I’m trying to secure ground cover to a hill that I made and some of the sides are vertical and I am having difficulty getting it to stay.
I can sprinkle it on the top of the hill but the edges gravity takes it to the bottom and it won’t stick on the side.
I’ve tried painting the hill so it may grab, using scenic cement to secure it before sprinkling it, as well as mixing ground cover with glue for it to stay, and none of them seem to work out right.
Has anyone had any success with anything I haven’t tried yet?
Search on the word “vertical” and you’ll find some prior threads on this. One method I used was to cover the surface with beige tile adhesive (it’s cheap, thick and easy to work with). Then cover the area with clumb foilage. Hold the clump foilage to the hillside with screen and weights until it dries.
Here’s a couple of shots:
Afterwards, before cleanup:
With some structures:
For a weight I just used a 1’x1’ 3/4" piece of particle board and leaned it against the screen. If any clump foilage doesn’t stick or comes off when you remove the screen, just dip it in the adhesive and stick it back in the hole where it came out of.
Another thought: Instead of trying to apply ground cover, use rock mold castings to define a cut or a sharp cliff. If you used a stratified rock mold, then you’d be able to drop ground foam which would catch in the strata and show plant-life struggling amid the rocks. Both WS and Bragdon make excellent rock molds and you can use either Hydrocal or Sculptamold for the castings.
Hi dale8chevyss: IMHO, it depends on what type of ground cover you’re trying to apply. Fine or med foam, clump foam, etc? For fine or med ground foam, I apply full strength white glue and blow it on from a piece of cardboard folded into a V. If it’s clump, I’ve found hot glue works. For mesh type, I’ve used dots of Hobby Tack and just stick it on. Vertical clump with hot glue. Vertical with blown on ground cover and mesh (WS foliage). .
Vertical sections are usually rock cliffs or stone retaining walls. These are usually cast plaster items. Or cast in place. It is also possible to use clump foliage glued in place as explained already. Fine ground foam is not appropriate for vertical scenery. Just look at nature. That is what we as model railroaders are trying to emulate.
However, if you do want to put fine ground foam on a vertical surface, paint the area with latex paint, then blow the ground foam on to it. To do this, take an index card and fold it in half along the long axis to make a V. Put some fine ground foam in it. Now blow gently into the V of the index card starting from the front (farthest away from you) with the card pointing to the area that you want to cover, and work to the back. Don’t blow straight down into the card, but blow forward. You could also use a straw to blow through. Anyway, work your way back into the V, blowing as you go, and pick up more material. The ground foam should be blown toward the vertical surface of wet paint or glue. The paint or glue has to be wet for the ground foam to stick, so you might have to paint small sections at a time, about one foot square.
The branch structure can also be pieces of super trees - tried these too and a bit more effective as you can cover larger areas at a time. I used hot glue, but super glue can also be used.
Jeff, great pictures. Thats a pretty good idea you have there.
I don’t mean to threadjack, but is there like, a minimum acceptable… mountain angle? There was some GMR or MRP or something where the last page talked about stair-step scenery, and how its ugly and how you could fix it by adding cuts and fills. Anyway, I have a situation where I have an 8" difference between track heights. Its in a tight space, and I’ve been wrestling with how steep to make the hillside, because I need to scenic it with some rock castings and ground foam/clump foliage and some trees, if possible. Should I have a minimum of like, one inch depth movement for ever 3 inches of elevation, etc?
Great question. “Real” mountains vary in steepness with more rock showing as they become more vertical. Compression works pretty well.
This is about 1-1/2" in seven:
and this one 1 inch in eight:
The mountain laurel is just green polyfiber with a dusting of white fine foam. Polyfiber with a couple of shades of green foam might work for treetops too.
All the suggestions for adhesive sound pretty good; I’ve used full-strength white glue spread thinly onto vertical or near-vertical cliffs (if it goes on too heavily, it flows to the bottom). One trick I’ve found that is hard to beat for blowing ground foam and other fine material onto a vertical (or any other) scenery surface is making a simple “air brush” out of a plastic medicine bottle (the kind pills come in). A baby food jar also works. Punch two small holes in the top, and then insert two lengths of plastic tubing like you would use for the air system on an aquarium (almost any hardware store will have it). Use a section about two feet long - that goes in your mouth - and a section about three inches long - that is the “nozzle” that sprays ground cover on the surface coated with glue. By varying your mix of find ground cover material, your distance from the surface, and how hard you blow, you can get just about any effect you want, and can cover an amazing large area in a short time.
Another trick I picked up from the Dave Frary’s videos for fine ground cover on vertical surfaces is to add the ground cover to a mix of 50/50 matte medium and water in a bowl. Then squeeze out the excess and apply to the surface. I’ve done this on a few surfaces. If you work in small sections (i.e 4" x 4" or so) it will hold to an almost sheer vertical surface. It is also nice if you are trying to apply to a rock face or in a crevass.
Generally, mountains flatten near the crown and next to the stream or river that drains the area. The steepest part is halfway up the mountain, and that rarely gets steeper than 45 degrees.
Cliffs and vertical sections are usually much smaller areas, "local’ terrain, it’s pretty unusual to find a mountain face that is vertical all the way up, except in a few mountain ranges where the orography (mountain building processes) creates vertical faces.
Loose rock and soil faces steeper than 45 degrees are pretty rare. Usually only solid rock will get steeper than that. There’s a natural angle of repose for loose materials, and all the loose slopes in one general area will be no steeper than this angle except in small localized areas.
Vegetation in the very steep and vertical areas usually begins on the flatter surfaces, where small particulates and organic material can collect to support plant life. Running vines and creepers can, in some instances, overgrow and extend down vertical faces, there’by covering an entire vertical wall, but this is pretty unusual.
Best bet is always to find photographs of terrain representative of what you want to model, then work from those. Remember that in photographs and in person, large terrain features always look much steeper, face on, that they actually measure.
Vertical with blown on ground cover and mesh (WS foliage). 
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