RMweb Premium Keith Addenbrooke Posted November 19, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted November 19, 2020 16 hours ago, coastalview said: Not a bad enjoyment to cost relationship And with breakfast included - all those cereal boxes had to come from somewhere . 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechnicArrow Posted November 19, 2020 Author Share Posted November 19, 2020 On 18/11/2020 at 17:17, coastalview said: Not a bad enjoyment to cost relationship I'm glad you agree! 12 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said: And with breakfast included - all those cereal boxes had to come from somewhere . I prefer to think of it the other way around - my breakfast generates free modelling material for me! A quick update for this evening - I've built the canal wall, with the usual layer of card covered by brick paper. It was topped off with a strip of capping, which also helps to cover the poor join! Finally four bollards were added along the top, built as on Green Lane Wharf using card hole-punchings and sprue offcuts. It does make the front of the layout look much smarter. I will eventually put some facing on the rest of the exposed card that forms the base of the layout, but I've got to figure out how I want to make the canal work first. Any ideas? 8 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Keith Addenbrooke Posted November 20, 2020 RMweb Premium Share Posted November 20, 2020 8 hours ago, TechnicArrow said: I'm glad you agree! I prefer to think of it the other way around - my breakfast generates free modelling material for me! A quick update for this evening - I've built the canal wall, with the usual layer of card covered by brick paper. It was topped off with a strip of capping, which also helps to cover the poor join! Finally four bollards were added along the top, built as on Green Lane Wharf using card hole-punchings and sprue offcuts. It does make the front of the layout look much smarter. I will eventually put some facing on the rest of the exposed card that forms the base of the layout, but I've got to figure out how I want to make the canal work first. Any ideas? In terms of ‘making the canal work’: I ran into a problem last year with a cake box model where I’d used brick paper for a road bridge and it got wet when I was tidying up the ballast around the track below. Capillary action pulled the water up the wall and stained the brick paper. To avoid spoiling the excellent canal wall you’ve got, experience would tell me to avoid anything that might get the paper wet. There’s also the card base to think of, of course. Of the different techniques around, that would perhaps suggest painting the canal and covering it over with a sheet of clear plastic / Perspex? One advantage modelling a canal is they can have still water, not waves. Just a thought, Keith. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold john new Posted November 20, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted November 20, 2020 Real water doesn't scale apart from any other issue it might create. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ls91 Posted November 20, 2020 Share Posted November 20, 2020 Just a thought, but if your "water" was based on a removable section, you could make a snug fit card base, paint it the usual mucky murky brown. Then use a few coats of gloss varnish to give your surface water sheen. If you do this as a removable section you could do 2 versions, with and without a canal boat, and being removable you can do them away from the brick paper as Keith has suggested to avoid. 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Posted November 20, 2020 Share Posted November 20, 2020 (edited) 23 hours ago, TechnicArrow said: I'm glad you agree! I prefer to think of it the other way around - my breakfast generates free modelling material for me! A quick update for this evening - I've built the canal wall, with the usual layer of card covered by brick paper. It was topped off with a strip of capping, which also helps to cover the poor join! Finally four bollards were added along the top, built as on Green Lane Wharf using card hole-punchings and sprue offcuts. It does make the front of the layout look much smarter. I will eventually put some facing on the rest of the exposed card that forms the base of the layout, but I've got to figure out how I want to make the canal work first. Any ideas? When I did my quay I used the woodland scenics drab olive and real water and it worked brilliantly. I avoided the real water on Lockdown Wharf as this would have sealed the boat in or if I left the boat off when poured the boat would slowly sink in when on display and leave a mark. So on the wharf I used Drab Olive paint for a base cover and then smeared Pritt PVA on it which after 24hours was dry and clear showing the dark colour below and still has a sheen. Also if you smear it will your finger you can give it very faint ripples if you want. I found this approach a good compromise. This photo in natural sunlight probably shows the effect best https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_2020_11/1743864608_LockdownWharf2_11.20-2268.jpg.44c2dd22af4dd0c1ed21af5114eceeb6.jpg I would also put a few random grass tufts along the bottom of the brickwork then pour what ever water you are using to link land to water. If you decide to use 'real water' avoid it contacting any PVA glue. It causes the real water in that area to go cloudy in my experience. Edited November 20, 2020 by Karl 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechnicArrow Posted November 21, 2020 Author Share Posted November 21, 2020 Thanks @Keith Addenbrooke, @john new, @ls91 & @Karl - very useful ideas, that have led to a little experimentation today... I already had the bit of card cut to shape, so I layered it up a few times, with a cereal box card shiny-side-up as the top. I painted that a vaguely suitable brownish colour - basically what I mixed up in a few minutes, I didn't try to match it to any real colours. I then created a sort of mold - a long piece of card with a layer of sellotape to keep it vaguely waterproof and less sticky. Finally, this mold was filled with a very generous layer of PVA - slightly watered down with the mucky water I used to clean the paintbrush from the earlier painting. I have no idea if this 'tinting' will help or hinder the final thing, but I went with the idea that this is all an experiment so we'll see what happens. It turns out that what happened is my mold leaks! I don't think it was quite sat level, either. I have now returned the escaped PVA to the mold and levelled it up a bit - and it hasn't started leaking again yet, so I think we're good this time. Because there's quite a lot of glue I don't expect it to set particularly soon, but I'll keep you updated. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechnicArrow Posted December 6, 2020 Author Share Posted December 6, 2020 On 21/11/2020 at 17:47, TechnicArrow said: I'll keep you updated He said, over two weeks ago... What can I say, we got to the end of November and suddenly Uni wanted everything done at once. Honestly, that term went much quicker than I thought it would depsite nearly everything being online. Anyway, the canal has not yet had a success. The first attempt (as seen above) made a right mess - PVA seeped through everywhere and the base completely warped, although the result wasn't *terrible*; it's just a bit messy at the edges, and only half of it was really flat and smooth. I decided to try again with a significantly thinner layer of PVA, but even that caused the top card layer to warp and de-laminate, and it ended up pretty cloudy too. More experimentation is required, most likely after Christmas now. But in the meantime - some rare Welsh winter sunshine streaming through my bay window, combined with inspiration from @Karl's excellent photos, led me to try some of my own sunlit shots. Here you can see the bit of the canal that sort-of worked. Not much else has really changed, other than the mooring bollards are fixed down now. A shot under the bridge. I'm not sure what it is about inset track that I enjoy so much, but I really like this scene. I'm particularly proud of this photo, because it's got real sky in the background! This will probably be all on this layout, and Arrow Paints, for a bit - I'm going home for Christmas at some point this week, for who knows how long. But there are other layouts at home, and some of them might even get topics posted about them finally... 15 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
coastalview Posted December 6, 2020 Share Posted December 6, 2020 Natural light works so well. The photos are great but agree with you about the last one it looks superb. Chris 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Posted December 6, 2020 Share Posted December 6, 2020 This is looking very good, amazing the effect of real sunlight isn't it! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManofKent Posted December 7, 2020 Share Posted December 7, 2020 Really liking this little layout. The combination of natural light and the height of the buildings add a great deal of realism to that last shot. 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
6990WitherslackHall Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 Loving the layout. It's amazing what you can achieve in a such a small space. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Ralf Posted February 23, 2021 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 23, 2021 10 hours ago, 6990WitherslackHall said: Loving the layout. It's amazing what you can achieve in a such a small space. How did I miss this layout, awesome stuff, feeling very inspired. Any news @TechnicArrow?? How did you do the infilling? Scalescenes print out on card cut to fit? I've loads to do but was planning on the DAS clay route... Cheers Ralf Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechnicArrow Posted February 23, 2021 Author Share Posted February 23, 2021 On 22/02/2021 at 13:50, 6990WitherslackHall said: Loving the layout. It's amazing what you can achieve in a such a small space. Cheers! Thanks for all the likes too by the way, I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up to 70 notifications this morning! 13 hours ago, Ralf said: How did I miss this layout, awesome stuff, feeling very inspired. Any news @TechnicArrow?? How did you do the infilling? Scalescenes print out on card cut to fit? I've loads to do but was planning on the DAS clay route... Cheers Ralf Thank you! No particular news - this little scene continues to sit on my windowsill next to Arrow Paints, acting as scenic stock storage for my slowly-increasing collection. Oh, and the footbridge gets nocked off every morning when I open the curtains... The infilling is no more than cereal box card, plain side up. It's sandwiched with Pritt Stick to various other layers of corrugated and thick card to bring it to the correct height. This method works on this scene since there's only 4 straight, parallel rails to contend with; I used the same method on Green Lane Wharf (link in my signature) but with curves and even points it isn't the tidyest. I've tried weathering it with watered-down acrylic black/grey paint but the section I've done looks pretty terrible, so I'll probably leave the rest for now. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
6990WitherslackHall Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 8 minutes ago, TechnicArrow said: Cheers! Thanks for all the likes too by the way, I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up to 70 notifications this morning! Your welcome! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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