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Hello, my name is Evert
and this my little on-line tutorial
on, uh, doing scenery using
Extruded foam. I've been model
Railroading, uh, I've been into
model railroading since I've been 8
years old and just recently made
the switch to N scale. The
Techniques I'm going to show you are ones
that I have been able to figure out that
have worked for me and are applicable to
any scale you happen to be modeling in.
So I hope that this can be a source of
useful information for you and give you some
inspiration on what you can do. My
techniques aren't necessarily the "end all".
It's just my way of doing things so feel
free to modify, or enhance, or make changes
to my ideas as you see fit. So
I hope you enjoy watching these short
little movies I'm going to be posting
via YouTube and I hope you can get more
fun out of your model railroading experience.
Well the first thing you are going to
need to do is get some foam. This is
the 2 inch thick extruded foam and you
should be able to get it at any home
improvement center like Home Depot,
Lowes, or Menards. It might be a
little more difficult to get your hands
on it if you live in a more temperate
climate here in the states but for the most
part it should be readily available.
It comes in various thicknesses. This is
the 2 inch thick foam. This is the 3/4
inch and it comes in 4ft X 8ft sheets and
I'm thinking they also make 5 X 9 sheets
but a 4 X 8 sheet should be enough
depending on how much scenery you need.
It usually runs about 15 - 16 dollars for
the 2 inch foam, and if you don't need to do
that much foam scenery then you could possibly
go do some dumpster diving near some construction
sites and grab a hold of whatever scraps they
have and use that to build up your scenery.
Now the kind of foam that you don't
want to use is this white 3/4 inch foam and I
think it also comes in 1 inch thicknesses. This
is a very light kind of foam and it's not going
to give you the kind of texture you're looking
for if you want to model rock formations in foam.
It's got these little beads that aren't going
to look right if you use this type of foam.
The next items you're going to need to get
are some tools for cutting your basic shapes
out, the basic pieces for gluing in place.
This is a drywall saw and you can pick that
up for 5 or 6 dollars (or maybe even less).
If you don't want do that, if you have a spare
hacksaw blade lying around that works just
great too on the foam. It will cutit up pretty
quick. And of course there's the old stand-by:
the utility knife. But it won't do you much
good if you have foam that's thicker than 3/4 inch.
Next items you'll need are some basic tools
just for shaping your foam and for cutting out
rock formations. The drywall saw and the hacksaw
blade work reallly well for stratified rock and
sedimentary rock. You can cut horizontally
along the edge and you can get that stratified look.
I consider a sur-foam rasp a must have tool for
doing basic shapeing, contouring, and smoothing down
some of the rough areas.
And for other tools pretty much the sky's the limit.
I use a metal ruler to tear up the foam and cut
out grooves, valleys, and rock formations. You can use a
screwdriver, a putty knife; any implemment you have at
home that's fairly sturdy. You could use a pocket knife,
a hunting knife. a serving spoon (make sure it's not your
wife's good one).
You can also use a hot wire foam cutter. I got this at
HobbyTowne for 25 dollars but I haven't really used it
that much just because I found that using these other
implements got the job done a lot faster for me.
Next on your shopping list you're going to need to get
some glue. I use the liquid nails for projects and
foam board. It works really good. It doesn't give off
a lot of fumes so it's safe to use inside and is safe to
use on foamboard. It won't dissolve the foam when you
put it on.
Another item you'll need to get is some paint. Flat
Latex wall paint will work. Get the cheapest stuff you
can because you will be covering it with scenery and
Acrylic washes so it's not going to matter. You won't
need to get high quality paint. I'm using a light
base color, a light brown. What base color you use
depends upon the kinds of rock you're modeling and
the kinds of scenery. You might want to use a light
grey base because you will always be darkening it up
with the acrylic washes you put on it. So it's beter
to use a lighter base color than something darker.
If things don't turn out the way you'd like you can
always go over it again and re-spray the washes/
Another item you'll need are some weights of
some kind. Maybe you have an old set of weights from your
exerciseing days(hopefully you still are). You're going
to need to weight the layers of foam down so you can
minimize the gaps between the foam layers. It helps
them bond together better and helps you leave as few gaps
between the foam as possible. Just in case you do end up
with some gaps you can get some light weight spackeling.
I'll show you how to use that to disguise the layers of
foam. This comes in handy becuase you can use it to
cover a multitude of sins. The next thing you're going
to need to get is some acrylic paint.
This is Burnt Sienna.
This is Burnt Umber.
This is black and this is some
Raw Sienna here.
The colors that you use, of course, depends on
what region your modeling, what kind of rocks you're
modeling. What I do is put some paint in these
spray bottles and add some water to dilute it. After
I paint the base coat and let that dry I start
spraying the washes and that starts to gradually color
the rocks and give me the coloring I'm looking for.
I can't tell what ratio I've diluted these (I didn't
pay attention to how much paint and water I was using).
The best thing you can to is take some pieces of foam,
glue some chunks together, carve some rock strata out,
and paint it. Do some experimenting and find
out what works best for you.