I was thinking about creating a dio of WWII France street battle. I have some Verlindin buildings picked out but the coblestone street kit is a little small and is expensive for what I need. Does anyone have any tips on building coblestone streets? Thanks Jeff

Here are a couple of ideas.
1. Buy a package of dry split peas at the grocery store. Glue peas, rounded side up on the base and then fill around them with diluted white glue and paint as a street. Looks good and is pretty cheap to do.

2. Cover base with plaster of paris and let harden. Scribe each individual cobblestone by hand. Time consuming but looks great. Works better for brick streets with straight lines.

3. Buy the Verlinden kit and make a RTV rubber mold of it to make more copies in plaster so you get more than one use out of it.

I have used the third technique as described above. I bought a resin section of cobblestone road, a jar of mold material (latex rubber in a white jar from Michael's Craft Store), and high quality plaster of paris. I brushed several coats of the rubber over the resin section, then peeled off the rubber, turned it over and filled with the plaster of paris. Then paint the need section, as required. It took a couple of days for the mold to build up, but it is fairly inexpensive.

One more technique I´ve seen successfully executed was plaster of paris thinned almost liquid and apply white or black peppers. Very small stones! Let dry, paint.
If I was to make a big street section I think I would use two techniques to give it some variation...

Toni

The split peas idea works really well, but seal the peas first.
I made a street section with this method without first sealing the peas and they absorbed the water from the glue/water mix and swelled.
Big mess..

A couple of coats of future or urathane (sp?) makes a world of difference.

Mike

Thanks! Great ideas, I think I will give the peas a try. I can see how they would make great coblestones. Thanks again. :-)

You might want to try seeing if a company like plastruct has cobblestone platic sheets. cut to size, glue down and paint.

Josh Weingarten
aKA shiryon

hei fubar you sayd that you have some Verlindin buildings. do you know any online shop which has some?

Another nice idea!

oh, here the link
http://fp.docdio.f9.co.uk/page/cobblestones.htm

Found this @ plastruct not the correct "scale" though.

Matt

Hi,

Came across this idea in a book. You can try it out..

- Get a pack of Epoxy Putty(two paste one).
- Mix up a putty ball about the size of a Table tennis ball.
- Using a broad wooden board, roll the ball into a tube like shape by rolling between board and a hard surface, and try to keep the diameter to upto 1/4 or 1/8 in.
- Now, using a knife, cut up equal small circular pieces and roll into the size of your cobblestones as needed.

Place the small balls on to your dio base in a cobblestone pattern before they dry, and pour plaster into the cracks.

Voila! Cobblestone pattern ready, and no need to worry about using peas!

Hope this helps...

Rgds,
BP.

PS : I think this can become a Digital Diamond tip. In that case, I got here first !