Dry Stone Wall
Entry posted by Jaakko
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I have been using Hornby’s Skaledale ready-made dry stone wall products recently.
The wall units are glued down by using a hot melt glue gun. The small gaps between the units as well as the gaps underneath the wall are filled with ready-made drywall filler. I like to work with the dry wall filler because it is an easy medium to carve afterwards if needed in order to hide the joints between the individual stone wall units.
If the scenery contours are relatively smooth, the straight wall units can be blended quite nicely into the small curves of the land. However, the main limitation of the ready to plant products is the rigidity of the wall geometry. The steep slope of hills and undulating scenery contours are difficult to follow. The price is another issue if you need (scale) miles of walls. For example, the Skaledale granite wall pack no. 3 makes a 410 mm long section of a wall and it costs about £7. So, one meter of the Skaledale wall costs about £ 17. In the case of the Harburn Hobbies product, one meter of a stone wall costs over £20.
I am modeling the Cambrian Cost Line and the colour of the dry stone walls in that part of Wales looks very pale. Geoff Plumb’s excellent photo archive homepage gives several nice examples of that (e.g. http://plumbloco.smugmug.com/Trains/CambrianCoastLines/16750125_TBdHnX#!i=1265237364&k=FtJJK3k&lb=1&s=A) Hence, the Skaledale walls should be painted.
This is my trusted warhorse, more than 25 years old Badger Model 350 single action airbrush and still going strong! By current standard, it is crude for any proper airbrushing but is very suitable for this kind of rough scenery work. I am habituated to use Humbrol enamel paints, so a suitable mixture of light grey, earth brown and cream enamels is order of the day. After airbrushing, the diluted Indian ink washes and some dry brushing weathering will follow.
The basic ground covering is the next thing to do. In this case the ready-made Heki’s fiber grass mat is glued down in the front of and behind the walls. By the way, a hanging basket liner is quite an unknown raw material in Finland. Finally topping up a little turf and static grass along the footings of the walls neatly fills the remaining gaps and gives a blended look. Presto!
The ready to plant dry stone wall products have their limitations. The stone by stone Das clay modeling produces very accurate and pleasantly undulating dry stone walls. I am not a fine scale modeler and I just follow a “good enough” modeling principle. In that case, the Skaledale dry stone walls fit the bill.
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