The CD Terrain Challenge

Well to drag us back on to topic I have made absolutely no progress on my terrain piece since friday... I have however progressed to Level 8 in Morrowind IV" Oblivion so my time hasn't all been wasted!

I've already commented to Stu what I think of his terrain but suffice to say its pretty damn sweet!

Phil I think your piece is great! I like the alternative use of a crater and it looks very good! I cant see the drying/gap thing you are talking about but I guess the blurry photo may be the reason for that.

2 very inspirational starts but all I can say is my entry will be down hill from here!! ;D

That's a bit annoying Phil ...what did you use for the groundwork? Surely there's not much that would react badly with an epoxy based resin product?

I do like the swirly green effect in the water...or is that the groundwork? in the photos.

Might start another CD piece myself tonight although I played Flames of War last night so am now of course revved up to do some 15mm work!

sorry Aaron, I meant it was (almost) delibarately blurry to hide the flaws

I've got a couple of theories as to what has gone on. Firstly, it's polyester resin, not epoxy, but I don't know if that makes any difference. Secondly, the whole thing was kind of rushed, cos I was dying to try this stuff out. The crater itself hadn't quite cured, I normally leave plaster casts for at least a week to get all the moisture out, but this one only had a few days.

I slapped all the paint on the crater when it was still slightly damp, painted over a still slightly damp primer, then did the water effect. The green swirly stuff is pva, allowed to go tacky, then superglue dripped on top. This was then painted in green and yellow, and a coat of nailvarnish poured over. Then, before I'd properly let that dry, I poured on the resin. Quite a few areas for problems to set in. As it's curing, the resin seems to be reacting with the texture stuff underneath, but in a good way this time - it now looks like there is some whiteish ooze ozing out the barrels, so that's all good!

I've got a couple of ideas to save this piece. First, whatever I do I'm not touching it all untill it gets a bit drier. I'll probably blast it with my industrial hot air gun (er, wife's hairdryer). Then either;

try and plug the gaps, with the resin or something else, maybe nail varnish. If I do go for resin, I'll try and seal the groundwork with something first. As I saud ealier, the resin hasn't peeled away from the skelly or barrels, so I'm guessing the problem lies in the ground work.

or, try and fill the gaps with more groundwork. this could be tricky, as I'll have to make sure it doesn't end up looking like the ground work is sitting on top of the resin, but could be ultimately safer, as I won't have to risk using the resin again.

Got to be the moisture then I guess. Modelling with plaster gets tougher as we head into the damper months. Takes an eternity for cast plaster blocks to fully dry in my garage over the winter

Ah I missed your second post. Bugger. So you reckon you've got a CD sized frisbee there or not? Are you just going to wait and see how it dries?

Still that's always the risk with using new materials I guess. I've had things go bad in the past (like an entire unit of Fantasy skeletons that were chestnut washed with a 'french art ink' that reacted badly with something (paint, varnish I dunno) and faded to purple over several weeks) and it's always depressing but I guess you learned something eh?

Latest update;



and a close up of the flaw;

The white scum is, how shall I put it, a serendipitous terrain effect. It wasn't there at all to begin with, but is spreading as the resin cures. I agree though, it looks pretty cool!

You probably can't see from the pics, but one barrel has a "poison" label, the other a "harmful" label.

I bought a pack of warning label decals when I built The Vat many moons ago, and, although quite expensive, it has proved to be one of the most useful purchases ever! about 80 decals, all the common flammable, corrosive, toxic and what have you symbols. If you look back through some of my terrain pieces, you'll see practically evryon has at least one warning label!

i do a bit of molding with pre set molds to make these tiny individual bricks and i would use plaster of paris.i would alwasy do it in the cold conditions because i found it gave a better result.in the heat the plaster craked and semmed to shrink kind of turned to powder in most cases but in the cold wanganui weather they came out beautiful!!

any reasons you can think of for that??