My drill-spun, floral-wire & ground foam pines are anything but groundbreaking (I even use a T-pin in the foam for planting), but I thought I'd share my "pining away" process anyway. With all the packaged pines in the LHS, even I forget that decent-looking trees can be built on a budget.  These are for my N-scale Mt. Coffin & Columbia River layout, but other scales can use the same technique as well.

Using green floral wire (got mine at Michaels), cut pairs of 3”-4” lengths. Trees will end up about ½” shorter than length cut. Ten trees will take about an hour (not including drying time).



Insert one pair into the bit of a variable-speed drill about ¼” deep. Secure. With flat-nose pliers, hold wire about 1”away from drill. Slowly spin drill to create trunk.




Lift one wire up, and place the other in a shallow groove cut out from a piece of wood that is of level height to the drill (mine is two 1”x2”s stacked on top of each other, bound with tape, and placed on a piece of 1/8”masonite to reach drill height: not elegant by far, but gets job done).

Note: for 10-20 trees, any jig made out of wood-scrap will suffice. As I roll past the 150 tree mark (on the way to 300-400), I should have set up a better jig: multiple parallel grooves on aboard with tapered width, for various tree heights to allow the tops of the wires to extend past the jig for easier access for the pliers.

Cut ¾”-1” sections of green twine (Ace Hardware). The twine is three bundles of strands. Take one bundle section and “fluff” each end while holding on to the other end: the twine seems to stick at the ends, and“fluffing” (lightly pulling away stray fibers), will help spread the fibers out to create individual branches.




Keeping the fibers vertical in your fingers, gently separate the fibers horizontally. Then layout the spread fibers on top of the floral wire resting in the jig, keeping the wire centered. The fibers should be thinly spread, and perpendicular to the wire.


 

Lower the top wire to sandwich the fibers and use the flat-nose pliers to pinch & hold the two wire ends together. Lift slightly (watch out the fibers don’t fall out!) and push the wood jig out of the way. SLOWLY spin the drill, until there is an even twist to the whole tree. Some fibers might bind up, but that’s okie dokie.



Remove from drill. Hold by bottom, and use scissors to cut stray fibers into desired shape. You might need to use tweezers or a pin to unbind some fibers, or to straighten others out.



Place in clothespin. Spraypaint with Grimy Black (or other dark / medium grey), especially at the bottom and top of trunk. Let dry.

***Notice: twisted wire will still be visible through the paint. For the mass of interior trees, this is fine. For more detailed foreground trees, coat the bottom trunk with a mixture of white glue & sawdust, or a wee bit o’ putty, or whatever to give a bit of thickness & non-twisted-wire texture, let dry, and then paint.

In a well ventilated but non-windy area (such as an open garage on a calm day), spray the fibers liberally with hair spray (extra hold, on sale at the drugstore), until white beads appear.

 

Over a wide pan (that no significant other will ever use again), sprinkle Woodland Scenics “Conifer” coarse ground foam over the whole tree. Pile it on, cover it good. You can use your hand sprinkle and pat the foam on the trees, but I’ve noticed a distinct improvement in texture when I just shake it from the canister (lid off).



Hold the clothespin in one hand while the other taps it firmly right where it pinches the trunk. This should rid the green blob of excess foliage, and reveal a lovely, airy pine tree.




Should you want a pine with thicker foliage, sprinkle a little dark green static grass on before you add the conifer coarse ground foam (I said “a little”: too much makes for a very fuzzy Dr. Seuss tree!).

Shoot it with a few light sprays of hairspray, then place down to dry (overnight recommended).


Here’s a finished batch of 10:



To install your trees, push a T-pin into the base foam (or plaster shell) to create a hole for the tree. Leave the pin in the ground until you’ve brought the tree to the spot, as the N-scale gophers seem to coverup the spot & create many misleading pseudo-holes all around the same area. Using tweezers, insert the wire trunk into the foam. Voila! If you don’t wiggle the T-pin or the tree around, you do not need to secure with glue. This will allow repositioning & replacing with an improved model that much easier.



Try trees of various heights, with no ground foam on the lower branches (many pines have dead branches at the bottom), or with different foliage. Timberline Scenery’s “Deep Forest Floor” ground foam makes for a good “dead pine” look. I’ve tried a bunch of different foams, but I keep coming back to WS “Conifer”. Whatever looks good to you, and in relation to the other trees on the layout!


 

[Only have a couple hundred more to go in this scene!]

Here's some various textures I've tried:



From left to right: WS Conifer only, WS Conifer on WS Dark Green Static Grass, WS Dark Green Static Grass only, WS Green Blend on WS Conifer, & WS Green Blend only

And a side by side of the WS Conifer on top of WS Dark Green Static Grass & the WS Conifer only:



As you can see, dropping a little static grass in there produces a much fuller tree, but you do run the risk of the static grass clumping a little (see the upper left "branch").

I find putting the fuller trees in the middle, and the airier trees towards the viewer creates a good effect: denser forest with less trees.

And for me, as my trees act as a partial viewblock, I can control the see-through-it-ness over the mountain by which density trees I plant on the ridge.   

Have fun seeing the trees for the forest!