Can anybody give me any suggestions on building a 14 inch high by 3 foot wide rocky cliff?
Doug57
Here is a nice how-to video:
Ulrich:
Thanks for the video! Great tutorial.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
DAve - it is a great tutorial. I have tried the techniques shown in it and they work! What I would not do (and did not when I made my rocks) is to use rattle cans for coloring. I went for dry-brushing which is less odorous and minimizes the danger of overspraying.
You should take a look at Bragdon foam. This is a two-part chemical mix that produces a very light but strong casting. It sets up hard, but you can soften it enough to bend with a hair dryer if necessary.
www.bragdonent.com
This is a small section on my layout.
I did this with both the Bragdon foam and one of their molds. The molds are very finely detailed. The foam itself takes detail better than plaster castings. Another attractive thing about the Bragdon molds is that many of them are quite large, so you can cover large areas like the one you're planning fairly easily. At the same time, the finished castings are easy to cut, so you can easily break them up so you don't get a repetitive pattern.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
At a scenery clinic, the presentor mentioned using ceiling tile for rock faces. He stacked a few tiles, scored them and stacked them on top to create a rock face. Since no tile splits the same, the look is quite realistic.
For mountain faces, I cut unwanted foam and paint it with cheap craft paint. While more time consuming than spray paint, I don't have the odor or time lost in taking the rock faces in an opean-air area.
Ceiling tile makes convincing sedimentary rock. Igneous rock (granite) requires other methods. To model Manhattan Schist as it usually appears around New York City, trowel your stiff plaster to a relatively planar near-vertical, then use a coarse comb and straightedge to scribe lines about 18 scale inches apart from bottom to top.
Why so close? Shot holes. It takes a lot of explosive to crack that natural ceramic armor!
As for finding the 'look' you (the guy in your socks) are trying to achieve, either visit a suitable cliff face or hunt through the photos that Google digs up for your key words.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - lots of igneous rock)
Depending on what type of rock you are planning to model, this might work.
I made a large, curved rock cut by crumpling a sheet of 18", heavy duty aluminium foil and Sculptamold. You could make several pieces and blend them together with more Sculptamold to get the length you need.
First I crumpled the foil, then spread it out, not trying to smooth the wrinkles. I turned about 1/2" up around the edges. Mixed the Sculptamold, maybe on the thin side and placed it in the mold. After it began to set up I stood it up and pressed against a foam base, let it set up before removing the foil. Make several of these and place them next to each other and fill between with more Sculptamold.
A fairly fast method and the surface is easy to use stains or paint once it's dry.
Just the method I used.
Good luck,
Richard
Check out the video in the post "Hi! I´m new here. Posting a EMD F7 photo from my layout." in General Discussion.
Virtually RTR rocks:http://www.cripplebush.net/
These are really good if you need the thin and/or removeable as part of a liftout.
You can hot glue them to all kinds of stuff. I made an armature out of foam, then blended the edges of the Ribber Rocks in with Sculptamold. The two liftouts in this scene are 3' and 6' long roughly and are very lightweight. I think I used three different choices from the varied menu of choices. They come with basic coloring, but then take washes, paint, whatever.,
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL