Hi All, sorry I'm late getting online to jump in. My grandaughter who lives with us was in a car accident last evening, the car was a write off. I guess it was just a dislocated shoulder as she came to the MS group meeting this morning with me.
Hi ncng, Zip texturing, now that triggered some old memory cells, I had completely forgot about that, and just remembered I have a book by Bill McClanahan on scenery that describes the method. I remember trying a little of it on a 5 X 10 layout back in the 70's with a grey color for a mountain. As I remember it looked great, it made stone faces look real, however I couldn't get the boxes of pigaments. Sometime, somewhere on a closeout sale I came across a few boxes, maybe they are like rocks now instead of powder, I'll have to check. I believe McClanahan's method is to spray the plaster first with water, then shake or blow from a paper, the Zip mix over it.
That zip texture was a good idea and still is as far as I'm concerned. Even if you plan on using ground foam over it,
Hi Bob, Now this is really interesting to me because I have a large area ready to scenic, but I don't have a lot of ground foam made yet. So!! if I zip textured it for time being and wanted to add some ground foam later, how ( method) do you cement the foam on top of the texturing without ruining the texturing?
I made a feeble attempt to make ground foam with a blender several years ago
Hi George, yes the blender is not the answer as it just chops the foam. A few swear by it but most swear at it, and buy the comercial product. See my methods below. BTW that scene is gorgeous, it really has a lot of character.
well dirt-colored latex-paint blended into the sculptamold papier mache base as it is mixed. So... now I have dirt
Hi kenw, I believe the last time I was in Walmart I seem to recall some product "sculptamold" in the crafts area. I used to read about projects in the MR mag. that called for it but it wasn't available in this area then, I'll most likely be using all the suggestions here since the area I have to scenic is quite large. Doing the whole area using one method might lead to a layout boring to look at. I mean like the coal mines that were around here I'll bet you couldn't find a blade of grass within 2000 ft of one.
Speaking of ground foam, has anyone tried making their own?
Ah! now maybe I can contribute something to those who helped me with my problems. Yes I have two methods and are quite different and of course a different end product. The first is using a wire wheel on an AC powered motor, and the second is using a RIVAL (tm) electric food grinder. A hand powered food grinder works not too bad sometimes.
If anyone is interested I'd be happy post a description of each, but right now I have to shut down. Heres a picture with my home made ground foam, some colors are a bit wackey but it's just an experiment. I used latex paint then scattered the homade foam over the wet paint.
Cheers Willis