Make the mountains. or should we call em cliffs?

Ok now I am standing here we've just hung the first shelves and everyone is looking at me like I even know what the heck I am going to do. Like I said earlier I had only ever attempted the old stand by of hard shell scenery. I had decided early on to use flex track and some foam but I had NEVER used them and on my previous oval of track I had used nothing but sectional track. So like a never fearing soldier I plunged right in and started building (cue the inspirational music) NOT!!!


I FLIPIN' PANICKED BIG TIME! What the heck had I got myself into? I can't build a layout. Maybe I should Just put up some track and nobody will notice that its JUST a circle of track, ya that's the ticket! Better yet I will go play some video games in my room and everyone will forget we were going to put track up there, hopefully they wont notice the bloody big hole in the chimney either.



So we have 2 ways of doing this 1st we could just start putting up foam and just start carving it with the hot wire tools or 2nd we could grab some paper and a pencil and draw out some ideas before carving the foam up. I am sortta leaning toward the paper idea. Now that I have settled on my way of doing it thats just what I did but of course I still needed to OK all drawings with the wife. After some drawings are done its time to lay foam right? Wrongo! Now we need to make some scale models and rough builds to make sure the dang thing look as good as the do on paper and will fit where I'm planning on putting it. Now when your in the design phase that is when you'll figure out the the best time to paint it. some pieces need to be done on the workbench others will need to be done in place. Now I am not saying that the design phase will make screw up stop, the wont! But it WILL minumize the possibility of a truely massive screw up.



Now its time to build the real thing. Hey if your lucky it might even be the design piece that you use. Carving is straight forward. Start by turning one the wire. (you don't know how many times I've screwed up step one!) Once its hot start gouging out pieces of foam. START WITH SMALL BITES! Its easier to take a little bit more out than try to put something back one that you stupidly cut off. While cutting have pictures of real rock that your trying to replicate dont worry that it doesn't look quite right when you start out the first few times you will get better and a hot wire tool is very easy to learn with.



Once your done carving get some Gesso and cover the rock you just carved it will suck up a lot of gesso, but Gesso is cheaper than paint. The paint will cover way better with the Gesso than without you will think you've got good coverage but when it dries you will notice where the paint missed the nooks and cranies. After you paint your base cover now you need to make a wash of black paint and in my case water. Now repaint this wash over your whole surface the wash will fill in all the low spots on the cliff face. after that dries you get to dry brush the rock face to bring out the highlights. It sounds complicated but pretty soon you'll have it down pat. Now your ready for ground cover but thats a differant post.