I will be modeling both a marble and a granite quarry, and I would appreciate some advice on methods for making (reasonably) realistic marble and granite slabs. Also, which colors for the highest quality stone for either type?
Also, does anyone know of any commercial outlets for marble and granite slabs and loads? The only source I’ve found for marble is Funaro & Camerlengo, which offers the sawn and banded slabs as a detail item. I just sent them an email asking if the marble load on pallets on one of their kits is also available, since I’m not seeing it listed anywhere.
You can cut extruded foam sheets into blocks to represent the large blocks of granite or marble. I would think you could also cut them from a piece of wood. If you are modeling large quarry blocks, they usually have drill markes on a couple of sides and are just split off the others. The drill marks can be made by drawing a saw up and down a few strokes. As for color, there are many. Around my area granite is gray, mostly a light gray, slightly flecked, some darker. In some places there are black and rose. Marble not far away is white, though I have seen marble buildings that were a green or some a pinkish color. From one quarry the color would be consistant, but a stone shed could have several colors of blocks sitting around to fill customers orders.
Size of the blocks can vary greatly. Most that travel the roads on trucks around here, heading for the sheds are 6’ to 8’ roughly shaped blocks. I have seen photos of special order blocks that took several flat cars to carry the length of the piece.
I agree with Richard, in the last post. You can slice the foam in any shape, and paint according. I just Googled “granite quarry” and “marble quarry”, then click on “Images”, and you’ll get lots of pictures of quarries to look at for ideas and colors.
Most of the finished product moves by truck, but I think there is some crushed and powdered granite that is used by various industries, that may move buy covered hoppers. Also, in the pictures of quarries in the “old days”, I noticed that the quarried blocks were moved to the cutting and finishing areas by rail and flat cars.
For cut and finished marble, plain old plastic would be very close, with a flat, polished surface. If white is not quite right, just overspray with gloss paint to suit. You may to look outside the MRR vendor community to find plastic slabs that thick, maybe pieces 1/2" thick or more?
— Captain Horatio Huffenpuff, The Beany and Cecil Show.
( “A Bob Clam-pett car-tooooooo-OOOOOOOOON!” )
anyway …
Don’t ignore real marble. It is possible to buy, cheaply, little awards and statuettes that are given for various reasons, with marble bases. At some home improvement stores you see broken or discarded marble from counter-tops.
Just to further Dave’s idea, people often sell unwanted trophies and awards at yard / garage / tag (depending on your local terminology) sales. You might get several bases cheaply thst way.
If you can get some scraps of the faux marble that is used for counter tops you can cut and size it with common tools. Rough cut sections might be a good stand in for rough cut marble slabs on the way for finishing.
