stone walls

[ranny9]

I thought about using floor tile and cutting it into small rectangles then stacking them up.
Another idea I wanted to try was pouring plaster out in a thin sheet. Before it was solid cutting it into small rectangles using a pizza cutter.

Oooooo...what an idea! Like making home made pasta squares for Dutchie Pot Pie. I'll have to try that.

[gnatshop]

I think Dave hit it right - floor tiles cut into small blocks. But since I tend to be a little lazy, I recently made
a building foundation out of Dr. Ben's Baby Building Blocks. They appear to be little pieces of linoleum floor
tiles. They are about 1/8 by 1/4 by 1/2.
I used two diferent colors - grey and tan - then weathered with alcohol and shoe dye.

http://www.debenllc.com/servlet/the-121 ... ins/Detail

I left them uneven and with a few gaps on purpose - this foundation will go under an old building.

Dr. Ben's Foundation.jpg (94.78 KiB) Viewed 284 times

I don't know why the top of the blocks looks yellow - it is weathered the same and really looks about
like the sides. Jaime has'nt taught me enough about photography, I guess.

[davidg]

Ok I have decided to try another approach with these tiles. I found cutting the tiles in half make them much more realistic in size. I also seperated the tiles into colors. The wall seen in front of all the tiles in the middle are simply cut in half with nippers piled up and glued together. Since I used different colors in this wall I had to paint them. The two walls on the outside are scored with a saw then cut with nippers. Got a cleaner cut that way. Since I used all the same colors on these walls I did not paint them. I don't think scoreing them before cutting make enough difference to justify the work. Since you can't see the back of the wall it does not have to be cut perfectly. The wall in the back of the picture is the one I orginally built using different color tiles and not cutting them. It will work ok if its under a foundation where you don't see the with of the tiles. I think these will work for some projects. I like the fact that there are spaces between the tiles as it looks more natural.

DaveG

[mecrr]

Dave, that looks a lot better. What did you use for "nippers?"
David

[davidg]

I used some old sprue cutters I had on hand. Since the material is plaster it cuts easy. The one thing I like about using the same color is I don't need to paint them. Of course if I used the blue or green ones I would.

daveG

[deemery]

I used some old sprue cutters I had on hand. Since the material is plaster it cuts easy. The one thing I like about using the same color is I don't need to paint them. Of course if I used the blue or green ones I would.

daveG

They'll dull your sprue cutters pretty quickly, though!!

dave

[davidg]

yup, that why I did not use good spreu cutters. I also found scoreing them with a hack saw first made them break easier and cleaner.

[davidg]

Here some new pictures of the stone walls I have using the mosaic tiles I purchased from Michaels. I found with the larger tiles cutting them in half made a good stone wall. In HO scale the stones end up being 1 foot thick, by three feet long and one and a half foot wide. The foundation with the beams on top are built with that size. I also found the best thing to highlight the stones are to spray them gray, then fill in the spaces with spackling. The white stands out. The smaller tiles which are still colored as I have not painted them yet, come in HO scale 6 inches thick by one foot square. I built a couple stone walls to see how they would look and built a longer flat wall which could either be a coble stone road or a side of a wall.

DaveG

stone wall with spackling

100_1880 (800x597).jpg (249.5 KiB) Viewed 176 times