Dried Flower Supplier For Tree Stock

Boone Morrison kindly shared his source for asparagus fern...and possibly my new source for Plumosa Fern that I use for cypress trees.

http://www.woodcreekdrieds.com/drieds.html

Another good dried plant to use is Ming Fern. It works great for evergreens.

http://weddingflowersofamerica.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=168

http://www.freshrosepetals.com/ming_fern_46_prd1.htm

These vendors are selling FRESH greenery, so you have to preserve it in a glycerin/water solution. Better to buy it dried.

Stumps Hot Out of the Oven!

The shop is so messy! I have got to get it cleaned up before Friday when the guys come over. When I cleaned up the scenery materials I found a lot of things that belonged in the shop so I just sat it on the counter. I did clean up the coffee materials.



Tubs and tubs of stuff everywhere. Maybe I'll get some time tomorrow to go pick up.

Here is my tree/stump carving station. It consists of a hardwood plywood base (cabinet grade, 1/4 inch) that has rounded and sanded corners. This gives me a stable working platform. The turntable is from Michaels and is heavy aluminum with bearings to it stays stable and spins very well. It is a lifesaver! I built a tool holder next to it for my carving tools, knives and the like. On top is a small stainless steel cup for holding balls of clay. So far it has worked very well. Mostly I take it upstairs so that Marie and I can chat and I can work. I also can watch the big TV.
I bought another set of carving tools today. This set was about $15. Frankly, I like my dental tools better. There are several repeat blades in this set and its not that great.
The stumps are moving right along. It takes about 20 minutes to carve one, including about five minutes to study the photograph and draw the design. Yes, I sketch out every one. This way I don't get duplicates and the detail is realistic. These are very tall stumps because about 1/2" of the stump is under water in the swamp.

Here is the carving table at work at the kitchen table. A large Coke, some all natural animal crackers from Trader Joe's and some Sculpey clay, and we're in business! I put a small piece of aluminum foil on the turntable (which is not mounted on the board, btw) and I begin to cut away anything that doesn't look like a cypress stump.


Here you can see the early shaping of the stump. The buttresses are smaller and more tapered on this model (from a picture of a real stump) and it will have more ridges. There are three types of cypress in the Okefenokee and the stumps are very different on each species.

The turntable is heavy and gives me a very stable work space. The top of the turntable is removable so that I can take it off and do very fine work up close.

My daughter is learning the hobby now at the ripe old age of four. Here she is learning how to paint. She's got a single alt brush and is practicing her fine moter skills. She is going to be GREAT! Fourth generation model train nut.

The first six stumps are ready for the toaster oven. I'll bake them for 40 minutes since they are quite thick. Its 15 minutes per 1/4". They are pretty and white now, but will come out brown and purple when done. I don't really care about the color as they will only be masters for the molding process. This is about a pound of Sculpey on this tray. I like a toaster oven better than our big kitchen oven. You can move it to the garage and get the fumes out of the kitchen, plus, it doesn't heat up the whole room which is a big consideration here in 96 degree Georgia. For some reason the fumes aren't as bad in a toaster oven anyway.

Here are all the new sculpting tools. Several are duplicates so I'll weed them out.

This is a more rounded and tapered stump. The loggers didn't want to cut through the thick buttress, so they would cut at the point where the tree tapered off. I start with a lump of Sculpey that has been THOROUGHLY kneeded to make it soft. Sculpey is hard as a rock and I'll take a ball with me while I drive in traffic or at the computer and squish it to get is soft and pliable. Then I'll make a rough shape just a bit larger than the finished stump and work it down with my fingers.

Here is the first dozen just out of the oven. They aren't a finished stump yet. I'll sand the bottoms perfectly flat for mounting and will remove the small clay balls that form from the wire brush. These match the photos perfectly!

Next week...we start the cypress knees!

Got a question or a comment? Post it here!

High Cutting Pine Stumps

From an On30 group I belong to...

Scott & group
Longleaf pines were often cut high off the ground also. The reason was that if they had been hacked for turpentine. The dried pine sap would form a hard surface where it was hacked and it would damge the sawblade. I own land in the sandhills of NC I have 6 longleaf pine stumps still standing that have the hacked area on them. I asked my grandfather about it when he was still living and he told that is what they did. He worked the turpentine stills as a boy and later operated several sawmill in the sand hills as well as in the swamps of eastern NC. He also told me of a practice of girdling the tree in late fall so the sap would not rise in the spring then they would cut the trees in late spring making the trees lighter in weight he said they did this to pine,cypress and eastern white cedar.

Alan Ashworth

Thanks, Alan! Yes, they did girdle the cypress trees. The tree would float in the water when they cut them.

Bill Neilson Updates Us on Stumps

The On30 people are just flat out awesome folks. Bill Neilson kindly gave this account regarding stumps....

(snip)

The following are the comments I tried to post:

Hi Scott,
My wife is an Everglades biologist who spends a great amount of time in Florida's Big Cypress Swamp doing field research related to the restoration of the Everglades, and she tells me that most of the remaining cypress stumps she sees in the field were cut quite high off the ground, many over 6 feet up. This is partly due to varying water depths depending on the season, but is also due to the shape of the tree closer to the ground. Cypress tree trunks tend to flare out dramatically near the ground, forming vertical ridges and valleys in the trunk's surface called "buttresses". These buttresses make the cut stump look like a multi-pointed star when viewed from above, and give the tree more support in the soft ground of the swamp. Because they are so deep, and steeply tapered, the buttresses actually get in the way during the cutting and milling process, so the loggers would cut the tree above the buttress, where the taper of the trunk was more like other types of trees (thus saving themselves a lot of extra cutting). It's also interesting to note that cypress trees tend to grow in groups, forming a large ring when viewed from the air. As the tree roots and knees collect floating debris and sand carried by the water currents, these cypress rings form an island, usually donut shaped, with deeper water in the "hole" of the donut, because there are no trees in the center of the ring due to the sun being blocked by the trees around the ring's perimeter. In the Everglades, these "tree islands" are scattered, and surrounded by sawgrass, making them easily visible from an airboat or highways (like I-75) that cross the swamp. Sometimes the tree islands will get high and dry enough to support other types of trees like pines and eventually palmettos, which need a dryer, sandier soil, although the concentration of these types of trees is much heavier on higher ground like Florida's sandy coastal ridges.

Regards,
Bill Nielsen
Ft. Lauderdale, FL USA

Stumpede! Carving Cypress Stumps

I built a carving station as I have about 120 carvings to make which include trees, stumps and knees for the swamp. Might as well have a good place to make them. I'll start with the stumps because when you are doing the big tree castings you often have a small amount of resin left. I'll take the remnant resin and pour it into a stump or knee mold so that none of it is wasted. Therefore, I need these molds ready before I start the trees.

Before I start carving there is a lot of prep work to be done. The first thing is to research what a real stump looks like. I surfed the web and came up with about 25 stump photos. The thing to keep in mind is what did the stump look like in the time period you were modeling? For me, I'm modeling 1920. The trees the loggers were felling were quite large, some over 12 feet in diameter. They would have been fresh cuts and mostly would have been cut off up high, then the stump cut with a saw. Most of the stump pictures I found on the web were old stumps that were cut about 80 years prior. So we'll have to improvise.

Once I have the pictures, I'll decide how many stumps to make. There is a list on this blog of the stumps and quantity. The first stumps will be the large foreground models, one dozen of them. After deciding the quantity, I then sketch each stump and give it a number so that I can reference the stump to the mold.

Nothing fancy, but it keeps me from making 12 stumps that all look identical. On the layout, each stump can be turned 60 degrees six times to give six different views. That makes 12 stumps turn into 72 different looking stumps.

I sat down last night and carved the first two out of Sculpy clay and left them on the table. Marie saw them and really like the look of the new stumps. I'll wait until I have all 12 and bake them. Then I'll pour the mold. Usually I'll wait until I have enough casting to mold before I order a 10 lb container of silicone molding compound, and then cast them all at once. So I'll wait until I have a set of knees and a few trees, then do them all at once.

By carving a stump or two per night, or a tree or some knees, we'll have the 120 units done in no time.

Marie was fussing at me about not being able to get the train expenses as a write off again. So I've agreed to sell the products I'm making for myself for a tax deduction. Look for Southern Scale Models to start business soon and you can have your own cypress stumps!

Introduction to the Okefenokee Railroad

Here is a hand slide show that can introduce you to the layout...

http://www.savefile.com/files/2090486

This is a free storage site, so don't pay for anything, just download the Powerpoint file and enjoy.


Its stored on www.savefile.com

Cypress Trees

I'm going to need trees very quickly so I have to start producing the molds. People are already trying to buy them from me and I haven't talked much about them yet. Here is my outline for the trees:

Cypress Trees Analysis
Series	Inches from Front	Size	Quantity	Detail	Height Inches Low	Height Inches High	Part Numbers
1100	6	Large	5	High	12	14	1101-1105
1150	12	Medium	9	High	11	13	1151-1159
1200	18	Medium	9	Medium	10	12	1201-1209
1250	24	Small	10	Low	9	11	1251-1260
1300	Backdrop	Small	3	Low	9	10	1301-1303
			36
Knees
Level	Inches from Front	Size	Quantity	Detail	Height Inches Low	Height Inches High	Set Part Numbers
1350	6	Large	2 Dozen	High	2	4	1351-1352
1400	12	Medium	2 Dozen	Medium	1	3	1401-1402
1450	18+	Small	2 Dozen	Low	1	2	1451-1452
Stumps
Level	Inches from Front	Size	Quantity	Detail	Height Inches Low	Height Inches High	Part Numbers
1500	6	Large	12	High	2	4	1501-1512
1550	12	Medium	12	Medium	1	3	1551-1562
1600	18+	Small	12	Low	1	2	1601-1612
Mold Casings
33	Halves
Total Molds
1 piece	13
2 piece	33
	46