Creating Scale Leaves with Ed Styles
Lou SassiDescription
Ed Styles, member of the Western Hoosic Division’s Lou Sassi’s Tree Group talks creating scale ground cover leaves in this video. Ed uses real dried leaves picked around fall time. He dries them and removes any big stems from the leaves so they are easier to work with. Next he puts them in a blender to grind up the leaves in order to turn them into a scale size. The blender is filled half full with tap water and he usually adds about three handfuls of leaves.
Ed has the blender set on a fairly high speed; the frappe setting works the best. Using a power switch to turn on and off the blender will prevent wear and tear on the switch of the blender. The next step is to run this material through a strainer to separate the leaves from the water. The result is dumped into a t-shirt and he squeezes the water from the leaves.
The leaves are spread back over a cookie sheet. Ed dries them in an oven at 250 degrees with the door left partially open to allow the moisture to escape. Then the leaves are sifted in a strainer to get the final leaves that will be used on the layout. These fine leaves will look very realistic in a model railroad scene. For more tips on making ground cover with leaves, or creating scenery from nature, visit the Model Railroad Academy website.
We use, actually, dried leaves that are acquired around the fall and dry them, so they're easy to work with. If you have any leaves that have large stems on them we break them off prior to putting them in the blender. We use a blender to grind these leaves up so that they end up being at a scale size. We use tap water, fill the blender approximately half full. I usually put about three handfuls of leaves into the blender. We have the blender set at a fairly high speed on the switch here, it's set at prep A, that works better in processing the leaves. We use a power strip to prevent wear and tear on the switch of the blender. The next step is to take the blended-up material and run it through a strainer so that you get the material for the leaves and remove it from the water. Once we've strained the leaves, we dump them into a t-shirt, and the t-shirt serves as a means of removing the rest of the water from the mash. And you take the t-shirt material and you squeeze it, squeeze the water out of the mesh and open up the t-shirt, and we spread it over onto a cookie sheet. And this is for drying. Okay, these are leaves that have been dried in an oven at approximately 250 degrees with the door left open, partially open, to allow the moisture to escape. The dried leaves are then placed in a strainer and you sift the strainer to get the actual leaves that we use on the layout. These leaves look very realistic when they're placed in the scene.
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