I am to the point of doing scenery on my layout. The base of my layout is covered with 1" foam insulation in which I have carved gullies, rivers and such. I have built foam insulation mountains out of 2" foam, as well as low hills and undulations with newspaper covered with masking tape. I am about halfway finished with plaster gauze application. It is a fairly large N scale of a C&O operation in Appalachia. My question…My original intention was to follow the plaster gauze application with a few coats of earth color latex to fill the pores of the gauze and then move on to rock castings and ground cover which will include electrostatic grass and lots of puff-ball trees. However, I have been reading about Ground Goop and was thinking about using it instead of the latex paint to fill the pores in the gauze. Although none of the articles I have read specifically say so, I am beginning to get the impression that Ground Goop is for direct filling and contouring of the foam features in lieu of using plaster gauze. Should I forget about the Ground Goop and proceed with the latex paint or will it still be worth my while in terms of the final effect to add the Ground Goop on top of the plaster gauze?
Applying latex paint to cover the pores in the plaster gauze may work somewhat but will not give you a very satisfactory result. Covering with a thin layer of plaster, sculptamold, etc will be much better and give you more satisfying results. I’m not that familiar with ground goop but from what I have seen described here and other places it may also be a reasonable choice.
Thanks for the response, Joe. After making my post, I scrolled down to a post from yesterday titled “My Mountains Need Help.” Thanks to a response in there from BogP40 and your response, it will be Ground Goop and rubber rocks.
From what I remember from the description of Ground Goop, it sort of a homemade Sculptamold. You can put it over foam, plaster cloth, wire screen, just about whatever you have made your base out of. Should suit your needs just fine.
Painting your “earth color” is fine, but you want the texture of your surface in place, as the paint will not fill the open texture of the gauze. When you paint your earth color onto your layout, only do a square foot or two at a time, sprinkle your first layer of ground foam into the wet paint. Don’t sprinkle it on so that it looks like a lawn, use different shades and textures, just like Mother Nature does. Saves both time and the necessity to “glue” your first layer of ground foam in place.
I use ground goop all the time - many times in place of Sculptamold. It dries rock hard and since it’s base is earth colored latex paint, there is no need to paint anything. Once I get the the paster gauze in place I apply the goop in about 2 square foot sections and create a base using finely sifted dirt, ground foam products and whatever else I decide to use. Then I will spray everything with wet water followed by dilute medium and let everything dry. It can be re-wet to apply other scenery materials and I just use dilute matte medium to hold things in place.
You can do the same thing with Sculptamold but I just prefer the ‘goop over plaster cloth’ method. The downside of goop is that it is almost impossible to remove so wherever it’s applied, I consider it permanent.
In case you don’t know, here is a web site that has some pretty good information.
I used sanded grout. It’s available in several ‘earth tone’ colors (tan, brown etc.). It mixes up like plaster, but is grittier and looks a lot like sand or dirt. It also has some texture that makes it easy to add grass over it.
I highly endorse ground goop. It smooths over the plaster gauze, providing a nice realistic contour. Plus, you can apply it in varying thicknesses to locally fine-tune your terraforming. It also gives a nice sticky base for your first layers of ground cover, if applied while it’s still wet.
My goop recipe is a variant on Lou Sassi’s that HaroldA links to. I found Lou’s mix consumed the expensive paint component at too high a rate, though, so my adjusted mix is thus:
equal parts Celluclay & fine vermiculite
a few glops of white glue (this actually may not be necessary, but I include it nonetheless)
enough water to make it mixable & spreadable
enough latex paint to provide color
a capful of Lysol
I mix to a little thinner than cake icing consistency, just enough that it’s fluid enough to spread but thck enough not to get runny. I apply with disposable plastic knives or spoons (whatever’s handy) - seems things like metal putty knifes get too gummed up too quickly.
My layout has lots of ‘ground goop’, but it has been hard to find ‘fine’ vermiculite here. I was able to get it over the Internet, but that source is now gone. Shipping costs and minimum purchase sizes sort of killed it for me.
What I now use over plaster casting cloth is Sheetrock brand 45 minute patching plaster. I buy it in 18 lb bags and mix it with water to a ‘soupy’ consistency. I ‘paint’ it on with an old brush. The long dry time sure beats plaster of paris(about 20 minutes). I mix in my standard ‘potting soil’ latex paint(Dutch Boy). You can buy it with anywhere from 20 minutes to 90 minutes setting time.
Jim’s method of the use of gypsom/ sheetrock product works rather well. If longer working time is needed, use the Durabond 90, for texture, if vermiculite isn’t found, sawdust is a good alternative. Coloring w/ paint or as I use - powdered masonry dye. The origional formula shown requires paint as the binder, this is not nec when using the plaster product. The paint is needed for coloring instead.
The patching plaster is nice because one can ‘sand’ it smooth after it dries. The 'rock hard’ consistency of redi-mix patching plaster or some others makes it hard to get a smooth finish. That was one of the nice properties of the ‘Ground Goop’.
As I mentioned, you can mix in latex paint just like with Ground Goop, and I am sure you can give it some ‘body’ with fine saw dust as well. As I found with most scenery, the difficult part is getting started. Once one gets going, you find there are ‘other’ methods that also work(especially late Saturday evening)! My first layout(in the late 60’s) used Hydrocal soaked paper towels(per Linn Wescott) and his ‘Zip’ texturing. I used powdered dyes in the plaster mix that I painted over the Hydrocal soaked paper towels, and dry powder pigments for the scenery color. There were some problems:
Soaking all of those paper towels with Hydrocal was a mess
The Hydrocal dryed too fast
The ‘Zip’ texturing faded with-in a year
My second effort a number of years later used the same Hydrocal/towel mess, but I used Ground Goop over it - Much better ground . I used very fine dyed sawdust for ground cover. The current layout uses medical plaster impregnated cast cloth over a wire form of cardboard strips/foam/plastic bags. Once the basic contours are established, I add rock castings and blend them in with the patching plaster mix.
The first photo is a completed scene with ‘puffball’ trees(I have over 700 on the layout). The second photo shows the Pecatonica River crossing with some of the river valley still not complete.
