Smoothing scenery material?

[peteski]

When building friend's layout we used this stuff.



It is good for smooth surfaces (like roads), but can be used anywhere.

[mmagliaro]

I used Celluclay on my current layout.  Loved it.  Relatively speaking, it's not cheap compared to home-made paper mache or joint compound but it is very light and strong after it hardens, takes glue and paint well, and can easily be cut out and reshaped if need be.   Spend the time to carve and rasp your stacked layers of construction foam so there aren't big jutting shelves and edges, as those will only have to be covered over by gobs of extra "goo".    I also found Celluclay to be easier to clean up and work with than drywall joint compound.  I've used joint compound before, and it definitely does the job, but I found it to be more brittle and shrink more than Celluclay.
The one negative thing about Celluclay... it takes a LONG time to really dry out and harden, like 3-4 days in my experience.

[Chris333]

The one negative thing about Celluclay... it takes a LONG time to really dry out and harden, like 3-4 days in my experience.

Like DKS said. I keep a small fan that I aim at any scenery right after I glue it down. I do this with the Celluclay as well.

[CRL]

I mix Celluclay with a 50/50 solution of latex paint & water and apply over foam or draped cheesecloth. Keep the celluclay layer thin since it shrinks some as it dries and it will crack if too thick. You can apply dirt or ground foam over the mixture while it’s still wet... hit it with some wet water until the paint starts leaching up through the texture material and this helps to bond everything together.

You must knock any sharp edges off the foam before applying the Celluclay or you’ll end up with a very unrealistic straight hard line in your otherwise natural looking scenery.

[mmagliaro]

I like this stuff too (Durham's Water Putty).  It's great for creating thin, hard surfaces.  I used it for sheer rock walls.  I just put a smear of it over the base material, let it get hard, and then hit it with a hammer to create a random cracking rock look.  The stuff really does dry hard as a rock.  They're not joking.  Very strong, light, takes paint and stain pretty well.

When building friend's layout we used this stuff.



It is good for smooth surfaces (like roads), but can be used anywhere.

[randgust]

I'm still old school and have been doing hard shell over 'whatever' since I was a kid.

I probably use much smaller paper towels than most to control the surface, my average sized one in N is about an inch square up through 2x3 inches maximum.   I precut all the paper towels into various sizes.   Normally I'm making my support structure out of cardboard and newspaper and I usually leave it in.

I'll use regular plaster or patching plaster; patching works a lot better if you're going over a surface that tends to leach the water out quicker.

After that dries - but not completely - I'll mix up disposable cups of plaster to the consistency of thin batter and brush it on to add to the thickness and make strength, cover any visible towel joints, may be more than one layer.    If you have really low humidity, you'll need to spray it as it sets to really set it up right.   That really makes it hard and durable.   I have hard shell that's now well over 35 years old and still fine.

I'll paint that with latex earth brown paint and add copious amounts of dirt, ground foam, and blender-ground dried leaves secured with white glue.   Unlike joint compound, you won't weaken it with prolonged moisture in this step. 

I like the control I have with the surface with plaster.   Never been a big fan of foam.   With the soaked paper towel layer in there, it's damn tough, repairable, and you have to drill it out to mount trees in it is so hard.   By the time I'm done you can't tell what was under there, but there's no visible vertical striation like with foam layers.   That's my biggest gripe about foam, I can still see the layer lines in the finished product unless somebody REALLY works hard on the surfacing step.

For modules, it's not light, but the weight is in the surface, not the subsurface, and it seems to take more of a beating over time than foam does.