Sawdust grass

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L

lavenlaar

New Member
Has anybody or recommend using sawdust as a ground cover. Because I am routing away, i have access to large amount of sawdust that i was thinking of utilising as ground cover/grass.
How would i colour it ?
As i wish not to buy too much as it will become quite expensive.

Brendan
 
I use sawdust all the time for ground cover, but, I've tried many times to color it & has never worked. I've tried acrylics full strength & let it sit in a large jar for a week & it never changed color. I go to a cabinet shop & sweep it up for free. If you could get a balsa sawdust you might be able to color that. I've glued the sawdust down on my board & then colored it w/a fine mist of dark green latex w/a little water. After it dries the color almost disappears.
 
I've used Rit dye to colour sawdust. Works great. Let sit in a pail of coloured water for a few days then lay out on newspaper to dry.
 


This is a 1940's-1950's technique, and will look like it. In those days there were not products to model grass with. Todays products are not that expensive, so unless you have hundreds of square feet of mowed lawns to model, you should not wind up spending that much money. It's up to you how you want your layout to look.
 
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Espeefan said:
This is a 1940's-1950's technique, and will look like it. In those days there were not products to model grass with. Todays products are not that expensive, so unless you have hundreds of square feet of mowed lawns to model, you should not wind up spending that much money. It's up to you how you want your layout to look.
Click to expand...

While I agree with you up to a point...(the old "zip-texturing" method of coloring rocks & scenery with colored pigments...there's no reason in this day & age to use that technique...)
But I've used a lot of older techniques (and still do) such as sifting real dirt for ground cover, real dried leaves grond up in a blender, dish-scouring pads chopped up & used to represent undergrowth, bushes, etc...dried weeds as tree armatures, bailing twine for tall weeds/field grass...and yes, sawdustn from the table saw, & I've also used shavings out of a pencil sharpener....wood ash, real sand, buts of broken-up plaster, etc, etc, etc...
But I also use more modern commercially available stuff like ground foam, ballast, etc...

dio_15.jpg


Most of the above-mentined items were used for this scene...

To me, model scenery is all about layers...layers of texture & color...not modeling individual blades of grass, or leaves, or whatever, but creating an impression of those things...

So yes...by all means use the sawdust...but don't stop there...use other things also, both old & new techniques & products blended together...lots of layers...the sawdust is just one element of this...
 
Amen, Drew, you never have enough texture. If you only use "modern" stuff your layout it will look like a cookie-cutter "modern" layout. Look at all the pictures, they all look alike. Everyone's textures look like everyone else.

Good scenery, Drew.

"Zip-Texturing" was Linn Wescott's idea to eliminate the "plywood pacific" look. It was only meant to be temporary covering. Poor Linn has been criticized forever for this technique which was just a fix-it.

Harold
 
hminky said:
.... If you only use "modern" stuff your layout it will look like a cookie-cutter "modern" layout. Look at all the pictures, they all look alike. Everyone's textures look like everyone else.
Click to expand...

I wouldn’t say that’s true of “everyone”, but it is true that “modern” materials & techniques alone do NOT necessarily equal good scenery…

Espeefan said:
This is a 1940's-1950's technique, and will look like it...
Click to expand...

By the same token, you can’t say “40’s & 50’s” scenery methods & materials automatically equal bad scenery…
The eye of the artist is a lot more important than the kind of paint he uses…
A lot of the reason we have so many comercially availabe products now is due in large part to the great innovations of modelers in the past!

hminky said:
"Zip-Texturing" was Linn Wescott's idea to eliminate the "plywood pacific" look. It was only meant to be temporary covering. Poor Linn has been criticized forever for this technique which was just a fix-it.

Harold
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I didn’t realize that Linn Westcott had developed the technique…I read about it a long time ago in a book from the 50’s written by Bill McClanahan…(I think that was his name)
There was one guys layout featured in the book that used asbestos fibers as an ingredient for his hardshell scenery…WOW! I definitely wouldn’t recommend that!
 
I read about it a long time ago in a book from the 50’s written by Bill McClanahan…(I think that was his name)
Click to expand...

Yep right on Bill McClanahan, I still have the book some where.

Cheers
Willis
 
The McClanahan book in later editions had a zip-texturing section added.

I remember when Wescott introduced hard-shell. He was using the hard-shell to support the Homasote roadbed without plywood. The idea was to landform and then add the roadbed. He was later poo-pooed for using Homasote without plywood. Such is the innovator and the ignorant.

Harold
 


hminky said:
Amen, Drew, you never have enough texture. If you only use "modern" stuff your layout it will look like a cookie-cutter "modern" layout. Look at all the pictures, they all look alike. Everyone's textures look like everyone else.{/QUOTE]

Weeeellllll, it's as much the skillful application of, as the materials themselves. If you see lots of cookie cutter layouts, it's likely the result of copying someone else's scene, a lack of imagination, or a lack of talent.

There is nothing wrong with sifting real dirt or using real rocks for talus, using sagebrush or stuff out of Michaels for tree armatures, or other such methods, but sawdust & Rit dye? YUK! why spend all that time dyeing sawdust when there are several perfectly good comercial products which look much better for not much money. Please yourself, but not on my layout, especially not on foreground scenes ;)
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And here ya go:

http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/Item/T1345/page/2

50 cubic inches of grass in the large shaker bottle for just under eleven bucks MSRP. You can probably get it somewhat cheaper at shows or your LHS. That'll do a bunch of area, and will look like grass. The colored sawdust looks more like clump foliage to me.

If you have plenty of sawdust and don't mind waiting days for it to dry, and don't mind the coarse appearance, go for it. Also depends on what kind of grass you need.
 
Wow, a bunch of holier than thou people on here.

I am too old to care so I use sawdust because I enjoy the process of making it.
I used oil pigments in the past and acrylics now. I mix up a cup or so of water and enough paint to give the color I want.
I put a cup of sawdust is a quart jar, add some paint solution, screw on the cap and shake. If too dry, add more paint. If too wet add more sawdust. Shake until evenly colored, pour out onto a cake-pan and let set in a warm oven, stirring from time to time to speed drying.
I sift with several sifters to produce several degrees of coursness and save in small plastic containers. Add to layout as any glue, paint system permits.

I thought the hobby was about having fun and learning new skills and ways. For all you with the "better" grass ways I hope I will never see dangleing air hoses from not to scale coupler or any steam loco without real smoke or diesel without the smell. And we better not see the other side of the layout, or any non-prototype operations. Count your rivets! I am here to have fun

Armchair
 
Sorry Armchair...I didn't mean to tick anybody off...

ps...I'm not a rivet counter either...I'm too blind to even see rivets! :D
 
Ticked off

Drew,

Not really ticked off, just frustrated. This hobby is so much for so many. The local paper, Yuma Sun, did an interview and the reporter was enthusisactic about model railroading. My friend and I have a display at the local library and I showed him my Athearn Big Boy and Con cor Pioneer Zephyr and said they cost about $400.00. He replied, "So the hobby is expensive?" I showed him a 4.5"x9" diorama of a log-cabin with hand cut shingles, a one hole outhouse, water well and a wood pile with chopping stump and ax; I told him that cost $1.39 for the wood dowels and I spent 20 to 30 fun hours building it. He replied "So it takes a lot of time!" I pointed to a RTR caboose and said "Just open the box and put it on the tracks."

I am an advocate to lay some track and run some trains. It won't be your last layout so try something and see if you like it. Right now my layout is 4'x4' and rests in the back of my wife's suv. The three shots were taken downtown at a public welcome to our 'snowbirds' and we were running off a 12 volt car battery. It is portable and we can visit schools or clubs to share the hobby. The buildings are card models downloaded from the internet and the grain elevator is scratch built from a cereal box with black sandpaper roofing. I am sort-of retired, work about 3 days a week, and am having fun.

Armchair
 
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Armchair said:
Wow, a bunch of holier than thou people on here.

I am too old to care so I use sawdust because I enjoy the process of making it.

I thought the hobby was about having fun and learning new skills and ways. For all you with the "better" grass ways I hope I will never see dangleing air hoses from not to scale coupler or any steam loco without real smoke or diesel without the smell. And we better not see the other side of the layout, or any non-prototype operations. Count your rivets! I am here to have fun

<snip>

not really ticked off, just frustrated. This hobby is so much for so many. The local paper, Yuma Sun, did an interview and the reporter was enthusisactic about model railroading. My friend and I have a display at the local library and I showed him my Athearn Big Boy and Con cor Pioneer Zephyr and said they cost about $400.00. He replied, "So the hobby is expensive?" I showed him a 4.5"x9" diorama of a log-cabin with hand cut shingles, a one hole outhouse, water well and a wood pile with chopping stump and ax; I told him that cost $1.39 for the wood dowels and I spent 20 to 30 fun hours building it. He replied "So it takes a lot of time!" I pointed to a RTR caboose and said "Just open the box and put it on the tracks."

Armchair
Click to expand...

My, My, A little thin skinned aren't we?;):p

I have had similar experiences with media. They want to reduce your expalnation into a sound byte or a sentence. How do you do that with creativity? :confused:

Like I said, earlier, please yourself. It's about choices, and all we were doing is making the fellow aware of all of them. He was worried about expense. The product is not expensive. It's not free either, but then neither is the sawdust. Your time has to factor into this, at least mine does. If you're retired, and on a fixed income, and have the time and inclination, do what feels good. Brendan will pick what's best for him. He has enough information.

As for me, I have to sqeeze layout building in between a job, kids, honeydo lists, and all that stuff, Modeling time is limited, so if I can get a ready to go product cheaply, I'm not going to spend that modeling time making it. I'd rather be making the actual scene.

As to rivet counting, I resemble that remark! Rivet counting can be fun too, and also does not have to be expensive:D:D

All rivet counters are doing is trying to recreate something to the best of their abilities. It can be a long process, but enjoyable and rewarding.

One last thing on grass: The absolute best looking grass I have ever seen was done using that Noch static applicator. Now that gets expensive, but the results are awesome.

Check this out:

http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=77673

If I was going to have an area on my layout where I photographed models, or do a diorama, I would use this! I saw a clinic on it, and the fellow had an alternate for using their adhesive, I think it was 50-50 white glue & matte medium, which was cheaper than the stuff they sell in their bottle.

And Brendan, whatever method you use, have fun!
 
Well I'm about to start on my final layout. Strange thing about model building is when we have the eyesight, steady hands etc. we are in the process of learning how to do it. Now when we've learned we don't have the eyesight and the hands are no longer steady. I know mine are not.
Now when I first got interested in model rail, the layout was in fact nothing more than a scenic setting to run our trains in. The trains were not perfect miniature replicas and neither were the layouts, but they did instill a vote of "Well Done" and sense of accomplishment to the model builder. Yes there were shining examples of craftsmanship in the magazines and we all wooed & ah'd! at the acomplishments of the craftsmen models showing the tiniest details realism in the displayed scenes a level of modeling we all wished to attain. Well some would achieve that level and some wouldn't so there was now an opening for a commercial interest and detail parts became available. The model manufacturers seen this as a bonanza, and rightly so, and the highly detailed model, with all the rivets in the right places became available for those who for reasons of their own just had to have it. The prices are right, the quality excellent so who wouldn't want one or two.
In order to display these correct featured models the scenery materials had to improve and the race was on in that facet of the hobby.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in any of this, as long as we do not leave the budding modeler behind. I look at the pictures posted here on this forum and I see beauty, craftsmanship some of the photos are life like and some are not as we all advance from beginner to a craftsman status. The only set back by all this advancement was the impression facing the prospective neophyte model railer (Wow! I could never do that). Thankfully we have people who have learned the way by doing, and are willing teach and help the beginner to the next advanced stage by helpful suggestions and not ridicule and that is why rivet counters are not welcome on forums. It's the feeling of accomplishment that drives us all, and so we find ways to improve on the next project.

So with that in mind, and my foobie locos (a satisfactory miniature not totally correct representation of the real thing) already built. I'll attempt to build an eye pleasing setting to operate them in. I'll do the best I can with what I have and what isn't out of my reach price wise. At 75 I don't have a lot of time to accomplish this feat in and I accept my limitations. Anyway this time I'll be using sifted dirt, colored sawdust ground foam; twigs weeds and roots they'll all work and it's certainly effective.
I guess that's enough preaching for this Sunday. :D

Cheers
Willis
 
Well said, Willis!
You’ve managed to put into words pretty much my philosophy, & aspirations as well…
Hats off to you my friend!

This thread seems to have veered off-topic though somewhere along the way…

Has anybody or recommend using sawdust as a ground cover. Because I am routing away, i have access to large amount of sawdust that i was thinking of utilising as ground cover/grass.
How would i colour it ?
As i wish not to buy too much as it will become quite expensive.

Brendan
Click to expand...

Brendan,
I’ll try & get back to your original question, because I don’t think I did a very good job of responding to it the first time around…
I too use sawdust as a ground cover, but I’ve never tried coloring it…I just use it as is, in combination with other materials…
I totally understand not wanting to sprnd money on things…my RR budget is pretty limited as well…but as has been mentioned, scenery materials usually aren’t that expensive, & can go a long way…

I also hope that you haven’t been discouraged by anything I or anyone else here has said…the last thing I would ever want to do is discourage, or be condescending to a fellow modeler…
 


I found Woodland Scenics ground foam products to be expensive, but that is probably because I resorted to purchasing locally, and not via the internet. LHS purchases are often quite a bit more costly than paying shipping for the same thing. And yet, it doesn't take bottles and bottles of the stuff to scenic a 4X8 layout...one bottle will do if you also use dirt and other materials.

I liked the description of sifting sawdust after it had been placed in a jar with acrylic paints watered down, shaken, and then spread out to dry. You then get an effective and cheap ground cover with the various textures you'd like.

You have nothing to lose by trying it. It can always be improved with a little of the commercial ground foam, or even covered liberally if you don't like how it turns out.

I am at a point in life where thrift is a distinct virtue and stress reliever.

-Crandell
 
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