Rob’s been back in touch, this time with an excellent tutorial on model train bushes:
“Hi Al,
I decided to try my hand at making bushes and shrubs. I have made trees and planted grasses, but now I think I will round things out.
Over the years, I have spent a good bit of my hard-earned money buying bushes from online sources and decided there must be a better way. While researching, I discovered that several folks had had good luck using manilla or hemp rope. I decided to try it.
I found that I could buy a huge quantity of this rope at my local big-box home store for next to nothing (100 feet for $5US). This is a lifetime supply of the stuff.
I found that cutting the rope into small sections of 20-25 mm (3/4 to 1 inch) seemed to work the best. I found handling anything smaller than that problematic with my fat fingers.
One can always trim the final bush to whatever size is desired after they are plunked into the hot glue and it has set up.
Foliage for these bushes can be commercial ground scatter, like you can get from Woodland Scenics, painted sawdust, or paper leaves, as I used in the video. I got my paper leaves from two different hobby stores and Amazon.
For the glue, I used Matt Medium, an artist’s product you can get at art stores or from Amazon. It dries to an invisible thin layer that is very stable over long periods, many decades.
The waxed paper I used was very thin and did not have much wax on it. A better quality waxed paper would be better, but I just did not have any.
A big thanks to Rob for sharing his model train bushes step-by-step.
You can see his excellent tutorial on trees here: Making trees model railroad.
And there’s Bill’s too:
John also did a fabulous scenery ‘how to’ on making a bramble or overgrown area for your layout.
That’s all for this time folks.
Please do keep ’em coming.
And if today is the day you press the fun button and get started, the Beginner’s Guide is here.
Best
Al
PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.
PPS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.
Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.
Hey Dean, thanks for sharing. Love the video and a great tutorial. Love the idea of using rope. Never thought of that. I will give that a shot on my next production run of small bushes. Thanks again.
I know of using twine for bushes, but the use of hot glue base was like a huge light bulb in my mind. What great tip.
Rob: Thank you for sharing your technique for constructing bushes. You are definitely on to something. I especially like your use of the hemp rope as a base material, it is perfect for scaling the height and width of a bush for a variety of uses.
John Hauser
I agree with you Rob, it is cheaper making your own brush. There are many ways to making your own brush and bushes. Thank you for sharing.
Rob, this video was great. I am going to make some of these bushes for my layout.
Thanks for posting.