I’m casting a lot of rocks these days and wonder, how do I hide the seams between the individual rock castings? There must be proven methods. Here are two photos of my latest work. I’m dreaming about rocks [:D]
When I place rock castings, it’s either by placing them while still slightly wet in the molds or after they’ve totally dried.
When slightly wet in the mold, some plaster will seep out from the sides of the casting. After removing the mold, I carve the seeped out plaster so it resembles the other castings.
When completely dried, I attach the casting with either more plaster or an adhesive caulk. If I used plaster as an adhesive, some of it seeps out and I carve it just like from a wet mold. If I used caulk, I usually embed small pieces of broken castings into the caulk to help hide the seams.
When all else fails, I use a lot of ground foam to hide the seams! LOL
Darrell, quiet…for now
I use non-shrink acrylic spackle. Dry wall mud or a thick plaster mix will work too.
Nick
In nature there are seams all over the place. Dirt blows in and small plants take root. Soon the whole seam is filled with vegetation.
Stupid system ate my first answer! [V]
Okay, try again.
Natural seams…
- fault lines
- strata interfaces
- changes of angle (e.g. between flat sand and a rock face)
- ledges where strata have weathered back at different rates
- animal tracks (depending on how you look at it this could include highways…)
- rock structure as in limestone and basalt
I think that its always useful to have a rough idea what sort of rock you are depicting. The sedimentary sandstones are different from the purely volcanic… but that may be going into too much detail.
Meanwhile, back at hiding the seams…
The first thing too avoid is seams occuring at regular intervals along or up the face. If this occurs it is all too easy for the face to look like a disguised brick wall.
Even when brilliantly disguised any movement/jolt or anything else that may shift the face may easily cause tiny cracks that start to show up the joints between the bricks.
So don’t install uniform length/height/size castings. Hacking the edges is a start to changing this. taking a number of castings and dropping them on a hard surface will do it even better!
AH! What’s he saying? Break them? NO!
YES! [:D]
But that’s more joints, more seams!
As Spacemouse says, there’s lots of seams in nature.
It will also make you think far more about how you build up the face rather than just laying them brick-like.
The (broken) bits don’t need to butt up to each other… in fact it’s better if they don’t. It’s much easier to plaster in a hole than to squeeze filler into a narrow crack. In fact… it’s even better to widen out narrow cracks… the chamfered back edges gve more surface for filler to grip
Thanks guys for your answers. I will tell you all about a method I just tried. I patched the seam with plaster and let the plaster set so it’s rock hard. Then I used a flathead screwdriver and a knife, and started working just like a sculpturer. The plaster cracks in a natural way and after a while gave me a seam that locked very nice. Do you guys understand what I’m trying to explain? Is this a common method?
[%-)] Sounds like you’ve hidden a seam with a seam… [%-)]
Common method? Not to be rude, but do you really care?
What works works. If you acheive the results you were looking for great. If not, try something else.
No, I did not hide the seam with a seam, even if that was what I said. I mean that the seam just disappear with this method.
I purchased an icing syringe ( the kind for decorating cakes ) at the dollar store. I just mix up some stiff plaster and squirt it into all the cracks. Before it has fully set, I carve it to match the adjoining rock castings.
Mark.
Electro:
Spacemouse is right, if it works, then it is an appropriate method. There are no technique police looking over your shoulder ready to arrest you if you don’t follow some officially sanctioned method. [swg]
The way you describe what you do is what I generally do. I fill any gaps with fresh plaster then once it has hardened, poke, prod, break off, and carve the seam to match the surrounding rocks.
However, since the material used for the rocks may be different than what was used for the seams, I find it best, once all the rockwork is done, to paint the entire rock wall first with a coat of acrylic paint using a neutral base color for my rocks, generally a light gray. Then stain and color the rocks from there.
By painting the rocks first, you seal them so the entire rock wall will take any further stain and coloring work in a consistant fashion across the entire rock wall. Otherwise, staining the rockwork directly may not look real great since the bits of rock castings you combined to make the wall will often absorb the stain differently and then make all your patchwork really obvious. Putting a coat of paint on over the rocks first works better.
Your rock work is looking good … but as you can see, this much rock work scenery is time consuming, taking more time than you would think, especially if you want it to loo
Most fault lines are actually subterranean. There can be fissures in the surface but those are rare.
Thanks guys for the great answers as usual.
electrolove;
What you are describing is known as zip texturing; if not invented by him then editor of Model Railroader magazine Linn Westcott was an ardent proponent of the technique and advocated its use in conjunction with hardshell scenery, another of his advocacies. I generally use putty knives, both narrow and broad, instead of screwdrivers and (regular) knives but sounds like we get the same effect.
I don’t know about the method being common but I’ve sure seen a lot of layouts with the scenery done up this way.
I TOTALLY agree! Frequently the only place we will see a nice clear example of a fault line is in an exposed rock face. If we haven’t been fortunate enough to have a good geography/geology teacher (or seen it on TV or somewhere) we may not realise that the surface feature is just part of something that will be running back into the ground behind the face. Old time miners knew this and used it as many metals (one at a time/in each place mostly) had accumulated in the cracks and voids in the ground made by the fault. Cornish tin mines were a classic example. In their case tin, lead and arsenic lay in pockets and along the linking cracks for miles. The miners followed the threads of valuable material taking out no more low value rock than they bsolutely had to. I would be surprised if many of the American gold and silver rush miners didn’t do exactly the same thing in the different strikes. No one so far seems to be saying that they pre-colour the plaster going into the moulds??? Joe? Anyone?