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Thanks, Rick & Jerry.
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Bruce -
I wonder about using a hot glue pot like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Crafting-Elec.../dp/B09X2ZTRH9 instead of the gun. It would be just "dip and go", right?
daveModeling 1890s (because the voices in my head told me to)Comment
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I wanted a catalog of the Woodland Scenics and Scenic Express turf/foam colors. I hope others find this useful.
Modeling 1890s (because the voices in my head told me to)Comment
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Ground goop: The recipes I've seen mostly call for Celluclay. Is Sculptamold a good alternative? Has anyone actively compared these two ingredients for ground goop?
daveModeling 1890s (because the voices in my head told me to)Comment
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Dave,
For the past 12 years I've used a product called Fusion Fiber. You just add water to it and mix in a color of your choice. You don't have to add a color you can just mix it white and paint later.
When I did the Little Saint John's River basin, I mixed Woodland Scenics green on one side earth on the other.
I don't get an kick back from Fusion Fiber but I highly recommend the product.
The difference between the almost right word and the right is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.Comment
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I tried using air-dry clay to fill in the gaps behind the plastic rock casting. That didn't work as well as expected, probably because my air-dry clay is so old. But it filled it enough for my ground goop plaster to fill in:
I'll need to work over the color (making it a bit more grey) when I do the rest of the rough scenery over the plaster cloth.
Bill Gill pointed me to his great article in Nov 2020 RMC on using Sculptamold. That's a good resource.
daveModeling 1890s (because the voices in my head told me to)Comment
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Dave,
The clay looks like it worked well enough to hold up ground foam, etc.
I've used Sculptamold and similar products to smooth out my scenery base and works just fine with a bit of practice. But I'm not sure how well it works as a substitute for Celluclay in "ground goop."
I can't remember from earlier posts of yours: Do you have a particular color you use as a base paint before adding ground color?
Mike_________________________________________________
I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now Bob DylanComment
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This got posted over on the MHR forums, and is worth sharing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C20srJd6mhQ The pine trees are a variation on the "twisted wire armature" approach for bottle brush trees, but using yarn. The result looks very good. The front-of-layout birches weave together wires into an aperture, adding wires along the branches. The use of various lengths of static grass before adding the leafs also works well.
daveLast edited by deemery; 12-02-2023, 10:41 AM.Modeling 1890s (because the voices in my head told me to)Comment
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The last couple of days I've been pondering/obsessing over dirt roads. (No asphalt paving in the 1890s :-) ) I think I have an approach, but I wonder what to use for making wheel tracks. A Jordan or Berkshire Valley kit is too fragile to drag through the plaster. Anyone got a suggestion?
daveModeling 1890s (because the voices in my head told me to)Comment
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Dave, I think we over think this. We know that vehicles evenly spaced as they move along. However when one looks at photos of pre-auto dirt roads you see tracks everywhere that seem to have no relationship to each other. Modern bridle paths are similar. In them you don't see the tracks of a lone horse. You see a thousand mold hills.
Bob
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How about a pair of small washers on a dowel "axle"? Or, if you're going to drag the wheels you could temporarily superglue a pair of pennies to a scrap wood spacer.Last edited by Bill_Gill; 12-04-2023, 08:23 AM.Comment
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Dave,
Harold Minky had an article in one of the magazines on making dirt roads; it's been a while. It looked pretty good.
Here's a summary: http://mrhpub.com/2013-05-may/port/f...ex.html#page32
Mike_________________________________________________
I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now Bob DylanComment
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Dirt road behavior depends a lot on traffic, how the road was built and how it's maintained. On a road earning any significant money for an entity (town, business, local farmers), a team pulling a grader would show up when it got at all difficult. Towns would dig small gravel pits near wet spots and use them to fill as necessary, paying the pit owner.
In the Northeast US, by 1890 most roads would have been in use a hundred or more years so trouble spots would be infrequent. If I was modeling Essex County, MA in that era, the roads would be 200 years old: I'd limit my ruts to a few on the shoulders of roads, and limit mud holes to by the gates into farm fields and paddocks. Maybe road conditions would be worse in the mountains by your quarry, but still problems would be directly coupled to lost money. Substantial stone mill buildings say "Long-term investment".. Gimcrak sawmills, by contrast, say "we'll have cut everything and left before that rots".
JamesComment
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Ground Goop question for Bruce and others: The recipes call for vermiculite, and perlite seems to be an acceptable substitute. The bags of vermiculite/perlite I've gotten have pretty big chunks in them. Do you-all screen the vermiculite/perlite, or do you accept the big chunks as "a feature?" (I have a blender to reduce the perlite, but darned if I can find it! I've been screening the perlite through my graduated sieves, and when I find my blender, I'll reduce the big chunks.)
daveModeling 1890s (because the voices in my head told me to)Comment
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