I am modeling a mountain stream with a rock-strewn stream bed and banks (n-scale). I live on just such a river. What are the pros and cons of finding, sorting, and using real gravel instead of WS talus or other commercial stones? I assume I would need to heat the stones to kill any organisms as people do with real dirt. BTW, this is a small area so I don’t think weight would be an issue. Thanks for your input. Glenn
I use real dirt and rocks for this kind of thing, as it has a natural range of shapes and textures the commercial product seem to lack. I nornally don’t sort or sift except to remove pieces that are overscale. It simple to adjust color of the natural material with dry-brushing to match any of your other scenery colors after it’s glued down.
I’ve never baked the material to kill off critters, and never had a problem. If your dirt has bugs that will survive being stuck in the diluted glue or matte medium then go ahead and cook 'em out.
I have a desert stream on my layout and have used the WS talus, but I am not completely satisfied with the results. I bought a bag of paver sand at the local Home Depot with an eye towards using it to model the desert around here. Turns out that if you sift the paver sand through a hand held sifter, the bigger particles are very similar to talus with the added benefit that they are multi colored, multisized and more natural looking. I used the sifted paver sand for the bottom of my stream. A lifetime supply of paver sand (one bag) was less than 10$ as I recall. I model in HO, so I am not sure if the sifted talus will be too big for your layout, it looks pretty good on mine.
After posting my response above, I realized I had some model riverbed photos. Here’s a river waiting for final detail and “water” on my old layout. The layout was dismantled before the water was complete. This scene used un-sifted natural rock:
Careful with paver sand. In some cases, many of those particles turn out to be metallic. When using anything from outside with fines in it near the track, use a magnet to test for potentially troublesome stuff.
That said, if you’re talking actual pebble sized materials without any fines in it, there should not be a problem. If your motor magnets attract something that big, they’d have to be pretty super. Doubt they would be a problem, even if somewhat ferrous.
If you find the appropriate color, shape and texture of the “real” stuff it works well. Not a great fan of the little bag of tallus. I make quite a bit of it by just chopping/ breaking up pieces of plaster.
I’ve got quarter down crushed limestone on the parking pad in the back yard and collected a small bucket of it for rocks on my N scale layout. The largest particles are 1/4" and they go down from there to dust so I’ve got a variety of sizes to sift out and sort for various uses. Being crushed limestone, the pieces are angular and jagged which looks good and the colour is a light tan or sand. BTW, that stuff is great for things like parking areas and walkways. Compact it, spray it with water and it becomes hard and solid.
See no reason not to use the real stuff in your stream bed. The variety of stone that gets mixed in as a stream travels means most gravel will work. There probably some locations, where a stream travels through a predomenant rock, that would mean you should get your sample to match. However, for most streams, I think any good stream will give you a good sample.
I have used the plaster tallas at the foot of my cast rock faces, as I used the same washes to color it, making the tallas match the rock face.
Good luck,
Richard
One thought you may want to consider is that very often river stone has rounded edges caused by the water flowing over it year after year and tumbling it due to the current. Of ourse the stone above the waters edge would be different. in that respect.
Bob
What an incredible travesty you had to take that down! That is scenery perfection!
Great input to my question. Thanks. Down on our beach I have nice river stone of every scale. Glenn
I have passed a magnet over the sifted fines and have not come up with anything in the paver sand.
I appreciate that. The current layout is progressing into the scenery phase, and I like how it’s starting to turn out better than its predecessor.