Wednesday update.

Wednesday update.

Took day off yesterday and got a good 5-6 hours in on layout.

The rock mold learning curve continued. Adding some more photos to get any hints people have and also to share what I am learning hoping it saves someone else some time and money.

Also putting rough scenery for the redesigned Huntsman. Pulled out photos from Trip to Colorado to try and customize the scenes to the local.

Redesigned Huntsman:
Put in cardboard webbing, installed Plaster cloth and my wife coated with Sculp-a-mold.

Here is the Huntsman cut-out roughed in. Plenty of room for the Section-house and small mine. Next will add rocks and determine mine entrance.

Have this wild idea to make an animated ore car being pushed back and forth with light in mine. Not sure if practical, but an idea anyway. Some friends over at HON3chat are doing a lot of animation on Blackstone loco's.

More on molds:

The before, plain roughed in wall with cardboard, plaster cloth and sculpt-a-mold to add strength.


Hopefully this gives you an idea of the (hopefully) correct consistency of the plaster.


Pour in and spread with spatula, like making a cake.


Filled mold, smoothed out. no little lines and still too glossy so not set enough to put on layout.


Little hard to see, but as I lift the mold you can see not as glossy and little tiny stress fractures show starting to set. Still soft enough to mount without running out of the mold.

Lift with 2 hands and press in place on layout. Make sure you press all around mold to get a good bond to the rough surface. If not it will break off and your will have tones on little rocks (ask me how I know, have a full coffee can of broken fragments in 2 days work). Hold in place about 30-60 seconds depending on the mold size and how well you have managed to get it to adhere.


Mold is in-place. I set a timer for 3 minutes and it generally worked out well. Test a small corner to see it it comes away from the mold clean. All mine worked but one, the plaster separated with part staying on the mold.

The reason you want to pull off after 3-5 minutes is the Dental Plaster is still soft enough to easily carve. This makes blending to the next casting much easier.


The finished product.

Learned a lot so far. Blending takes some time, but with patience you can really make the two molds look like one rock face.

Tried filling gaps with some sculpt-a-mold. Looks really good, but may end up being an issue when staining the rock, we will see.

Thanks Cameron

Rocks, Rocks everywhere.

Rocks, Rocks everywhere.

Well mainly in my head some would say (Grin)!

Trying some new stuff this weekend: Bragdon Enterprise Molds and Dental Plaster.

Got 6 molds all excellent quality and Joel Bragdon is first rate (no affiliation just a very satisfied customer).

Here are the molds:

This mold is large, about 2 feet wide and 18" tall. Start with a smaller mold to learn. This large mold takes some practice.


This is one great mold, lots of detail and a easy beginning one to learn.


This mold is also easy to use and makes a nice solid rock casting with limited depth, great where you don't have much depth.


This mold is deeper and has great texture. Little harder to use.


Limited depth, nice striated rock, easy to use.


This is the retaining wall mold. Cheaper than the Noch flexible and conforms to base.


Using Molds:
I had little experience with wet molds, mainly a few Color-rite (nice molds, inexpensive but not in the same league as the Bragdon molds). Add 0 experience with Dental plaster and the first 3 tries were a disaster. The 4th try was when it started to gel. First the Plaster said 44-45 cc water to 100 g plaster. Found this was a little too thick, so used 50 cc and decreased plaster by 10%, so 50cc water to 90 g plaster.


Loading plaster to water required constant agitation or stirring. don't dump all in at once but add slowly and let water absorb plaster. after about 1/2 in it will require constant stirring, not circular but back and forth.

Once all entered make sure all lumps broken up. You want the plaster like pancake mix. bounce mixing bowl to remove any bubbles. Pour in mold and use spatula to spread over mold (makes sure to spray mold with wet water before adding plaster). Use care in spreading to ensure no open spaces or trapped air.

Applying molds:
Spray receiving surface with wet water. Once mold begins to film over you can slide a hand under the mold and lift. This takes some practice. Small tiny cracks are ok, larger cracks mean it is too far set and will crumble when applied. This is the hardest part, but after doing a few you will get the feel.

Place where you sprayed and press and hold. I hold anywhere from 60 seconds to 2 minutes depending on how it is adhering. Subsequent molds can over lap. The amount of pressure will let you vary the mold depth and shape.


Here is a mold drying in-place. Paul Scoles removes his after a few minutes, I'm still trying to get a feel for this. Waiting 15 minutes works but makes and carving difficult.


Overflow can be chipped off to make castings blend together. Paul recommends a Dental Pick.

Results:

This is the first mold shown above. Took me 3 tries to get a good casting. This is looking down grade from Beaver Brook.


This is mold 2, looks really good. This is Forks Creek.


This shows 2 molds together just downgrade from Forks Creek.


This is Forks Creek with 3 castings in-place.

So much to learn. Made some progress, but a lot more to do and learn. Plan to do more casting tomorrow. Will try Paul's way and remove molds earlier so I can chip any excess away. Of the 50 lbs of plaster I got in, used almost 1/2.

One thing that I want to try out is only filling part on the mold to give more variety.

Any hints always appreciated.

Thanks Cameron

Redesigned Huntsman and more dirt.

More Dirt and Huntsman redesigned.

I have got to say the trip to Colorado and the Narrow Gauge Convention really served to inspire me.

Ordered rock molds from Bragdon Enterprises, and they are first rate. Joel speed shipped them to me, got in 2 days. Ordered 6 molds one almost 2 ft long. The quality is excellent with extremely fine detail. Will post some pictures next week. Going to try two new materials, molding plaster and dental plaster. Hydrocal is great but it is costly, wanted to try an alternative as I have 60' linear ft in the middle peninsula alone to cover.

Found out my wife likes to do the scenery with the real dirt (so do I). so an extra set of hands is great and she has an artistic talent I don't have. I figure having the family involved is a win for everyone.

So first is the Huntsman redesign. I posted above how the original mine was way to large. Switched to the Grandt line kit and it is much more reasonable. That left me with the new to significantly redo the mountain course.

Before:

Not the best shot, but you can see how crowded the scene is and how far the mountain sticks out towards the track. Leaves no room for Huntsman which has a Section house and other assorted support buildings.

After:

This is the same view, mountain was cut at base and top then bent back. Really easy as sculpt-a-mold is strong and had some give. Reattached with staples and will fill gaps with Scupt-a-mold then dirt.


Now lots of room. Should fit Section house and support buildings easily. Will also have a few mine support buildings also. Spur has room for 2-3 cars.

More Dirt:
Added a good bit of scenery also. Having to hold on final details as Rock molds will likely drip some. Also began work on the Clear Creek banks.


This is just down grade of Beaver Brook. The dirt really goes fast. Color is still a little dark. Trying to see if I can mix some grout in with it to lighten.


This is deck 1 middle peninsula. Looking downgrade towards Tough-Cuss Pass.

Here is the creek being fleshed out. banks being shaped. Looking towards Forks Creek. Once Rock work is done we can go ahead and finish scenery. Next step will be to begin adding buildings and ballast the tracks.

Thanks Cameron

Thursday Update

A little more progress to report.

Enlisted by wife to help paint ties. She does a better job than I do. Used some gray, earth, mud, and grime then used the Min Wax Early American stain stick once dry.

Before:

Top track has brown spray paint only. Bottom track was first attempt at painting.

After:

I think this looks much better.

Thoughts?

Thanks Cameron

Golden Redesign

Had mentioned how visiting the area you model really helps. I wanted to show the before and after images of Golden to show what I mean.  Click to enlarge.

First cut of Golden about 6 months ago:

Design is frankly, bad! Nothing hardly in the right place or orientation.

Second Cut before visiting Golden:

Design is better, but downtown totally wrong.

Third try after visiting Golden:

Design now has look and feel of Golden. Massive compression but that is expected in models. Coal mine was closed by 1916 but I will leave open for operations sake.

Denver Trolley planned to be a static or DC running point to point if I can figure out someway to program delays for stops. Any ideas?

Visiting the site if possible really brings it alive and helps do a better job modeling.

Thanks Cameron

New thoughts on Canyon Mine.

Well best laid plans to add the mine complex to Clear Creek Canyon look to be going down in flames. The complex is too large to fit the space and still keep Huntsman.

Before:

Here is the image with the Banta Mine (very nice kit was my first kit in years so over did the weathering). Takes up so much space it would overwhelm Huntsman section house.

Proposed solution:

Sorry blurry. This is the GrandtLine Mine (only built to this point for sizing). Looks like it will fit better and I can cut back siding to 2 car lengths. By running tram into mountain and lighting tunnel I think will add some visual interest. Put sound in and detail it should be nice.

Leaves plenty of room for Huntsman after I trim Mountain back some.

Thoughts?

Thanks Cameron

Amazed at the difference.

Amazed at the difference.

Since coming back from Colorado and the Narrow Gauge Convention we have been busy with the High Holy Days. Got a little time to go back to planning some work on the layout and having visited the sites everything is so much easier to visualize.

Beginning redesigning Golden to take into account the correct layout of the downtown and station and adding the Black diamond coal mine west of town.

Looking at the maps makes so much sense now. A little bit of tweaking and I'll post the changes.

Next on the agenda is picking up some rock molds to work on the canyon. Lots more tock work to go. Paul Scoles book recommends dental mold, will look into that.

Picture tomorrow hopefully.

Thanks Cameron