Eastern Tn logging on the DG CC & W RR 1928

It must be tricky to dig those graves in the churchyard, since the "grass" is sitting directly in solid rock. Or do they "iron out" the bodies first to make them flat enough to fit? :cool:
 
There ain't enough topsoil on Iron Mountain to bury a parakeet! My geology is mainly based on the Cumberland Plateau, which has a limestone cap rock over sandstone. the sandstone would be easier digging, but not easy.

Bill Nelson
 
Bill Nelson said:
I have done some blending, stuffing tiny pieces of wet paper towel in the cracks between the foam scenery and the layout proper.

after that I added some ground foam, and some ballast to make my primitive road all though I haven't secured all of the ground cover yet, I like the result so far I took two photos from odd angles, where a camera can be held, but your head can't reach.

one shows the back side of the church, and the track going down to the Gizzard-Terrapin tunnel. since you can't see the layout at this angle , you can see spots in the rocks, where I missed crevices when I painted the rocks.

the other odd angle photo I got by holding the camera up above the benchwork for Gegokayoosa (the 5th level- where the benchwork is a shelf, hanging off the sloped ceiling.) It shows a view showing Sander's gorge, and then the Gizzard in the background.


I'm not done with this scene, but this whole exercise was an experiment with foam scenery, to answer the question, can I build with foam scenery and get results approximating the quality I get from carving plaster. I'm believing that the answer will be yes.

while the foam strata is a little blocky, and less detailed in places than what I do with plaster, I was working quickly. with some more practice and different tools, I'm thinking this foam stuff has real potential.

another photo shows the joint, on the left is the plaster, on the right is the foam, and a little lichen is stuffed in the crack to hide it, This is going to work!

Bill Nelson
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Hey Bill, you are getting more detail out of the foam work your doing than the plaster but I believe it's because of the plaster your using. What is it? It has too much of a plastic look to it. The Structo-Lite I mentioned before has a lot of sand & when dryed looks very much like layers of rock & has a stoney surface. Maybe when the time comes for a burial you can use dynamite. That's what they use in Eastern Ky where my family is from. :eek:
 
SML confluence#1.jpg many plasters, to many repaintings

Sawdust said:
Hey Bill, you are getting more detail out of the foam work your doing than the plaster but I believe it's because of the plaster your using. What is it? It has too much of a plastic look to it. The Structo-Lite I mentioned before has a lot of sand & when dryed looks very much like layers of rock & has a stoney surface. Maybe when the time comes for a burial you can use dynamite. That's what they use in Eastern Ky where my family is from. :eek:
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The Gizzard was started in 1981, and went half finished for at least ten years. when I started it the only plaster I had was plaster of Paris, which takes detail and carves well but is much too fragile, is often nicked and needs touch up paint to cover the white spot Later I used House plaster, which was stronger, but had a gravely look which couldn't be controlled, and I couldn't get the clean broken or water smoothed look I wanted, but it's strong and doesn't need to be repainted every month. Later I had some to Hydrocal "dental stone" which was the best. strong if you broke a piece off it had a broken stone look great stuff, but the folks that carried it in Nashville discontinued it ( I need to check a dentit's supply house), and lastly I have used patching plaster, which is stronger than plaster of paris, but doesn't carve quite as well as the plaster of pais or the dental stone.

The glossy look in some of the photographs doesn't show to the eye in the RR room, and I believe it is a result of plaster of Paris rocks that have been repainted with acrylic paint every year for the last twenty five years to cover chips in the plaster, and flash photography.

To my eye, one of the most disconcerting problems with the gizard is a result of all that repainting, the color of the rocks is not uniform. that in itself wouldn't be bad, but in places it has a mottled splotchy look.

I have had soomuch fun with this scenery extension, it has crept beyond where I was planning on it stopping, all the way to the confluence of Sander's Creek, and the South fork of Crooked creek.


Bill Nelson
 
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To my eye, one of the most disconcerting problems with the gizard is a result of all that repainting, the color of the rocks is not uniform. that in itself wouldn't be bad, but in places it has a mottled splotchy look.
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Sounds like "weathering" and "erosion" to me! :thumb:
 
SML giz ext#2.jpg having a lot of fun

I think I've carved all the foam I'm going to, so this is the extent of the new land form.

I have to make a run by hobby lobby, I'm, out of the gray I using for my starting point for the rocks (Payne's gray), and also for the green that is the starting point for the water. it will be easy to correct the cocks, while the water I'll have to mix some of the correct color green in with the acrylic gloss medium. I do that anyway, as it helps create the illusion of depth.


The steel bridge in the background is begging to be removed and get a better paint job. The bridgedeck would be a candidate for repacement as I've gotten much better at bridge decks over the years. I hesitate though, as there is a vicious micro S curve at the right hand side of the bridge that used to cause a lot of trouble, and I'm afraid to touch it, as I forgot what I did to minimize the problems I used to have, but whatever it was it took me many tries.

Bill Nelson
 
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SML gizrd bridge#2.jpg SML gizzard bridge.jpg fixing the bridge

When I had built the bridge in the gizzard that shows here (there are four others (two of them narrow gauge). the bridges were silver. I decided that wasn't right, and attempted to hand paint the spans black, but missed a few spots, that I could never see when I had a paint brush in my hand, but could see all the rest of the time.

This afternoon I went up with an exacto knife, and carefully separated the spans from the bridge deck, and shot the trusses with my auto body primer and flat black mix. I stuck them back in place, but with much less glue, so I can take them out if, for instance I want to get rid of the shine they have in the photos. that doesn't show in room light, but some dullcoat might help it behind the flash.

I'm getting there, the new creek water just needs to get about another 30 coats of acrylic gloss medium, so that it reflects like the rest of the creeks in the Gizzard.

Bill Nelson
 
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Sounds like your all foamed out there Bill. I get that way sometimes working with scaled lumber & trying to keep my supply full. I keep a styrene project in progress for that reason, sometimes it feels good to go back & forth. The bridge looks good.:thumb:
 
Thanks, I'm getting close over in this corner, if I can get lightbulbs in the church and sawmill, get the dust off the log pond, perhaps get the log pond it's annual maintenance dose of gloss medium, and fo some work on the road (or foot path ) bridges in the gizard, I will be ready to take my efforts elsewhere, possibly to the back side of Horlow, where I am thinking that steamboat needs a wharf.

Bill Nelson
 
I like the strata and variations you've done, very nice :thumb:

My only bit of advice is to throw a few white patches in some areas and then tone them down with a darker wash of some kind. Then again i've not seen many color pictures of where you're modeling so maybe i'm :p

I'm looking forward to doing a dockside scene at the club when summer starts drawing to an end and everyone's doing all their vacations and outdoorsy hobbies. Cant wait to see what you guys come up with! :thumb:
 
SML sander's creek road bridge.jpg
ytter_man said:
I like the strata and variations you've done, very nice :thumb:

My only bit of advice is to throw a few white patches in some areas and then tone them down with a darker wash of some kind. Then again i've not seen many color pictures of where you're modeling so maybe i'm :p

I'm looking forward to doing a dockside scene at the club when summer starts drawing to an end and everyone's doing all their vacations and outdoorsy hobbies. Cant wait to see what you guys come up with! :thumb:
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White is unnatural. the only place white will land unmixed is highlights in the waterfalls. Large portions of the rocks need a wash to darken the crevesses, I have found that on top of the chipping paint, the rocks tend to get lighter over time due to fading paint, so the 30 year old sections have been repainted several times.


I got some work done on the road bridge. The glue on it is drying until it is strong enough to drill for the tension rods, and NBW castings. After those ore in I can touch up the stain on the cut ends of the timbers, and add decking. I will probably trim some off the foam rocks and re paint them to get the area where the bridge fits in there to look a little better.
 
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SML checking out the bridge.jpg a litle more work

I did a little more work on the road bridge, adding a deck and touching up the stain on the cut ends. I also subtracted some foam from underneath the bridge, on the cliff, to try to make that a little more natural.

In this Photo Ronnie Jones inspects the new bridge, before he tries to cross it with his model T. If he declines to drive over the bridge, the only other way to get that little truck out of the Gizzard is on a flatcar.

Bill Nelson
 
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SML Confluence#4?.jpg SML Sander's Gorge fall ext in progress.jpg Got acrylic modeling compoud.

I Got acrylic modeling compound! I have some @ the club, but I keep getting so wound up with the subroadbed for the sawmill area that I keep forgetting to bring it home. I was at Hobby Lobby the other day getting some picture frames and getting one of my dad's large photos of monument valley matted and framed, so I picked up some acrylic modeling compound. this lets me add some texture to my new waterfalls, and I can use it to build up the last 25 feet of Sanders's falls, so that the falls reaches the new scenery extension. it still will need some fine layers to improve the texture, as well as some gloss with tints and hint's of green and blur to get it right, but it is a start.

Bill Nelson
 
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That's what I like about the acrylic technique. You can keep playing with it and tweaking it over and over. it takes a long time, but I think the results are incomparable.

Bill Nelson
 
Acrylic modeling compound.

The stuff is called acrylic modeling compound, and you find it at the art supply store usually near the acrylic paints.

Oil paints are usually much thicker straight out of the tube than acrylics are. When you are painting with the oil paints, this will allow you to put the paint on really thick, so you can sculpt it with a pallet knife ( a little painter's tool that looks like a miniature masons trowel - pallet knives are my favorite plaster carving tool) to add some visual depth to the paint surface, which can add in a little 3-D effects.

Since acrylics are thinner, you can't get those effects with just the paint, so you get the acrylic modeling compound which is thicker than the paint, and you can build up the shapes you want, and then paint it later, or mix it with paint to get something thick enough to fake the 3-d effect you can get with oil paints. so the acrylic modeling compound is something us artist types use to force some of the effects we could get by painting with oils when painting with acrylics.

I have two kinds the one I'm using on the falls dries white, and so after I have the basic shape I'll tint it with some light green and a touch of light blue (you can see this in the upper part of the falls, and then add white highlights over the tint to represent the froth.


The other kind ( I think I might have some at the club); dries translucent, and that can get some really cool effects as it can be mixed with a tint of color and pasted in in a shallow space @ the near edge of a creek and get a fabulous depth illusion.

I have one waterfall I haven't attempted yet higher up in the Gizzard. The top end of the falls is near eye level, about an inch from the edge of the layout. The flume for the water mill starts right next to the top of the falls, and due to the height of the layout, and the bizarre topography, the falls is almost invisible, which is why I haven't modeled it yet. The other is it has a deep undercut, so unlike most of my waterfalls the water will fall free away from the stone face, I'm thinking of trying to use some of the translucent stuff, to start working flat on some wax paper. Once I have the basic structure I"ll peel it off the paper, and build up the flat back side . I figure If I make something slightly longer than the falls , I can trim it down to fit, and then goop it into place with more of the same stuff.

If I can do it right, it will make a spectacular scene, which almost no one will be able yo see.

On this recent scenery extension I have used the acrylic modeling compound to fill in the gaps between some of the foam chunks used to build up the rock shapes. It is handy stuff.


Bill Nelson
 
So...this acrylic compound dries hard..?? I often find myself rushing to get the plaster in place before it starts to harden, and then have little chance of sculpting it. Sounds as if this stuff would be good to lay over the plaster and fiddle with it to get the effect I want. Thx. for the heads up...:thumb:
 
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