H i Reggie ! Yes, & years ago I got some from a fellow for grass, & all he did was put it in a nylon stocking or such & dyed it green with Ritt dye. That should be a pretty inexpensive way to go !
Thanks, John
Home of the K.I.S.S. Railroad
I think you can get Rit Dye at most super markets. Now to get different shades, you would have to experiment with maybe, the amount of dye you use or add another color of dye to get what you need. Probably also have to experiment with nylon stockings or some sort of little metal container with some small holes in it ! Could be a fun project !
Using sawdust is something that I've always known about but quite never figured out, in my mind that is, how to dye it.
I like the hosiery tip. Now all I gotta do is find me a girl willing to give me hers (hmmmm).
John, great lesson you just gave there!!!
QUESTION: Doesn't it all stick together when it dries though? That's the part that I haven't be able to get past. Even if you spread it out to dry it would seem that it will still clump together.
Can someone offer some comments on that aspect of doing it?
thanks - walt
Walt, I'll be right back with a picture !! I still have 1 bottle of the stuff left !!
Well, here it is, kind of hard to get a good picture for me, but I think you can make it out. I hope !!
I put a ruler next to it.
Here's another one.
I know when I glued it down a long time ago, then went to get it up, I really had to scrape !
I have used sawdust as scenery 'dust'. First I tried dying it, this was a royal pain. It clumps up, takes ages to dry and doesnt dye consistently, also you get a lot of chunks in it.
Next I tried sifting it with a flour sieve to get a consistent size and lose the lumps. This was also a royal pain because it took forever and I still had the dying and drying to deal with plus dust gets everywhere.
The most sucessful scheme, for me, was to apply it to the still wet scenery as a way of absorbing the extra glue and finally to use spray paints to simply color the surface. This works well and the only snag is if you knock it, it 'scars' and reveals the plain sawdust under the thin skin of paint. However this way of painting sawdust would only work if you made your contours the way I did, which isn't a popular method I suspect.
I have tried them all, wooden blocks, plaster impregnated cloth, chicken wire, screening etc but what I prefer is to use cardboard and paper, newspaper or paper towel.
VERY IMPORTANT! FIRST MASK YOUR RAILS WITH PLASTIC SHEET! USE MASKING TAPE TO ENSURE NOTHING CREEPS UNDER THE PLASTIC!
I make up cardboard verticals spaced about six inches apart. These are the basic contours. I hot glue these down fairly sloppily because they only have to provide temporary support for the following hard shell. Next I connect them with criss cross strips of thin card like cereal boxes and shirt stiffeners hotglued to the verticals. Finally I take sheets of newspaper torn into fairly big pieces, about hand sized, then quickly dip them into a mixture of white glue and water (about 80/20) and lay them over the criss crossing until the subframes and gaps are all covered. Don't put too much on, keep it as thin as you can, leave it for about 24 hours and at summer temps it should be dry. You now have a fairly ugly looking thin shell which is surprisingly strong already!
The way the wet newsprint sags and lays is usually more 'realistic' than you would ever get trying to get that deliberately. The steeper the slopes the more likely the paper is to wrinkle a bit and even look sort of 'rockish', the way I see it, you're more or less mimicking what really happens as earth gradually builds up and vegetation covers the subsurface. So don't try too hard to make it behave, let it do its own thing.
White glue gets pretty expensive to use in gallon lots, so I usually switch to using plain old cheap emulsion paint. First I slop on a ground coat of brownish yellow using a very heavy hand so theres puddles everywhere on the shell. I might add more paper to modify the general shape if I need to or if not, this is where I drop the sawdust on. Be heavy handed. Let it dry for however long it takes, usually a weekend, till its really solid. Use a shop vac to suck up all the stuff that didnt stick.
Now for the final touch. You've probably got a fairly interesting texture with lumpy bits and balding bits. You might want to smooth it out a bit or fill it up a bit, here and there. Gently, using that flour sieve or a tea strainer, sift sawdust over those bits and anywhere else you want to, try and keep it as thin as possible. Now spray it with a Windex type trigger spray using a mixture of white glue, water and dish washing soap liquid. About 70/30 plus three or four drops, shake it well. This is the final 'skin' to keep it all stable, try not to soak it too much, its only to make that last coat lie still.
Once dry you get your final colors with rattle can sprays. It doesnt take much, you can spray from at least a foot away using sweeping strokes. Watch it though, this stuff floats onto anything especially if its holding a static charge, you might need to move in closer if that happens. Another reason why you mask the rails with plastic sheet.
Stand back and admire the effect, anywhere where you want fissures, cracks, use some matt black or dark brown to accentuate the shadows. Dips and hollows in the grassy areas will look deeper if given a slightly darker shade, hilltops get a slightly lighter green. Grass isnt 'green' its a mixture of shades. You want at least two or three dark brown/ yellow ochres and at least three shades of green, use these sparingly and overlay them, it takes a little practice, you're using an Impressionist painting technique.
Thats basically it. Your results may vary! Meaning you might want a thicker shell but this stuff is surprisingly tough, fast and cheap compared to those other methods where you end up with cement bunkers! Its easy to modify too and not heartbreaking because it didnt cost much.
Thor, what you describe is strikingly similar to what I did as a kid, about 50 years ago. Mine was even simpler: I made sandwiches of flour-water glue and two sheets of newspaper, then draped them over a temporary assemblage of boxes and other objects with the rough shape that I wanted. When it dried, I replaced the junk underneath with an occasional wood-stick prop where it wanted to sag. As you say, it formed all sorts of natural-looking wrinkles and bumps as it dried.
If I ever get to the point of putting scenery on my present layout, the first thing I'll try is that same technique.
Bob Nelson
Thanks for the replies back. Appreciated.
- walt
I agree about what was said about the different types of sawdust for different areas ex: a lawn vs. a field. Reggie keep the different types seperate. I like to use foam board that way you can take it outside easier and spray it with paint or spray adhesive then sprinkle the sawdust on it and it will stick shake off the excess and do as many coats as you want. You can do it in sections assemble the foam board with the hot glue on your platform then pull the sections apart and take them outside. Spray whatever you want (foamboard, cardboard, plaster) then put the sawdust on and it will stick. when you spray your final coat of paint use green straight down on top of it for the grassy/weedy look and spray from the side of your creation (verticall edges) brown or grey for the rocky areas that may have been dynomited for your rail line to pass though.
I mentioned on the coffepot that I use golden rod its a weed that keeps its weedy foolage and spray paint it and add the sawdust while its wet it acts like glue or use spray adhesive from "3M" that works great if you cant get cheap spray paint. then spray it the shade you want. and stuff it into the foam board or drill a hole in your platform and put it in there you can do a whole forest of them side by side for the cost of the spray paint!
Have not used sawdust for scenery, have used saw dust inside quad hoppers and put a cardboard cover over and add some small rocks for detail. Looks like the real thing when pulling a load of coal hoppers.
Lee
speaking of quad hoppers,
take a piece of aluminum foil, crumple it up, then stretch it out, and cut out the size of roughly the inside of the hopper (a little bit bigger) spray paint it black and poof a coal load! light weight and the most important NO MESS! I remember the day back in say 1989-90 one of those years i convinced dad to break down and buy real coal loads. One trip around the track a little too fast and wham 4 quad hoppers full of coal on the inside of the bend.. (Youll note that same coal is on display at the base of the coaling tower)
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
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