Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Terrain Forming Has Officially Commenced

I'm getting asked two questions frequently:
  • Why did you stick all those strips of cardboard on there?
    -AND-
  • Why did you put the fascia on now. Doesn't that go on at the end?
Well my friends today your answer has arrived.

It's a matter of order of operations (though there's a high probability that I forgot something and will realize it later and wish I had done that first). I didn't want to permanently mount the track if I knew I was going to be plastering right next to it. It's possible, of course, but I didn't want to risk it if I had the choice. So instead I decided to do the outer terra-forming first, before mounting the track. Then I could lay down the track in confidence.

On a larger layout there would have been more of a shoulder on the wooden trackbed, but because this is a very small layout it made more sense, in my opinion, to terra-form first where possible.

Terra-forming can be done in different ways, but with wood I choose to go the cardboard strips + plaster gauze route. The first step is to establish a web of cardboard strips that give the basic shape of the earth:

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It first starts with the vertical strips (or vertical-ish strips). The strips run from the wooden track bed down to the fascia! Tada -- there's the answer to the first two questions. In order to create the terra-form web, I needed to attach cardboard strips to the front fascia.

Once the vertical-ish strips are in place, horizontal-ish strips are woven into them.

I used my mom's old crafting hot glue gun to glue it all together. While the hot glue is drying, they're held together with clothes pins:

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When all is said and done, the cardboard strip webbing should look like this, leaving about 1.5" squares of openness:

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Once the cardboard strips are in place, plaster gauze is laid over them. The plaster gauze is a crafter's product that originated as cast-making material. Doctors offices could order gauze that had dried plaster attached to it. It enabled them to make a cast by simply wetting the plaster gauze and applying it to the patient.

Well some government organization that regulates things like this regulates that they are only allowed to be so old, and then the doctor's office must dispose of them. Those surplus, "expired" casting gauze started making it's way to crafters. Soon it became a hot item and craft supply stores began to offer non-sterilized versions.

I actually picked up 8 rolls off of ebay for $25 (that's about 5 cents a square foot). On a side note, it was being sold by a "baby memory" seller who was offering it to expecting mothers to make a plaster cast of their pregnant belly. Fortunately, when it came into work it wasn't marked as such and was in a plain'ol USPS box.

Anyways, the gauze isn't 100% covered in plaster, so after the strips are wet and laid down on the cardboard web, they look as this...

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I'm not sure if you can tell, but there are small holes in it (holes like gauze would have holes).

However, if you rub your finger across it, you can smooth out the plaster. I did a 2nd coat of plaster gauze, as I was planning to do, and on the 2nd coat smoothed everything out, giving me the final terra-form base:

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TA-DA #2! The first land form has taken shape.

I plan to go back with an x-acto knife and spackle and clean up where the fascia and plaster mountain meet, then paint it with a coat of my base desert earth beige color.

There's also something neat I'm building which shows up on the edge of a couple pictures which I'll post about later this week (probably a video along with it).

Oh yeah, and under the terra-form, it's very professional looking...

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On a side note, I'm actually building this layout on an old bulletin board that my mom used to use to block her puppy dogs into a certain part of the house. It has dog scratches all over it, and at one place on the bottom they actually peed on it. Good thing that part is getting covered up...

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