Wa’a Kaulua by Glen McGuire – FINISHED - 1/100 - BOTTLE - Traditional Hawaiian Ocean Voyager

[Glen McGuire]

2 hours ago, Canute said:

A stair stepping would look better, like your last picture.

I think you are right, Ken.

 

52 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

Something like this?  

Penguins AND icicles in a Hawaiian waterfall?  So much for global warming!!  😄    Happy New Year to you too, Keith!

[BANYAN]

Oh you are so naughty (or should I say mischievous) Keith

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Keith Black]

48 minutes ago, BANYAN said:

Oh you are so naughty (or should I say mischievous) Keith

 Me? I don't know what you're talking bout. 

[Javelin]

Happy New Year Glen, 

what I meant was that your stone/rock looks somewhat bland. It's side is too smooth and even, an effect you'd get when the water would run down its surface continuously.

In the waterfall pics you don't see smooth rock, it's not eroded by the water as the water touches the rock in only a few places on its way down. 

The rock itself however is broken and worn by gravity with a high frequency of sharp edges.

I believe you could either adapt your rock with more protruding pieces, like the one you circled, or try to replicate those edges by fine dark jagged lines (combined with lighter areas above them) to break the large grey areas on your rock. 

The jagged lines would then insinuate shadows and cracks in the rock.  

 

That's just my view though, all in all the centerpiece remains the bottle and the falling water would hide and break the view on the larger grey areas of the rock after all...

Edited January 1 by Javelin

[GrandpaPhil]

Amazing work!

[Glen McGuire]

Work begins on the real waterfall.  I bought some foam blocks for floral arrangements, glued a couple together, and cut them to fit my base.  I affixed a couple of bamboo skewers to the base which will pierce the foam giving it some extra stability when I load it up with rocks.

 

 

 

The next step was cutting the foam to the basic shape of the waterfall's wall.  You can also see my large assortment of rocks to choose from as I build the wall.  

 

 

I started affixing rocks at the top with the rock heating/foam melting process I used for my test. 

 

Unfortunately, I got off to a rocky start (sorry about that  😁) with the very first piece.  It was a bigger than my test pieces so I decided to use a propane torch instead of the butane torch I used for the test.  Bad move!  When I heated up the rock and placed it on top of the foam, it started sizzling and sinking really fast.  I realized it was about to cause a mini China Syndrome and melt all the way thru my carefully shaped foam, so I grabbed it quickly and went back to the butane torch.

 

 

More progress...

 

 

And here's the face of the wall complete.  At least for now anyway.  It's got some ridges that are more noticeable in person than picture, but I'll let it sit overnight and take another look in the morning to see if I want to make them more prominent.  I also tried to visualize the flow of the water down the rocks as I was piecing it together, but I found that's a lot harder than I thought.  Hard to see the forest when you're working on each tree.  So again, I need to step back, let my brain refocus, and look at it with fresh eyes.

 

 

Viewing from the top, you can see I left 2 small channels on each side of the main channel in the middle.  I might have a couple of small ribbons trickling down paths from there.  Maybe.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3 by Glen McGuire

[Bryan Woods]

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!

[BANYAN]

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

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

Looking good so far, but I'm looking forward even more to seeing it completed.

 

Steven

[Keith Black]

 Great rock face, Glen. Does it get painted?

[Glen McGuire]

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.   

Edited January 4 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

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.

[Glen McGuire]

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.

 

 

 

[Keith Black]

 Looks fantastic, Glen!

[gjdale]

Great job Glen - very convincing!

[Louie da fly]

Wonderful work, Glen!

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking good!

[Glen McGuire]

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.  

 

 

Edited January 18 by Glen McGuire

[Javelin]

I did something similar, by accident, with clear acrylic gel. You can pull nice  transparent acrylic skins off glass or plexi plates after application of acrylic gel. The acrylic is totally transparent and could be touched up with dry brushed white paint combined with the cotton. 

These skins are also tacky and very flexible to create a 3D effect rather than a flat layer. 

 

In any case, your rock turned out awesome! 

 

[BANYAN]

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

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Canute]

Nicely done, Glen. We did a similar waterfall in a train club I belonged to. We got some shiny fluffy fabric to add to the bottom of the falls. Made for a nice spray effect.

[Glen McGuire]

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?

 

[Keith Black]

 Welcome back, Glen.

[Canute]

Glen, it was a very long time ago (mid 80s). I'd guess it was some kind of pillow stuffing.

[Keith Black]

2 hours ago, Canute said:

it was a very long time ago (mid 80s). I'd guess it was some kind of pillow stuffing.

 There's a man after me own heart, don't throw nuttin' away because you never know. 

[mtaylor]

5 hours ago, Keith Black said:

 There's a man after me own heart, don't throw nuttin' away because you never know. 

Very true, Keith. 

[Ian_Grant]

As we know, Glen never throws anything away either....how many of us also have short sections of railway track lying around "in case"?

[Glen McGuire]

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.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Edited February 2 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

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.

 

 

Edited February 13 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

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!!

 

 

  

Edited February 13 by Glen McGuire