The Concrete and the Clay...

A different view of my "Tetford Quay" model, styrene stone in evidence.

 Apologies for going on yet again about stonework. I covered the subject back in this blog about two years ago, but on reflection, I don't think I described things well enough.

The photo above shows why I don't like proprietary stone plastic sheet. It's pretty bland, although some people get superb results with it, have a look at Geoff  Forster's superb Penhydd station building, also featured in MRJ 211. The Wills stuff is nice, but the pattern repeats very obviously and it's easy to spot. However, all this is only my humble opinion, feel very free to disagree with me!

I first tried doing stonework with Polyfilla on card, then later on plastikard. The results were OK, even on plastikard (I used 0.040 sheet), but it was difficult to scribe, resisting the scriber and giving me aching wrists. I then moved on to Pyruma after reading some of Allan Downes's excellent articles. This did mean baking the sides of the structures in the oven for a (very anxious) half hour, but the results were worth it. Only trouble was, the clay had to be scribed wet...it dries so hard that any re-modelling is out of the question.

The wet Pyruma clay is best attacked with a Stanley knife blade, repeatedly in a vertical motion, keeping the flat, sharp base of the blade parallel with the work piece.If the marks are all roughly horizontal, that will be fine. Then stab with the tip of the blade, to make vertical course lines. The barn below was done this way.  I was working to a budget; the customer wasn't paying for my spending hours carving each stone, but it works well enough.

My partner, Petra, has spent time carving stonework out of the wet clay and of course it looks excellent- best done with an exacto knife ground down to a square tip. There's a photo on the previous post. You can also use a clay stamp, although the results are a bit hit and miss. This is also described on the previous post.

The Das method...those quoins were added later, and they look pretty clumsy now.

I seem to have settled on the scribed Das method now, for various reasons. It's forgiving, easy to carve, and it doesn't have to be baked. It only really works on something porous, like thick card, and the card does have to be treated with wood glue for it to adhere, and to stop it warping the card. However, if you use a small hand scriber, like a ground down screwdriver, sharpened to a point, scribing is easy, if a little mind-numbing. You can work it wet, and I have achieved passable results with a stamp, but I prefer working with it when it has dried. I scribe carefully and gently, going over the lines two or three times, and taking regular breaks!

I promise not to go on any more now...until I start painting the office model on the bench, anyway!


My original Stonework Post here