Are there any recomendations for making stone church walls? I had thought about covering the walls in Woodland Scenic's talus but I don't know how that would end up looking. I'm trying to find Plastruct's stone sheets but no stores near me sell it and s/h is so much from their website. Do any of you make stone walls a certain way? Any ideas would be helpful.

Since it sounds like there's nowhere nearby with anything you want, perhaps you could try looking around the ornamental section of a garden centre, there are things like cladding and stuff that might work. It wouldn't weigh too much if it was thin and you could perhaps cut it with an angle grinder. It sounds a bit off the wall if you'll pardon the pun but you never know, it costs nothing to check it out...

Try building your walls from wood, then cover them with plaster or drywall mud. After this dries, it is really easy to scribe your rocks into the plaster/mud. It's not as hard as it sounds.

Patrick

That's kinda the way I was thinking but not sure how to texture so many individual looking rocks. I've come up dry at all the local train and hobby stores? How do I scribe the plaster?

Another recomendation... try Plastruct sheets of stone... several styles available. In fact, I have taken several sheets of varying styles of "stone" facing, and created molds, so I could reproduce them in plaster. The reason for this is plaster takes paint and stain more "realistically" than styrene... very simple to do as well... all you need is a nice flat tray with edges, and some latex mold rubber. Paint on about four or five layers, allowing each to dry before adding the next. For the final layer, add in some strips of mesh gauze or the material used to reinforce fiberglass bodywork (available at home depot for about $7.00 per roll). This will provide strenght and regidity to your mold. Once it is al dry, pour in your plaster and let it harden. Peel it out when dry, and glue it to your structure... use wall spackle to join any visible seams.... works like a charm, looks great, cost very litte, and you have a mold that can be used over and over again!

There are lots of ways to do this. Scribing plaster is easy -- just use an old Exacto blade, a dental pick (my favorite), or even an old ball-point pen. I like to draw the pattern with a Sharpie marker first, then trace the lines with a scribe.

Another method is to use the foam from meat trays. You can but individual bricks -- or stones -- and put them together, or simply scribe the foam with an old ball-point pen. The only limiting thing about foam is that it must be painted with acrylic paint.

To see examples of both of this methods, check out my Horizon Indiana Jones figure at this site: http://www.ipmsgreatplains.com/Gallery_BobKerr.htm

The pillars are scribed plaster and the floor is meat-tray foam pieces.

I echo all the previous posts. I have made wall in all the above ways. The easiest is the plaster pour method. If you can't get a master wall section, scratch is the next method.
Go ahead and use a bass wood base (stiffer and wont warp as much as balsa). Cover with a thin layer of house hold spackle (wall putty). If you are going for a uneven disjoint 'wavy' rock face and not a smoother uniform face make sure the putty is as deep as you want the rocks to stick out. Let that dry and then come back with a pencil and draw in your basic outline of all the rock. When you are pleased with that outlining come back in with a sharp object, back of a #11 blade, scibe, ice pick kinda thing, tip of a small file, and etch in the lines. As far as making the uneven rock faces I would use a dremel like tool and put a round grinding/rasp bit on it. Then grind each rock individually. The putty will give you decent texture overall, the grinding will give you shape.
It is a lot of work, the results come out great.

I use the foam method
You can get it from meattrays but I know that carbumpers are packed and shipped with it too and those plates are a little bit bigger.
What to do with the foam?? Just cut/saw/melt the part that you need out of the foam. Sand it for a good flat surface. Now pick a pencil or a pen (I use a fine tip pen for it) And scribe in all the detail you want.
If you want a plastered wall you first scribe in a brick pattern. after that you cover the parts where you don`t want the bricks to be shown
same with the street just scribe in the cobblestones take a vile and push randomly on your street surface so you get some kind of leveling in the stones
Making walls for a building
Here I have a link where I show how I made the walls, street and sidewalk for my contest dio. It`s a 6 paged album

I hope this was of any help

I have a question for everyone. Have any of you guys ever heard of Balsafoam? Yuo can buy it at most hobby shops. It is a high dence pressed foam that you can sand, seal, paint, crave, and even dremel. It is also used in the movie model field. It is great stuff, I have used it for many things even for figure bases

Balsa Foam is great. Works like a Dream You can carve it with ANYTHING......

Matt

Thanks everyone, it seems that I have a lot of work ahead of me. Thanks for the input!

hey matt. Check out these pictures of what I have made from polystyrene used meat trays at no cost. Glued together with medium temperature hot glue and paint in acrylics.
my page




Both house ruin and bridge are made from the same method

This ruin was made by making a cardboard frame and sticking each individual stone on to it cut from cornflakes box cardboard. Texture was added by white glue and talcom powder

Plastic Battle... you ever post finished pictures of the Church you were working on? If so, where - I want to see!

Also, I bought two large sheets of BalsaFoam - haven't used it yet, but will report in once I do. And darn - that stuff is EXPENSIVE!

A cheap method for making stone surface on walls is regular wall spackel or thinned DAS pronto. Just apply thin layer on wall , let dry for some time and use rough sand paper to press the stone texture on surface. Spackel should be still soft of course.
Another advantage of this method is that you can crack pieces out of it to make realistic damage. To make bullet hits, simply use your x-acto , stick it in the surface and fold. Cracks nicely! Like plaster, it´s easy to carve as well. Use terra-cotta coloured DAS pronto and you have right coloured brick wall!

:-)

Toni

Damn that looks good. And the price is right :-) I'm a cheap son of a tank..

Think white glue whould hold the peices together?

White glue works well, but low temperature hot glue works better. It dries reasonably quickly and you can get on with your project.

Hi plasticbattle
I was what technique you used to get the road surface in the last photo or is that bought?