same conclusions and will be sticking with the original 'wicket' door. When swapped over, their styles make the swap very obvious.

I now have to decide whether to fix the doors fully open, part open, half open, or closed. With the wicket door fully open I'd have to model some interior with contents. I do like the idea of having some coats hanging on the back of the door.

 

Thanks again for your input.

Rearguards,

Badder

 

 

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I bit the bullet and fixed the porch door in place. It's in the 'almost fully open' position. Subsequently, I realised that when fully open it could be that the door also locks and seals off the left hand side of the porch interior, forming a temporary 'strong room'.

 

pQew6sW.jpg

 

brBKJSM.jpg

 

And with that done, I can now move on to constructing the large tree.

 

TFL

Badder

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Pfffft. Forget the large tree for now. I had a look through my collection of twigs and small branches and I can't find anything that's going to be suitable. I do have a largish tree which I made for my 'Enemy at the gate' Vignette Group Build entry. It might be possible to cannibalize that one for this diorama. I shall have a look. Failing that, I will add a bit more veg to the building.... not ivy this time, some other stuff.

 

TFL

 

Badder

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Dunno what's going on with my laptop but photos are either not showing up, or taking absolutely ages to load up. Hopefully YOU can all see them!

 

Because here we go with the 'BIG TREE'.

 

I visited a fly-tipping site looking for some suitable 'wood' for a tree trunk and came across a heap of garden cuttings... mostly 'Old Man's Beard' and some shrub/tree cuttings which may or may not be Privet. I can't be bottomed to look the latter up on the interrupternet.

The Privet, or whatever it is, had been trimmed back on a very regular basis, and so has tonnes of new growth at the extremities. We are talking a 'Gorgon's Head' of twigs.

This should provide a great number of options for the tree's silhouette and require that I need add very few extra branches, if any. In fact, my first job will be to lop a lot of the excess growth off.

 

I've also purchased some Maxima Nylon Monofilament fishing line, in 2lb and 6lb breaking strains. The two spools will give me 200m of line in total. More than enough to make this tree and a few more!

 

The next important component I already had: a spool of 'Gardener's Twine'. This twine has a wire core and a wrap around 'paper' outer. It's great stuff for making extra branches, and more importantly for securing 'twigs' to branches. Having the paper wrapping, it absorbs CA and PVA and having the wire core it can be bent, twisted, knotted and looped, and as such is the perfect material for fixing to and embellishing the actual wood armature.

 

Those of you who saw my 'Carry on Regardless' WIP before Photorhymingslang kindly stopped 3rd party hosting, will know my technique, but I have modified it slightly since, and now of course I will be using a completely different material for the leaves.

 

For those who never saw the WIP, I hope you find the following very useful. Maybe you'll take up the technique and never buy those horrible clumpy foamy plastic 'miniature railway trees' again.:D

 

So, here's the fishing line and the 'Gardener's Twine'. If you look very closely at the end of the twine you'll see the wire core which I exposed.RIJKcuT.jpg

The 200m of line came to 8 quid exactly. There are other brands and breaking strains but Maxima is relatively cheap, reddish brown rather than green or transparent and is quite stiff in short lengths. I purchased the 6lb for the bigger 'twigs' and the 2lb for the finer twigs as the latter should droop more under the weight of the leaves.

 

And here's the Privet, or whatever it is:eCXFNJy.jpg

I expect I will be using some Miliput and putty to thicken up some areas of the trunk and boughs.

As for the leaves, well, there's my snowflake punch and I'm thinking of using a slightly different 'cut' from the snowflakes to make them look different from the 'ivy'.

 

TFL

Badder

 

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I've trimmed my 'bush'.

I removed a fair few of the innermost twigs, and those twigs which were too long and lacking in twiglets. As the Privet is still 'green' I also managed to bend out one of the larger 'boughs' to even up the silhouette of the tree, then secured it in position permanently with CA.

Having said all that, it has always been my intention to place this tree fairly close to one end of the building, so there's a 'flat spot' on that side of the tree closest to it.iUnjaHe.jpg

 

Further trimming may be required, but for now I shall give the tree a good dose of 50:50 water:PVA. 

Once the PVA is dry I'm going to thicken the trunk and the main boughs using Miliput. I will be leaving some of the real wood exposed though.

 

TFL

Badder

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Hi, peeps.

In the past I've glued crushed herbs to nylon monofilament in a random 'sherbet dib-dab' way, (you young ones probably won't get that, so ask your parents) but I wasn't sure if it was possible to glue individual paper leaves and get them to a) stick, and b) stick where I wanted them. So I carried out a feasibility test. 

The results can be seen below.

teNyNVE.jpg

 

The whole structure has dried, and as was the case before, the paper has now taken on a plastic-like quality and the leaves are resilient to anything short of deliberate rough handling. The leaves though are much too close together to be realistically tree-like, so this 'branch' will be going onto the building as 'ivy', probably creeping out onto the rear wall.

 

For a tree, I will have to space the leaves out more, sprouting out from the twigs either in opposing pairs, or alternating left and right.

 

TFL

Badder

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7 hours ago, Vince1159 said:

It's that time again :popcorn:....

Glad you're enjoying it Vince, for some reason I'm not seeing any photos I post. I can see everyone else's okay. Strange.

 

But I shall continue posting them!

 

Rearguards

Badder

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I have trimmed my bush further. The great thing about having a Gorgon's Nest is that it gives you a wide range of options for the tree's silhouette... and hence a greater choice of species. I'd like to make an oak. Or a sycamore, or a beech, but I have no way of making leaves that will be realistic enough to denote the species.

 

So my tree will have to be 'An Tree'.

 

Today I visited another 'Gardener's Fly Tipping' site, and found another heap of hedge trimmings. Again, I'm not sure of the species concerned, but it's possible that it was Privet again. I gathered up a carrier bag full and I'm now going through the twigs looking for some suitable for creating the lowest level of the tree's branches. So far, all of my tree's boughs and branches are vertical, or at least reaching skywards. I need some nearer the ground to reach out on the horizontal.

While I'm doing that, here's a photo. I hope you can see it.

ijQkXCk.jpg

EDIT...

 

Okay, I selected 3 twigs which fit the bill, er fit the trunk. They had enough curve in them to look natural sticking out from the trunk, just below the first fork.  Fixing them in place was an easy job, once I'd decided where to place them First I chamfered the ends of the branches to form good contact areas with the trunk. Next I drilled holes into the trunk, dribbled Medium CA into each and into each inserted short offcuts of paperclip, leaving about 5mm protruding. I then drilled holes into the ends of each of the branches, dribbled Medium CA into them and then pushed each of the branches onto the paperclip 'dowels' and hard up against the trunk. Finally,  more  Medium CA was dribbled around each of the joints.

 

This is now the main skeleton of the tree. Photo to follow.

 

TFL

Badder

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Here's the main skeleton of the tree.  No more actual wood will be added. All further branches and twigs will be made using wire, fishing line and gardener's twine.

dzG1j2M.jpg

 

Next I'll be getting out the Miliput.

 

TFL

Badder

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17 hours ago, RichO said:

Photos show up fine here.  Nice bush trimming!?

Thanks Rich,

Photos are showing up now.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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I added two more branches to the tree, one to fill a relatively open space amongst the others, and a second to do the same at the lowest level of the branches. With that done, I thickened up the trunk and softened some of the branch/trunk joints using Milliput.  I used a wooden kebab skewer to gouge bark patterns into the Milliput while it was still soft. Once it has hardened I will use metal tools to add more detail.

46i9Ggs.jpg

 

TFL

Badder

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I've been ogling my tree since applying the Milliput. There was something about it that was bugging me, and last night I realised what it was.

It's so not tall enough!

But not to worry. Tis but a trifle to correct.

 

UPDATE

I've extended the trunk of the tree and have fattened it up a bit. The tree looks much better now.

Still, if it looks good, it has be done!

 

TFL

Badder

 

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Later today I will be re-visiting Hobbycraft where I saw a paper punch which features a birthday cake motif. The bits that interest me are the flames on the three candles. They are leaf shaped. I don't know why I didn't fork out 3 quid at the time. Perhaps I thought the flames were a little bit too big, but the more I think about it the more I realise that it doesn't really matter. There ARE trees out there with very large leaves.

Ah, yes. I remember now why I didn't buy it. It's not because the flames are too large, it's because the flames are separate. I'd have to glue every leaf on individually. That could be running into the thousands..... so I put the punch back.

 

But now I'm thinking if it looks good, it will have to be done!

 

TFL

Badder

 

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Hi ,gone back to the beginning to see how you do your mould making ,just bought some liquid latex on ebay ,might have a go at making some models using Miniart kits .

Have you ever used the plaster buildings made by Fields of glory models ?.

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15 minutes ago, cocky05d said:

Hi ,gone back to the beginning to see how you do your mould making ,just bought some liquid latex on ebay ,might have a go at making some models using Miniart kits .

Have you ever used the plaster buildings made by Fields of glory models ?.

I don't know if you read some of my tips for making the moulds, so I'll just list them again.

1. Use plasticine or some other clay to build a 'wall' around the object you want to mould.

2. Pour only thin layers of latex and let every layer fully dry before pouring the next.

3. Don't be tempted to use heat to speed up the drying. A thin layer will dry pretty quickly on its own. Heat may cause the mould to shrink. I know my roof mould turned out 10 percent smaller than the original!

4. The more layers you pour, the better. Thicker moulds don't stretch, distort, bend, lift etc. They tend to stay flat and true to shape.

 

As for the FoG diorama accessories, no, I've not used any of their stuff. I've had a look at quite a few of them though. They aren't bad, but I find them a little quirky and slightly cartoony - there's a deliberate 'wonkiness' and 'quaintness' in the design of their buildings. They do have some excellent ideas for scenes though and make good reference material.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

 

 

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Just now, Ratch said:

I was expecting a wire-frame tree, but you continue to surprise

Having collected a fair bit of twiggery over the years, and having used real branches and twigs to make trees/bushes in the past, I don't feel it necessary to go to the extent of building an entire tree with wire.

However, I have the wire-cored Gardener's Twine and also some brass picture-hanging wire which I have used in the past to embellish and fill-out trees and bushes. I will definitely be using the twine to make the branches which will hold the majority of the leafy bits, and probably a bit of brass wire here and there.

 

I'm still pondering over the leaves though.

I think I'm going to have to try out two different methods and see which is best.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

 

 

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