ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.
I looked at Micheals today and they have coarse sand that would be perfect for HO ballast. The only problem is that they don't have grey at my store.
It's made by Panacea Corporation of Columbus OH. I checked out their site and although they don't have a list of colours available, the minimum first order is $1000
Bernie, I think I know the white sand you're talking about, and I've never seen it in anything but white. I think mixing it with grey tempra powder might work for you.
None of the craft stores carry it in gray. I go to Joann's ETC stores & buy the different colors they have & mix them together. I gave up trying to find or make gray sand, so, I use a mix of tan & some almost black mixed in. It's not gray, but, my layout is freelance, so, I use freelance sand. LOL
I bought a bag of the white sand from Michaels a couple of weeks ago. I thought I saw an empty slot for gray on the shelf but maybe I'm mistaken. The Michael's I went to had sand in two different aisles so maybe it wasn't all from the Panacea people.
The white is too sparkly for me so I was going to try hitting it with an India ink wash after I glued it down. You could try soaking some white in an ink bath to see if it would get grayer. Or maybe soak it in a diluted acrylic gray paint? (Actually, I think I'll try that myself just out of curiosity.) If Panacea can dye sand purple, we ought to be able to dye it gray, right?
What does 'coarse' mean? Does it mean 30 thousandths coarse, 50 thousandths coarse, or maybe 80 thousandths coarse? If the stuff is much larger than about 30-40 thou, it is too large for HO scale ballast.
If the colour is too bright, or even wrong, you can weather it with masonary dyes, tempera powder mixed with plaster of paris, use India Ink sprays...they'll all work, but leave it looking very uniform for the most part, and not very realistic. Proper ballast has some variation, including in the weathering from place to place.
to avoid or minimize the solid color look, color it in batches and vary the color density or tone in each. make some lighter (less dye), darker (more dye) and mix in some black dye in some batches. Keep the batches separate, then when you are placing it, take a bit from multiple batches for custom blend.
As you are using the same basic "colors"/shades, it will look great, but since each placement used a slightly different mix of colors, there will be a difference. This is very difficult if not impossible to do if you color it after you place it.
btw, for my HO layout, I used N scale Woodland scenics ballast (shown). It isn't perfect but it is more-better sized than HO ballast. I used a variety (3 i think) of greys and used the method I outlined to mix it up above but without the custom dying. Hopefully the pic shows the relative scale which I thought was pretty close.
I did use some play-sand for a parking lot (to represent a very sandy soil) but it is much too light and doesn't look "right", it looks more like a beach. Since it is in place now, I need to sweep it with an airbrush and brown paint to knock it down a bit. I think the size and texture are close enough, but the color is awful.
