Hi after having used plaster cloth for the first part of my layout i have grown tired of it’s cost. i have read somewhere that you can use plaster and strips of newspaper or paper towels to the same effect, albeit a bit more messy.
What I wonder is simple, how do you do it? What proportions do you mix the plaster? When making plaster rocks the plaster I use use a 3 cups of plaster for 2 cups of water, would this work for this aswell?
Magnus
I think you will want it a little more on the thin side to soak the plaster into paper medium used, yes it is a lot messier but we’ve all used it for years before plaster impregnated cloth. BTW, have you checked out medical supply house,it’s the same cloth used for casts, it might be cheaper?
I went to stacked and carved styrofoam scavenged from construction sites. For large areas it works very nicley. I have done the towel and plaster bit and am resisting it this time around…
Hi There;
I also tried the paper towel method WHAT A MESS!! I now make a web of Cardboard strips hot glued together & then a layer of tulle hot glued to that. Then I spread plaster over the tulle. You can get tulle at any fabric store or Wallmart. It’s the stuff they make ballerina tutus from. Works for me.
Tom
Lillen, what you are referring to is known as hard-shell scenery. I don’t know whether he invented the technique but, certainly, credit for its popularity goes to the late Linn Westcott, editor of Model Railroader Magazine. He wrote many articles advocating its use in the 1960’s. Mr Westcott was a giant in this hobby; he not only has received but is, indeed, deserving of the many accolades which have been showered upon him over the years. I wish I had gotten to meet him personally.
Basically hard-shell scenery uses industrial strength paper towels (industrial strength is important here - we are not talking about those wimpy things hanging above the sink in your kitchen) and a U.S. Gypsum plaster know by the trade name Hydrocal. Hydrocal was developed as a moulding plaster; it has been used as that but it also has been used as a white art plaster, a pottery plaster, and as a casting/hobby plaster - check out the scenery and structures sections in your Walthers catalog and you will find several manufacturers who use it to cast buildings and tunnel portals to name just a few of its uses in this hobby.
Hard-shell scenery is adequately covered in most scenery books of any merit; recently, however, there has been a ranking of authors advocating the use of blue or pink foam; these authors tend to give short shrift to hard-shell scenery almost as if it is a dinosaur taking its last breath just prior to that notorious (and most probably fictitious) asteroid crashing to earth. Myself, I have used it for years, I will continue to use it in the future, and I can’t understand anyone using anything else. (I suppose when I say that I deserve to give that blue and pink foam a try but everytime I have gone looking for it no one has it!!! Everyone always knows just where to get it but it is never there when I go looking for it!!!) Is the process messy? Yup (as ole Coop used to say), but out here in the far, far reaches of the wild, wil
R.T.POTEET I would like to thank you for one of the best answers I have ever read on any forum ever. Superb and detailed, my great thanks goes out to you for your informative help. Thanks!
Magnus
Magnus;
Here is a link to an alternative method to the same hardshell type of sceanery. Being in the testing stage of this, give it a try! It can’t hurt! It also looks to be less messy than the usual way described above, it’s worth a look at least. Here ya go.
http://www.the-gauge.com/showthread.php?t=6930
I also agree with you on R.T.'s post ! and in plain well written English too![(-D]
Oh, and don’t forget to post back and let us know if you try this method.
Good Luck;
John
Here is another link to another site with in progress pics of a plaster mountain.
http://cid.railfan.net/kohut_mtn.html
Here is a good one using cheesecloth.
http://www.ucwrr.com/Kelly’sScenery.htm
Got this info from a Yahoo search
Thanks for the links, that technique seems to be very good as well, I will try it out in a few days when I got time.
Magnus
My method is to put down a base coat of drywall joint compound on all supporting surfaces, then put down heavy paper towels coated with plaster. After it’s dry, I go back with more joint compound and fill in anything I don’t like.
Before you start plastering, save yourself some grief and cover anything that you don’t want plaster in/on (existing scenery or track). To cover track, I use strips of masking tape that covers everything to the base of the roadbed. Also, cover the floor under your layout. It’s a messy job.
For paper towels and plaster method of hardshell scenery, I replaced the paper towels with those blue shop paper towels available from AutoZone and Wal-Mart ( in the automotive section). I cut them into strips 2-3 inches wide and dunk them into the plaster, one at a time, leaving them in long enough for them to soak up the plaster. They’re much easier to handle when wet than regular paper towels and they’re alot tougher. You can actually take them out of the plaster without falling apart. Just mix your plaster with the same consistency as pancake batter. Once the plaster sets, you can either add another thin coat of plaster (your choice). Either way, once it sets, I re-wet the plaster with a spray bottle then sift dry plaster over it.
When that dries, I paint with a thinned acrylic (water based) paint. I bought a gallon of customer rejected light tan paint from Ace Hardware for $5. That will paint a lot of layout. While the paint is still wet, I sprinkle with sand that I’ve removed and strained from one of those sand tubes you can get from Wal-Mart. People that drive in snow know exactly what I’m talking about. It can be found in the garden center. If the plaster is already set, spread thinned white glue (not as diluted as what you’d use to ballast track), then sprinkle the sand on it. The sand will give your scenery some “bite” so that when you apply your ground foam, it won’t run down the side of your mountains/hills.
When the paint dries, I sprinkle my ground foam, spray with wet water ( water with a few drops of liquid detergent in it), and affix with diluted white glue.
Thanks for all the advice. Today I bought some towels that you use to clean the kids after they have messed up there dipers. It’s tough and should work I hope. I wan’t able to find any “normal” papertowels but I hope this goes well, otherwise my kids will use them up anyway so it’s a win win situation.
Magnus
Well I did my little experiment and it turned out great! The only thing I still haven’t figured out is the proportions I need to mix to get it just right but I experimented and I will see what works.
The washcloths worked supreme, they were nowere near tearing and they had a good ability to suck up the plaster water mix. They then hardened real hard, perhaps even harder then the plaster bandages I’ve been using before. Price was also nice, the plaster you all know how much it costs and the washcloths, wich are about 20cm by 20 cm cost 25 SEK(aproximately 3$) for 200 of them.
So in conclusion, it was cheap, effective, fast and not as sloppy as I thought due to the washcloths ability to hold the water. Did I mention it was cheap?
Magnus
It sounds like you’ve got it going pretty well. The first time I built scenery, I was living in Coos Bay, Oregon. Couldn’t locate any Hydrocal nor the recommended industrial-strength paper towels. So I substituted regular Plaster of Paris and regular kitchen paper towels with the fiber reinforcing (Terri brand, I think). I didn’t have much success with the masking tape and balled-up newspaper system for creating the “form” for the scenery. And suspicious of how strong Plaster of Paris was compared to Hydrocal, I stapled some non-metallic window screen in place as my form. Worked like a champ. There is a group today that favors cardboard strips, hot glue and cheesecloth. They just “paint” the plaster onto the cheesecloth - no paper towels. I had already learned I could do the same with the window screen.
The advantages of plaster shell scenery (compared to foam) to me:
the ease of visualizing and adjusting your land contours as you set up the forms (whether you use screen, cheesecloth, or cardboard strips).
scenery is hollow underneath, leaving room for hidden track access, wiring, switch machines, and uncoupling ramps
is naturally not flat. You must carve nearly every square inch of foam to avoid flat spots.
easily carved, detailed, and/or added on to.
the shell can be colored a natural color by adding tint to the plaster mix. Foam is inherently pink or blue.
plaster shell is cheaper than foam
The advantages of foam (compared to plaster shell):
lighter weight (although much of this is lost if you coat the foam with plaster)
much easier to install trees (impor
I am in the midst of doing the method in Kelly’s scenery, link in an above post. I used J-Cloth type towels that were on sale at Canadian Tire, and am using Joe Fugate’s recipe with one part portland cement, three parts wall patch plaster, and four parts fine-grind vermiculite. My local gardening centre got me a large 40 liter bag of vermiculite for $24, and I will use virtually all of it.
The plastic bags filled with crumpled newspaper does an excellent job of providing variable support for the cloths, and Joe’s mixture bonds nicely, although with some dripping, to the J-Cloth towels.
I am happy to hear that your first experiments were gratifying for you…so important in this hobby to have success most often.
Even the cheapo aluminum screen works well. I’ve used cheese cloth from Lowe’s as a first and second layer.
I have used hard-shell scenery for years. In my country pink (or blue) foam does not exist. You can make your own casting cloth, and is a lot cheaper that the one sold by woodland or the one used for broken arms. Just by Hydrocal and a piece of cloth known as muselin (i’m sorry, but i don’t know how it is spelled). Use the same process as for the hydrocal + industrial paper or newspaper technique. You’ll be amazed of how realistic a rock cliff will look by just passing your fingers over the wet hydrocal. As substructure I use chicken pen wire mesh.
The word there, RedLeader, is muslin and it is a cotton product; my wife tells me it is used as lining material as with drapes; just for information glance in the dictionary and check out the derivation of where this particular word comes from; you will be just a little surprised, I think.
Muslin comes in two grades, coarse and fine; I seem to vaguely recall someone in N-Scale(?) Magazine advocating its use as a scenery material many, many moons past; the details are just a little sketchy but it seems to me that this individual’s job or business gave him access to large quantities of it. Did you use coarse muslin or fine muslin??? Not sure that it would make any difference - and I haven’t handled any of this in a long time - but it seems to me that the coarse would probably grab more plaster than would the fine.
It looks like there is a new layout in my future as I am still trying to fit my new wife (of two years now: that’s new???) into my mobile home here. Since this will most likely be my last layout - unless I hit the Poweball, per chance - I thought I might do some experimenting and this sounds perfect for a scenery experiment.