The club that I am a member is used a material Builder’s foil, a double thickness of aluminum foil with a layer of brown paper between each layer of aluminum to build their mountains The layout is 30 years old, was wondering do they still make this? or what would be out there today that is close or similiar to it…
Mike
To each his own, but how is this better, cheaper, easier than stacking foam??
There are many schools of thought on mountain building…I’ve never heard of the foil method though.
I use foam, blue foam insulation board, and I cut pieces in the general contour that I want my hills\mountains to be and then I stack the pieces and use long bamboo skewers and white glue to hold it all together, then I use drywall compound and build up the contours and texture, when it’s started to dry I add detail and more texture till it looks like rocks\dirts\talus. When it’s completely dry I paint it [although sometimes I use latex paint mixed in with the drywall mud to make it easier to paint later, no white showing through]. I have excellent results with this technique and it’s cheaper than plaster and sculptamold.
For larger mountains I use cardboard skeleton covered with screen and then plaster and sculptimold. Smaller ones I use layers of foam covered with plaster and sculptimold. I don’t have the patients or artistic talent to carve the foam into realistic looking mountains and rocks.
I’ve never heard of that material your talking about. Sounds like some kind of insulation or old vapor barrier material.
I think you can still get the insullation paper you are talking about, but why? I would think that the foil surface would be hard to get things to stick to. There was an article in RMC a few months back using red building paper, which is quite inexpensive and white glue to make the scenery shell. Personally I am using blue and pink foam as it is available for picking up at building sites. Just leave them a trash bag or two to put it in, makes it just about free. Full sheets are sometimes available that were excess to the job for a fraction of the full cost.
Good luck,