Michael,
I'm not familiar with a Sitka spruce, but we had a spruce tree in the
front yard of my family home. It really didn't grow very much over the
years--probably 25' tall and maybe about 12' for a base diameter so you
are correct in that they also get fat.
However, the pine trees that we have down here as well as, my memory of
the trees in the Black Hills of South Dakota are probably in the 60'
range but they loose most of their lower branches so end up being fairly
narrow in width. They will grow 6-8' apart and a totally straight
12-24" trunk. We had two such trees in my front yard that were in the
20' range but the first 8-10 ' didn't have any branches anymore. They
were only 4-5 ' from each other. This is almost too close for a modeler
to get into with tools to plant. Hint...It's really easy to drill a
mess of holes and then loose them just as fast--use nails to mark the
spot immediately. It's also common to use a finish nail to embed into
the trunk for layout mounting--I used to do that. A much better method
is to use twisted wire. In this way you can bend that twisted wire to
conform to the terrain, while the nail will likely break away. All my
trees are made this way, so you can mount them on a fairly steep slope.
Additionally you can add extra wires to create exposed roots that are
very common in dense forests and on steep slopes. I'm learning that
process.
I photographed Jess's layout twice and we took a couple of walks in the
woods near his home. He pointed out trees that were very fat "first
growth", some with old fire damage and then the newer replacement 2nd
growth trees all within feet of each other. So that proves that trees
of different sizes can be together, while often the opposite is true
too. I didn't think anything was out of scale on his layout but he did
have some large trees, but most I would judge as being normal looking.
I know Arden and Lee Johnson have been up to Jess's layout many times
and they might have different opinions.
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
On 7/23/12 5:06 PM, Michael Eldridge wrote:
One other consideration: if you make them tall you need to also make
them wide. It looks like the foliage of even 100ft spruce would be a
foot in diameter in S Scale. If you're talking about Sitka spruce, and
you pick a not-so-tall 150ft, you might end up planting them two to
three feet apart. Not sure about a shelf: you could build half trees
against the backdrop, but a 150 ft tree would still extend 9 inches
into the scene.
Didn't Jess Bennett make scale sized trees? I heard every visitor said
they were too tall to be scale. I think we get used to certain
wrong-sized things on layouts, and then right sized things look odd.
This is down the road for me, but I think when I get to that corner
I'm going to start with some 100 foot trees and see how they look in
groups. I think more smaller trees might give a better impression than
fewer really tall ones.
-Michael Eldridge
-Half done sheetrocking the new room (that's drywall for you Eastern
roads)
--- In [email protected] <mailto:S-Scale%40yahoogroups.com>, Bob
Werre <bob@...> wrote:
> One thought is that if you're modeling trees you may want them to the
> height that Dave is talking about. This is ideal for the shelf type
> layout where the background is really close.
