PHPaul

Sounds amazing. Looking forward to more pictures!

Looks like a great start! What will you be finishing the exterior of the garage with?

Sculptamold is a common material for building larger terrain features. It's basically paper fiber mixed with plaster powder and works much like plaster but is lighter and goes further than plain plaster. However, it is - at least on my budget - expensive with a 3 pound bag running around $20US. For larger dioramas and model train layouts, 3 pounds doesn't go very far. There are a number of Youtube videos on how to make your own. The consensus seems to be that the best source of paper fiber is the gray paper egg cartons. The cartons are torn up into small pieces and then chopped into fine fibers with a blender. The video I watched chopped them dry, but that didn't work worth a hoot in my old cast-off single knife blender. After some experimentation, I found the following "recipe" works best for me: 1 egg carton 20oz of water 2 cups of plaster of paris. Put about half the water in the blender. Add torn up bits of carton slowly, adding more bits as they are reduced to a slurry. Add more water as needed to keep the mixture about the consistency of sloppy oatmeal. When the entire carton has been reduced to slurry, pour it into a bowl and add the plaster of paris in roughly 1/2 cup portions, mixing thoroughly as you go. Obviously, this mixture is for immediate use but one batch will cover quite a bit of area. Working time is dependent on how wet the mix is. The proportions I listed worked well for me, the mixture held it's shape and working time was more than adequate.

I'm in coastal Maine. This area is referred to as "Downeast Maine" as it's less than 100 miles from the Eastern border with Canada.

Especially right now! 25°F (-3°C) and 20 knots of wind after snowing all day yesterday and sleet/ice all night. The basement stays around 15°C year around. Cool in Summer, warm enough in Winter.

Thanks, David. It has a 4 foot LED fixture on each end and I'm thinking a third in the center of the room while I have things cleared out would be a good addition. My 73 year old eyes need all the light they can get!

Rumors of my demise, etc. etc. My wife mentioned that she thought I should buy/build a shed to house my hobbies so I'd have more room!!! I looked into the concept and soon realized that in order to have significantly more room, plus add heat and electricity I'd be spending a LOT of money, plus I'd have to go outdoors every time I wanted to play. So I came up with Plan B: Undertake a major rearrangement/remodel of existing space in the basement where the "hobby room" is now. This is before. The room is roughly 10x14, but the perimeter is taken up with an old reloading bench, shelves and a desk. By cleaning out a bunch of junk that should have been disposed of years ago, moving the shelves to another location, moving the desk out of the room and tearing out the old reloading bench, I gained enough room to increase the diorama from 4x5 to 5x6 and still be able to walk around all four sides. As you can see, the existing diorama "table" is a hodge-podge of whatever I had laying around as I added on here and there. As part of the remodel/consolidation, I built a new table to move the modules to. The cutout is for the wiring and various light features on the front of the diorama. As of this afternoon, I have the modules separated and sitting on the new table. I'll shim them up, match the joints between modules and screw things down as the next step. A few upgrades/repairs will be taken care of in the process. Meanwhile, I'm dreaming up stuff to take advantage of the additional acreage.

Started on the weathering.

My youngest daughter, who has more artistic talent in her pinkie finger than I'll ever have, wants to do a diorama in a terrarium setting. The center piece will be the ruins of a small castle. She chose this picture from the web as the model. She's never worked with plaster so I volunteered to build the basic form for her, while demonstrating a few techniques. I printed out the picture which, conveniently, was scaled to nearly the exact size of the space available in the diorama, took some measurements and built a form to pour the front wall. Removing the casting from the form caused breaks in some of the thinner areas, but that's a "feature, not a bug" as it's supposed to be a crumbling ruin anyway, right? I carved the left side and did a dark wash on it to demonstrate the technique and then poured, carved and erected the other walls. And here's the "finished" project as far as I'm going to take it. She will finished weathering, detailing, adding rubble and vegetation and blending it into the rest of the diorama. I'll try to remember to post a picture when she finishes it. Given her skills in every other art/craft she enjoys, I expect it will be fabulous. Of course there's a small chance I could be prejudiced...

Following!

Just what I needed to know. Thanks!

A picture on the internet has given me an idea for a project. I will need the front clip from a '66 GTO and I'm wondering about the quality of this kit.

Really first class work!

VERY nice work! And I've heard the "No, it's not for sale, I'm going to fix it up some day" story more times than I care to remember. In at least one instance, it's still sitting there rotting away 20 years later.

The next thing that has transpired, is that this diorama is no longer a sensible 4 feet by 4 feet. It has now grown another 8 feet longer, giving it a size of 4 feet by 12 feet, as evidenced in the next photo. Yeah, that'll happen I started with 2x2 and am now at 6x4 and would expand more if I had the room. VERY nice work, I love the section with the cars parked in the bushes and trees growing up through the engine compartment. Very real, I've nabbed parts off cars and trucks in just such a situation.

A Whitney Punch works great for thicker plastic and metal.

A little progress indeed! That's gorgeous!

LOT of detail! Glad I don't live in that neighborhood tho.

Cool! Also looking forward to updates!

LOVE the truck! Very realistic patina.

I love trucks from this era! They required DRIVERS, not steering wheel holders. Following.

VERY nice! What are you using for the cast iron soil pipe? Whatever it is, it looks great! Very realistic.