Well guys here’s the problum. I have a corner of my layout where I want to make a rising hill. The hill will get a rock cut face because the railroad cut through it. Now, I wanted to make the rock face out of pink extruded foam, but I don’t know where to start. So has any one made a Rock Face out of stryofam. If so could you tell me how to make one?
You could do it the same way I did the hillside in this shot. It’s just pieces of 1" beaded polyboard glued together and roughed out with an old steak knife. Just rub the edge of the blade across the face of the polyboard. You’ll be amazed at the result. NOTE: Keep the vacuum handy. You’ll need it.
Thanks Jeff! I had almost forgot about that. I got some of that stuff laying around.
I carved the rock face on the right out of extruded Styrofoam using a kitchen steak knife.
If you want a more visual aspect to this idea, look up youtube videos, there is one on there a guy did really good video explaining how to do just this .You will have to seach a bit but it’s worth it to give you a heads up . I used on mine the knife bit but, used a hacksaw blade (worked better for me) and then i covered it with joint compound.Mix a little paint in the compund either black or tan to give you the base cover you need .
Hope this helps
Chris
First off, get as many pictures of rock faces from the area you are modelling as you can.
Rock faces fall into two main categories, natural and manmade cuts. They look quite a bit different, so put more weight on pictures that match what you’re trying to do. You also might ant to think about the era you are modelling, and what methods they used to blast and remove rock for grading.
Once you have pictures you like, you can block out the area with styrofoam, cuting it with a steak knife or one of those $5 handysaws with a sawzall type blade you can get from the hardware store. i use a 12" sawzall blade that i made a wooden handle for rough cutting, and a steak knife for finer cuts.
Glue it all together, or else use bamboo skewers driven in at different angles to hold the blocks together, or else it will be hard to match one level of foam to the next. You may not want to glue the block to the table, because styrofoam carving makes a mess, and it may be hard to reach on the layout, so the mountain may have to travel back and forth between the layout and the cutting area.
I tried carving details into the foam itself, and never was happy with the result. the blue and green foam was too dense to get a good rock texture, or else I never figured out the secret, and the beaded foam left a pebbly surface that didn’t look real.
I carved the foam to the rough shape I wanted, and then troweled about a quarter or half inch of Lightweight Spackling Compound ($12 per gallon Lowes or Home Depot) onto the foam and carved that to match the pictures with a butter knife, exacto knife and a wire brush. I added vertical cracks with the tip of a bamboo skewer. The more I did it, the better and easier it got, after while it became easy to get neat effects because I understood the material better. Clean dry tools work a lot better than crusty ones, so keep some rags and a basin of water handy.
We used acrylic craft paints from Walmart, $1 a bottle and mixed a w
My contribution. Carved dirrectly in pink(blue) styrofoam with a steak knife. The forth pic is the beginning of hoodoos for the canyon wall.
Score the pieces and simply break off the length needed, not only does it speed things up, it gives a very natural rock-like surface to the hill. It seems it’s almost impossible to get away from the inevitable stepped, rock-cut face ledge on every layout, (in some cases, 3 levels-never seen in real life) it does take some imagination to eliminate this scene from your layout, there are alternatives.
I don’t know if you have your heart set on using styrofoam, but have you considered the old fashioned way, broken pieces of ceiling tile glued on top of one another? Run a wire brush over it to even it out a little, cover it with some type of puddy, your choice, and go to carving. Finally, stain and landscape as usual. Works great.
I would strongly suggest that you make small test dioramas using the various methods suggested and decide what works best for you. It won’t cost much and it may save you a lot of grief.