My Tree Modeller (my Wife...) has just broken out her modelling gear for her Winter Project of Tree Building. She advises me that the "Flexi-Bark" containers are of no use as they are now solid, having been stored in the model room for the past 9 months. The lids were secure but the contents are 'beyond use'. Flexi-Bark is stated to be water soluble but I have not been able to revive the the contents. Has anyone else got any ideas of whether I am 'barking up the wrong tree' in thinking that I might be succesful? Googling in an attempt to find an answer has produced no applicable results... Cheers, Martin, retired in a sunny Central Portugal.
I also had the same result when I went back to some "Flexi Bark" paint I bought ages ago. I had used it to make some trees successfully but at the time I thought it smelled like household emulsion paint. Any way I thought as it had a kind of grit in it maybe it was a type of masonry paint so I've just googled flexible masonry paint and got loads of hits. At about £45 for 5ltrs its not cheap but 5ltrs of modelling paint is probably much much more expensive. This may not be of much help to you but if you've got some masonry paint perhaps trying that instead of flexibark. I know Greenscenes claim its water soluble but I reckon that just means it can be thinned down, if I'm right, and it is just repackaged masonry paint, it wouldn't be much good if it washed off when it rained . Cheer's, Pete. Just had a look at Greenscenes product, at £4.00 for 1/4 ltr , it works out at £16 a ltr, £80 5ltrs.....
Thanks jakesdad13 & StevePower, this is just the sort of information that I had hoped for... so it's off to the Builders Merchant's store in the morning and see what they have in small tins of the stuff, just to give it a try. I can hardly imagine GreenScenes formulating a special product. Pauline has been very successful with her tree making with Flexi-Bark and the several other products that she has tried have not given her the results that she wanted... I shall report back when we have given it a try out...
I use acrylic caulking (gap filler) for my trees and it works a treat as it is flexible. To give a bark texture to it, it can have fine saw dust sprinkled onto the wet caulk before painting. Cheers, Gary.
jakesdad... I found that I had actually got the remains of a 15l bucket of masonary paint from when we did some exterior renovation in the Summer. The spec. appears to be just what we need, so Pauline has tried it out this morning, it is a bit thinner than Flexi-Bark but when dry it has the flexibility we were looking for. From the 'feel' of the wall paint application there is quite a lot of 'grit' so it could be just fine. The paint is thicker at the bottom of the bucket so I shall 'recover' a litre or so and we shall play with that on a couple of more armatures. Much cheaper than anything else that we have read about!!! so very favourable, as I said above I shall report back - in due course...
Although I've not tried it, I would imagine that Silicone rubber sealant (from the Mastic gun type tubes) would work well in this situation. The 'cheapo' stuff (ie, non "Sanitary grade") which is around £1.39 a tube from our local 'cheap' shop, should do the job, applied from the gun tube and smoothing into place with an old paint brush. Even after setting, the branches would still be fairly flexible due to the nature of the silicone, so you would be able to tailor the branch armatures to suit a particular location within reason, and as it's available in several colours (grey/brown/white) it would look ok without need to colour further. Just a thought! Keith.
Pauline has 'trialed' several methods of tree building over the past couple of years, but has now settled on the use of 3mm Bowden Cable, cut to about 200mm long. A tree trunk starts with 3 or 4 lengths and hot-glued together for about 40mm. Then the bundles are deconstructed as necessary at various thicknesses to spread out for the branches. More hot-glue is applied to these 'branches to set them in to approximate position, tweaked and cut as required to form thinner branches. She thought that the use of a masonry paint might be a solution to locating a suitable flexible 'bark' and it has proved quite practical except that it needs several coats to produce a good finish. This morning I took photographs to show what she has done using this technique. Picture Tree01 shows a basic armature with some 'bark' applied; Picture Tree02 is of the next stage and Picture Tree03 shows a nearly completed tree, of no specific type almost ready to go down to the model room... Thanks to all for your previous comments Martin & Pauline Jackson, retired in Central Portugal...
Pauline has done a splendid job on that tree. What has she used for the finer branches in the last pic ?? To me it looks like teased out lichen.. Cheers, Gary.
Cheers Gary, Pauline showed me the product which was bought from a local garden centre here in Portugal. It was actually on the stand that was displaying 'floral art' items, it looked like other stuff that she had bought in UK, Woodland Scenics I think. Anyway it was labelled as a 'Box with moss', 350gms and cost €3.50, we reckon it is lichen. She uses it by selecting nearly right bits, teases it out and places it on a recently hot-glued branch, finally fixing it in place with odour-free hairspray. Not re-inventing the wheel but works for us... M & P
