Rockfall shelter progress

I did more rock carving on Sunday, but soon got a bit bored of that. It's a pretty slow and tedious process, although it's really starting to look the part now.

I decided instead to tackle the rock shelter. My masters had dried by now and were ready to be turned into molds.

Step one is to attach the masters to a smooth base, and build a fence around them. I'm making these molds upside-down, so the flat surface at the bottom will become the top where I pour in the resin. These are just simple one-piece molds.

The fences are cardboard, hot glued in position. As long as it's water tight that is all that matters.

Step 2 is to mix up some silicone. I have some highly accurate jeweler's scales which I use to measure out the precise ratios, and a 100 pa...

Rocking rocks

Well the queen of Utrainia is away for the weekend, which means it's back to bachelor living for me and the cat, and the bulk of the weekend has been spent in the garage, bag of plaster in one hand, empty pizza boxes in the other!

During the week I went on a collection trip up the road to get some suitable soil. I tried to turn this soil into a clay-coloured paste to cover the raw polystyrene, but instead I just made mud. Mistake #1!

Correcting this mistake, I made a new paste consisting of: "Deck and Pave Grip" (very very fine sand), acrylic modeling paste, water. Mixing these together made a nice gritty paste that I used to cover the polystyrene and blend the rocks into the scene. This worked well.

I then glued the first tunnel into position and filled behind it with boulders. The boulders were easily made: take one zip lock bag, some old plaster castings and a hammer. Put plaster in bag, seal, bash. When done you should have a good variety of plaster rocks.

Making Rocks

A canyon requires rocks, and so rocks I've been making.

Molds

For the steep cuttings near the track I made a latex mold of a rock in the garden. This was a fairly smooth-faced rock and so hopefully will represent where the railroad has blasted and excavated away the rock.

After applying 3 layers of latex to the rock I peeled off the mold and prepared it for casting. To cast it I supported the mold on some card and spooned in some plaster. From the same batch of plaster I applied some to the vertical polystyrene surface where it was to go.

I kept a careful eye on the plaster, and as soon as it was no longer liquid (but still quite soft), I transported it to the site. Using the cardboard to support the mold I bent it to shape and pressed it onto the wall. I left the mold in place till it was dry, then peeled it off.

This worked very well for get...

Canyon progress

Progress on the Thompson River Canyon has been steady this week. Last Sunday I only had a couple of blocks of polystyrene, but over the last few evenings I've fleshed this out into many layers of sculpted polystyrene, and added some tracks.

Working closely from reference photos of the area, I used a saw and craft knife to roughly shape the foam, then a SurForm tool to grind off the rough edges. Then I worked the foam with a knife, breaking off chunks to form rock faces. I used the saw blade to scrape over the surface and add more texture. By the end of the second night I had this:

The last couple of days I have been fillin in the joins between layers with some lightweight spackling compound (Red Devil brand). I have no idea what spackle is, or what it is mad...

Polystyrene Day

Work on the viaduct continues at a snail's pace, however this weekend the Utrainia Engineering dept were proud to erect two out of the four (yes, it's growing) bridge towers. One is going to be the full 100 feet height, the other has a sloping base to accomodate the steep valley floor.

To the right you can see the beige bridge girders, produced on-site from patterns taken from the masters. The two remaining towers still need to be produced, and for these Management has grudgingly conceded that two more tower kits shall need to be ordered in from overseas. The paperwork is currently pending with the government paper-pushers.

Meanwhile, the civil engineering forces have been a little more productive. The base for the viaduct scene has been triangulated and is now very sturdy, so construction can move into the polystyrene phase.

Workbench update

What's been happening in Utrainia this week?

Corner module #1

After making the skeleton of the first corner module in record time, I ran into a bit of a road block with the bridge. I realised that it was too short and too tall, and would take a bit of work to get it curved. What I really needed was an extra bridge tower to make the chasm sides a bit less steep.

So rather than just biting the bullet, ordering an extra span and waiting a couple of weeks for it to arrive, I decided I would make my own. The girders were easily cast, however the A frames for the bridge towers were a different story. I had to make a two part mold, and then inject the resin in at one end, using a combination of gravity and pressure to distribute it throughout the mold. Second attempt went reasonably well, good enough for my purposes:

A lot of flashing to clean up, and a fe...