hills

[gazzerk]

I have just finished hills and rock faces on my new layout using modroc but this leaves the mesh and edges showing. I need to put a thin cover of plaster on to smooth everything out. What can people suggest.

[Graeme Dunbar]

Traditionalists swear by plaster of Paris, Pollyfilla etc, which is great if you want to carve rock strata into it. One of the bugbears with plaster in portable layouts is chipping, exposing brilliant white plaster.

You could try a skin of kitchen towel laid over coating of watered down PVA and stippled with further PVA. Toilet tissue and glue turns to a mush that can be used to texture the surface (sheep runs on hillsides, ploughed fields...)

You could also experiment with a "gruel" of Pollyfilla, water, PVA and earthy colour paint painted on in layers - sort of DIY textured paint. You can add other texture materials (I've sifted sandy subsoil from the garden and baked it to sterilize it - topsoil has too much vegetable matter.)

Das modelling clay is good in places. It can be watered down to a slop with some mixing work and appears to have cellulose fibres in it that help bind it together. In its more normal form it makes good weathered rock (old toothbrush to add texture), though I have not really tried carving it to give it a quarried appearance.

Art shops also sell cellulose fibre (to make true papier mache, not the torn newspaper and glue often known by that name) but I've yet to try it.

For the base I prefer newspaper and glue over a former, and use PVA in place of the flower and water paste of my youth (or the more modern equivalent wallpaper paste). Waterproof PVA and well smoothed down paper makes a really tough shell (i.e. a proper laminate and not roughly stuck down down bits of paper with air bubbles in it). The downside can be shrinkage so it is best not to attach it to the edge formers until it has set.

[JulienW]

Traditionalists swear by plaster of Paris, Pollyfilla etc, which is great if you want to carve rock strata into it. One of the bugbears with plaster in portable layouts is chipping, exposing brilliant white plaster.

<snipped>

Not if you mix some powder paint with the plaster - brown for earth and a suitable rock colour (depends on the geology) for the rocks - or just have a layout set on chalk!

[gazzerk]

Cheap Homebase plaster with a touch of black poster paint has worked really well for the rock faces.  Just need to find some brown poster paint now for the muddy/grassy bits.