Glen McGuire

8 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

you've inspired me to definitely do an on-water presentation for my next static build.

Thanks, Ian!  I can't wait to see what you come up with!!

On the projects where I build a boat then try to create scenery and water effects around the bottle, one thing has become abundantly clear.  It's a whole lot easier to recreate things man has made vs things that God has made.

The picture of a lush waterfall that I have in mind has big leaf plants on top of the wall, flowing vines cascading down, and patches of moss and undergrowth on the vertical rock faces near the water.  To come up with my various assortment of faux greenery, I hit Michaels and Hobby Lobby, got a donation from a neighbor that was throwing away some fake plants, and got a small package of stuff from Amazon.  After hours of trying to find and place just the right mix of things from this assortment, another thing became abundantly clear - I'm glad I never decided to become a florist.

So here's what how it all came together.  

You can see in the 2nd pic that I took it after I had begun adding some texture to the water.  The pic below shows the full texturing of the pool.  The pool starts with a smooth, base layer of epoxy resin.  Then I add a layer of acrylic gloss gel and swirl it around to give the first bit of texture.  I like the acrylic gloss gel because it's clear, but not completely clear.  It adds just a tiny amount of cloud to the water (opaqueness like @BANYAN mentioned in a comment above).  The last step is mixing a couple of Woodland Scenics products together - Water Waves and Water Ripples.  I mix them together because the Ripples product self-settles too smoothly for what I want and the Waves product doesn't settle at all.  But when I combine them I get the perfect balance I'm looking for.

The next step is adding is adding some froth where waterfall stream hits the pool.  For this, I pulled a few pieces off a cotton ball.  The natural shape of the cotton ball fits the arc I need to show the splash that spreads outward from the point of contact.

After getting the fluff of cotton in place, I hit it with a few blasts of hairspray spritzer to hold its shape.  I'll do some fine tuning around each of the splashes to complete the effect. 

We're on the homestretch now!!

Hey Gary!  glad to see you back at work on your Pelican.  Very nice job on the planking.  The tiny plane and chisels are quite interesting!   

And congratulations on  having your William Underwood accepted by the Jonesport Historical Society.

Nice recovery!

The seizing and (fake) splicing on your rope work is exceptional.  Well done!

On my last build (Archimedes'' Claw) and on @Javelin's Spartacus build, we had a discussion about the tendency of epoxy resin to creep up the sides of whatever it is poured against.  The same thing happened when I added epoxy resin to form the pool at the base of my waterfall.  Only this time, I got an added and unwanted bonus because of something I forgot to do.

I fully expected the epoxy resin to leech up the waterfall cascades that penetrated into the resin.  What I did not expect was the resin to grab my paint and take it for a ride!  It was then that I realized the mistake I'd made.  When I painted my wooden based with its swirl of greenish, bluish color, I completely forgot to seal it with a coat of varnish.  Ugh!  However, I think I can hide it fairly easily.  Another lesson learned!

I decided to wait on the pool's water effects and add the greenery to the wall.  Here's my assortment of what I hope will be come tropical-looking foliage.

Hey Dindsy!  Welcome to Model Ship World!!  I hope you will start a build log for your cross-section project.

On 1/30/2024 at 9:17 PM, Ian_Grant said:

how many of us also have short sections of railway track lying around "in case"?

I can't even begin to imagine what an engineer might have lying around the garage!  Probably enough random parts to build a MacGyver-like space shuttle!

Back to the trials and tribulations (or should I say tributaries) of the waterfall.  I've been chasing my tail for several days trying to get a look I'm satisfied with.  @BANYAN made a good point earlier a slight opaque quality simulating running water.  But I still thought my first version was too cloudy - I wanted something in between perfectly clear and what I had done before.  So I got a tube of DAP UltraClear caulk thinking that it would provide a clear base and I could cloud it up somewhat from there.

Another thing I did not like about my original strips of waterfall was that they were too flat.  I also was not thrilled with how the cotton strands were setting up.  Previously, I had brushed them with diluted white glue which coagulated the strands and also flattened them.  I thought they needed to be more stringy and poof out some rather than just look like a flat ribbon.  So I tried a bunch of different things till I finally hit on something I was satisfied with.    Here's the final process:

1.  I drew several beads of the UltraClear caulk on a glass pane.  This time, I left the caulk fairly thick versus flattening it down as I had done before. 

2.  I placed the cotton strands lightly on the caulk, careful not to press them too hard into the caulk. 

3.  I took some spritzer hair spray and gave the cotton strands a heavy dusting hoping it would give the cotton additional body and keep it from flattening out.

4.  Another thing I thought my original version lacked was individual water droplets.  So I took some salt and sprinkled it up and down the strands of cotton.  I did this before the hairspray dried so the salt crystals would adhere.

5.  After everything was dry, I gave the whole thing a light dusting of spray polyurethane to seal the whole mess.

I was pretty happy with how they were shaping up.  Back to the wall, I needed to add a few carefully placed rocks that would make the central part of the waterfall look like it was naturally diverted into and around the mouth of the bottle.  I glued them in and painted to match the rest of the wall.

The next step was gluing the waterfall strips in place.  To finish the falling water effects, I took a fan brush and lightly dabbed some Woodland Scenics Water Ripples up and down the water streams.  I think this last step really brought the water to life.  It added a glisten and also beaded up on some of the individual cotton strands to give the look of water droplets.

The last step was adding the streams at the top of the wall before each plunge.  Once again I used the Woodland Scenics product along with some thin cotton strands for very subtle white water effect.  Here's how the whole thing turned out:

The next step will be adding the epoxy resin for the waterfall pool and creating the water effects where the falling water hits the pool.  

What the heck!  I thought I was missing a penguin and now I know where he ran off to!! 

Glad he found a job with you, Ian.  No doubt he will be a lot happier with the weather in Canada versus Texas.  ⛄⛄⛄

That is very impressive work on the valves, Ras!

Sorry for the delay in responses.  Back in town now and ready to get this thing going again.

On 1/18/2024 at 5:54 PM, BANYAN said:

I like it Glen.  Wouldn't the slight opaque finish simulate running (not agitated) water in the stream and mist anyway?

Thanks, Pat.  That is definitely the look I'm trying to simulate.  What I've done just looks a little too cloudy to me.  But I might be being too picky.   I'm going to play around with some other ideas (like @Javelin suggests with the acrylic gel) and see if it looks better.  If not, I'll go back to the original.

On 1/19/2024 at 10:46 AM, Canute said:

We got some shiny fluffy fabric to add to the bottom of the falls. Made for a nice spray effect.

Hey Ken, what is the "shiny fluffy fabric stuff" you used?

Time to dive into the water effects, which will probably make or break the project.  After going thru a bunch of youtube videos on how to make waterfall dioramas, I finally settled on a hybrid technique that I think will work - caulk and cotton.  I took some caulk that comes out white but dries clear and laid down a number of beads on wax paper and a glass plate (I could not get it off the wax paper later, so glass is the way to go).  

Next, I unfurled some cotton from the ends of q-tips.  I like q-tips because the cotton is wound around the ends and you can get nice strings which work well for a stream of water like a waterfall.  While the caulk was still tacky, I gently pressed the stringy cotton onto the caulk strips.

Next, I took some diluted white glue and dabbed drops of it onto the cotton with a paint brush.  It was a bit tricky to do this without pulling the cotton strings off the caulk.

While the waterfall strips were drying, I worked on the base layer of colors for the waterfall pool.  The waterfall pool in the first pic below has the color shades I was trying to mirror.  The 2nd pic is what I was able to do after several days of trying, failing, and trying again.  The final result is varying mixes of green, yellow, and 3 different shades of blue. 

I will add a layer of clear epoxy resin  (maybe a slight tint) for 3D depth and then some mild ripple effects on top.

Finally, I had to take a preliminary look to see if I was heading in the right direction or way off track.  So I placed a few of the waterfall strips on the rock and got a rough sneak preview.

I'm not sure how happy I am with the opaqueness of the caulk.  I think it would look better if it was clearer and you could see thru it to the rock in the gaps between cotton strands.  However, to the naked eye, it looks a lot better than this up close picture.   So I may play around with that some more.  Regardless, it'll have to wait as I'm fixing to head out of town for a couple of weeks.  

10 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

Unfortunately either the aftercastle is slightly out of square due to the gunwales being unequal heights or, (as I aligned the masts in relation to the stempost) the stempost itself is out of square.

I stared at the dang picture for 5 minutes and could not see what you are talking about.  Looks really good to me.

Regarding your carving skills on Buono/Rustico, now I am the one that is "gobsmacked"!!  

More progress on the wall…

To me, one of the great beauties of nature is its randomness.  Related to this project, it’s the cascade of a waterfall, the ripples in the pool, the cracks in the rocky wall, and the variations of color in the same rock.  For someone like me, who tends to think in straight lines, right angles and basic colors, it’s a challenge trying to recreate the randomness.  But nature is also subtle, so you don’t want to go overboard with the randomness and end up with something that looks like kindergarten finger painting.

With that said, it's taken me a while to get satisfied with my initial painting of the rock wall.  I started with a base layer of slate gray, then brushed some darker tones in places, then ran a light white-ish wash over certain areas, then finger-smudged some different gray tints around a few other places.  I think I ended up with a fairly realistic coloring.  Of course, much of what I’ve done will be hidden with the waterfall itself, moss, and surrounding greenery, but I think you’ve got to get the base layer right for a good foundation.

Agree with Javelin.

Nice work!  I'm anxious to see how you pull off the thatching!

Boring update here - prep work for painting.  The first step was using modeling clay to fill in a bunch of the gaps and then brushing a layer of Gesso over everything.  I left more visible cracks under the main channel of water for a bit of contrast.  We'll see how that looks when I paint the rocks their final gray. 

For the sides and back of the wall, I covered the areas with a thin layer of modeling clay and textured/contoured it a bit.  The idea was to make it look like a cross-section of a large rock wall without all the cracks and sharp edges that the exposed face has.

Nice job on the weathering, Steven!  The last sample piece looks really good.

On 1/3/2024 at 5:47 PM, BANYAN said:

You need a Roman Centurian guard? 

I love Pat's idea.  I nominate this guy...

4 minutes ago, Cathead said:

I might have to steal this phrasing, well put!

Same here.  Keith definitely has a way with words!

Welcome to MSW!  I'd love to see a lego build like you describe.  I hope you will do a build log here when you start your project. 

Agree with jpalmer - impressive work with a very tedious process.

1 hour ago, Louie da fly said:

even though my stepdaughter thinks it looks nice - she just doesn't understand

I agree with your stepdaughter, it does look very nice.  And, you did such a marvelous job making the brace and making it fit.  But at the end of the day, it's your decision and either way I don't think you can go wrong since you do have a mosaic prominently showing the brace. 

31 minutes ago, Louie da fly said:

I've been experimenting with weathering, and I'd like the team's opinion.

I like the way the middle 2 boards on the left look if you can replicate that on all of them - it's not too much and not too little weathering.  I think the black on the far right board is too much.  The board on the left is not bad, just maybe a little too dark.  I like the way the railings look on that same pic.  My 2 cents.

14 hours ago, Bryan Woods said:

I think it’s great to have a little excitement added to the build:-)  I know you got that finial vision in your head. I can’t wait to see that water flowing!

13 hours ago, BANYAN said:

The joys and adventures of experimentation   Glad things worked out Glen, that is a great base for your waterfall.

Thanks, Bryan and Pat.  I'd say there's a fine line between excitement and adventure vs abject panic!!

13 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

I'm looking forward even more to seeing it completed.

Thanks, Steven.  Still got a long ways to go though - filling in the gaps around the rocks, doing the sides of the wall (still pondering that one), painting the rocks, adding greenery, painting the base, adding the pool water, and finally the waterfall water.  I think that's the proper sequence.

8 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Great rock face, Glen. Does it get painted?

Thanks, Keith.  Yes, I'm going to paint the rocks grayish, in similar fashion as that test piece.