I am getting ready to pour the resin for a small stream on my layout and have a few details I want to add, such as canoes, and fishermen. Should I put these items in place before I pour the resin, while it still setting up or after it completely dries.
Best thing to do would be to wait until dry. I assume your canoes are waterline models? And the fisherman can afford to lose his legs, assuming he was going to be standing in the water?
The reason is that most “water” tends to wick up on objects only partially embedded in it and around the edges. It’s usually easier to just"float" things on top. And you don’t want the canoe sitting in the same place all the time, most likely.
The fisherman is a harder call. The wicking effect might actually looks like a pair of waders. And with some objects, it’s being able to see them under water that’s important to the effect and you’re willing to deal with the wicking.
My canoes can sit on the water or the bank this way.
If your water is meant to appear as if it is moving rather quickly, you can set some things in place and pour the epoxy around them. It will wick up some, but if you look at banks, rocks, rip-rap, and logs near or in the water in fast-water, much of their bared surfaces are wet due to wave action.
If you’d rather not get the wicking, but would like the object to appear partially submerged, you could try putting a thin bead of clear silicone caulk at the point where you’d like to stop the epoxy from wicking up. Later, when everything has settled and cured, pare away the caulking.
You should plan to do several “pours” of the water material. It will harden better this way, and this technique also allows you to tint the layers with different colors of paint to add to the illusion of depth. It also lets you put things like canoes “into” the water by gluing them to the next-to-last layer and then doing the final pour around them.
Somebody threw a bicycle into the old mill canal…
Here, I took a Musket Miniatures beaver and sanded off the legs, flattened the base and turned him into a “waterline” beaver. Still, I put him into the swamp and poured the final layer around him.
