Joe Fugate's scenery plaster mixture, Swedish edition (step by step with pictures)

I decided to try Joe Fugate's scenery plaster mixture and this is what I came up with.

I live in Sweden and the hard part for me was to find the right material. After many questions and a lot of thinking I found similar products here in Sweden. Not that easy but I did it. And I want to share it with you all, if it happens to be a Swede listening [:D]

Where did I get the material?

Vermiculite 1-2 mm, use 1 mm if you can find it. What a nightmare!

http://www.althea.se

It cost around 1-2 USD for 1 litre (10 SEK/liter) and looks like this.






Patching plaster. I found it at a wellknown store called COOP.

http://www.coop.se

It cost around 11-12 USD for 5 kg (89 SEK för 5 kg, kallas gipsbruk, danogips) and looks like this.






Cement, also found at COOP. It cost around 5-6 USD for 25 kg (45 SEK för 25 kg) and looks like this.






How do you mix it?

First of all, protect your eyes, you don't want plaster or cement powder in your eyes!

Use 4 parts of vermiculite, 3 parts of patching plaster and 1 part cement.



I don't know what this is called in english (scoop?), but I used it, and it worked.



Put the vermiculite, patching plaster and cement in a plastic box and shake well for a minute or two.



Mix it with 3-4 parts of water. You must try this out yourself. All I can say is that you want it thin, but not so thin that it drips. For me 3 and a half part of water was the right mix. If it runs, its too thin. Experiment!






How do you use it?

You can for example use cardboard strips (with 2" masking tape to fill the holes) as the scenery base. I found masking tape at Överskottsbolaget.

http://www.overskottsbolaget.se

Masking tape cost around 3-4 USD for 50 meters. (Maskerings tape 27 SEK för 50 meter) and looks like this.



Use a putty knife (also Överskottsbolaget, cost 1 USD) to spread it out in a 5 mm thick layer. After 2 hours you can make another layer, also 5 mm thick.



After the mix is nearly dry it looks like this.



Closeup inside the dry mix.






Conclusion

I really like the mix so far, even if I have not tried it on my layout yet. It's easy to mix, work with, I'm looking forward to do the rest.




What's the next step?

This is what I have done so far, if you want to read the rest. Go to this url.

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=32122

A BIG thank you to Joe Fugate for great thinking and lots of inspiration.




Must tell you all about the cement. It's so funny [:D] Me and my son went to COOP to buy some candy. And there it was, cement! I decided to take it home on my bicycle because I had no car with me. Everything was going great, it took about 45 minutes to walk home. After 20 minutes it started to rain, heavy raining!!! And you all know what happens to cement when it mixes with water, PANIC!!! [banghead] But I was lucky that day. The paper bag around the cement was thick and it was still cement powder when I got home. [:D][:D][:D]