 I'm James McGeer and the October What's Neat starts right now. The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for October 2020. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a really good show in that Tim Shreiner stops by and he builds a diorama in Acho scale from start to finish. Caboose shows us all of the techniques he uses, rock mode castings, putting down the ballast on your track, putting down dirt on the scenery, coloring the rocks, and then putting down the greenery and the vegetation to complete the scene. He does this all in less than 40 minutes. It came out to be a really good video with a lot of great tips. Also be sure to check out the What's Neat This Week video podcast that we shoot every Saturday night. This is on YouTube and you can find it by typing What's Neat This Week into the YouTube search. Also after watching this video, be sure to go to the inside pages of Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine online. That's a great publication that Joe Fugate and all of the associate editors spend a lot of time every month producing great Model Railroad content. It's a really enjoyable magazine to read and when you get to my column, you can see everything that's in our videos in still pictures and text. And by the way, when you're on there, vote me some stars in the Reader's Comments section. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this October 2020 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Tim Schreiner in the studio today. Hi, Tim. Hi, how are you? And today he's going to share with us his techniques on how to make rock molds and complete a really cool scene here. So let's sit back and enjoy this What's Neat with Tim. Okay, what we have here is a form that I already pre-made using Styrofoam that I had carved that I covered it with paper towels dipped in plaster. I am going to be applying rock molds on this form and then doing some coloring and blending. So what I have here is a nifty item, which is Woodland Scenic Produces, this pot that you can mix plaster in. It's flexible, which makes it easier to clean. I have already plastered it. This happens to be ultra-cal. I've used other plasters as well, as long as it's a hydro-cal or a plaster of Paris. This is what I tend to use the most. So I'm going to add some water. Start a little bit first because I don't want it real runny. I want it pretty thick. More water. Don't be afraid. It will make a mess. It cleans up easy. If you can find ultra-cal, I highly recommend it. It's got a little bit of a gray tint to it. It also cleans up extremely easy. It is produced by the U.S. Gypsum Corp. It comes usually in 50-pound sacks. I'm going to mix this real thorough, make sure there's no bubbles, make sure there's no unmixed plaster in here. Another thing about ultra-cal alike, it doesn't harden real quick. It gives you a little time to work with it. Okay, you can see the consistency I have. It's pretty thick. Now I'm going to take a mold. I'm going to start at this end. I've found a mold that I've already applied. I'm going to go ahead and fit it. I don't know if it's going to go here. By the way, these molds are made by Bregdon Industries. They are really high-quality. I'm going to go ahead and just wet the mold a little bit, just a tiny bit, and just pour. This is a big mold, fairly big, so it will take quite a bit of plaster to fill it. Now if you've got it a little too thin, don't worry about it. If you wait a few minutes, it will set up a bunch of this out of here. This is pretty thick and won't take long. You can see it will not come off the mold. Needs a set for just a couple of minutes until I start seeing it crack just a little bit. Another thing to do too, if you think you've got too many air bubbles, just go ahead and pummel it a little bit, get those air bubbles in there, out of there. Okay, now we let this set for a few minutes, about five minutes. It will always be different, depends on what the mixture turns out to be, and also depends on the humidity levels in the room. So what I'm going to do here, you can see it's nice and thick. I'm going to go ahead and spray the surface where I'm going and just dampen it. It'll help the plaster stick. Take this, put it right here. Push down pretty well, making sure every surface in the mold is sticking as much as possible. Don't worry if not all of it does. There's been times too. I've had to lay stuff against this until it sets up, but it's going to take a few minutes for it to get hard enough where I can pull it away from, or pull the mold away, so it'll leave a nice plaster detail. Okay, so about ten minutes, I'm waiting for this to set up. I started peeling away on the corners to make sure we're okay, so we just gently pull this away. Now don't be afraid if some of it doesn't stick, it won't hurt nothing, it'll happen. It'll also feel warm too, from the friction of it setting up. Any imperfections, I can go ahead and take a putty knife and carve and manipulate. That's beautiful. Here's some of it broke away, no big deal, happy accident. I'm going to go ahead and take a putty knife and I'm going to break away some of the stuff that I know is going to fall off anyway and blend these two molds together so they blend and flow nicely together. Okay, so here's the paints that I prefer to use. These are very inexpensive, they're from Hobby Lobby or Michael's Basics. I've got several different colors here. I have Mars Black, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Red Oxide, and Raw Sienna. Now the way I do it is first I usually start with the black or the gray. I just start a little bit on there and go ahead and just put a little bit of water, not a lot, because I want to get it stirred good before I dilute it. I want to make sure all the paint is mixed and no solid left. Now I'll go ahead and dilute it further. Without casting that was already previously made, I used this to do as a test so it gives me an idea of how dark or light it's coming out. About right I'm going to add just a little bit more water, test again, use a little bit more. Now I can either use a smaller brush, it depends how much territory you have to cover and just basically hit it. I'm going to go ahead and switch brushes and go with a bigger one and don't be afraid, there's no wrong way of doing this. And just go over this gently and hit and miss. Don't worry about trying to cover it all. You're not wanting to get it all gray, we're just highlighting. We can always go back later and do more. I'll set this aside for future because we're going to need that again. Next as I will, this time I'm going to do a little burnt umber and don't take much, just a little bit. Again I'm going to use a little bit bigger brush, just go ahead again, hit and miss. Where it starts to run, go ahead and brush it out so you don't have streaks. This is absolutely my favorite part of this whole deal, because I love doing the staining of the rocks. Now a person could, if they wanted to, if they're happy with this, they could stop right now and just fill in where you have missed and just utilize these two colors. But I'm going to keep going here. Next one I'm going to do is, let's see what I've got here, red oxide. This one doesn't take as much, it's very strong color and you don't have to clean the brush every time you're doing this because it doesn't matter. This is very strong so I'm actually going to pour some of this out so I can dilute it. Now on this I will not use a larger brush, I'll use a smaller brush. It doesn't take as much on the red, you don't want to use a lot and that's a little too strong still. So I'll just kind of brush it out, need to add more water. Now this is all personal taste, you may not want any red in your rocks, but if you look in what real nature is, even gray rock will have other colors in it besides gray. Okay, now I'm going to do another color, this one I'm doing is burnt sienna. Again you can stop at any time if you don't want any more colors, if you're happy with what is on your layout and you're good to go, otherwise you can still keep adding different colors. It's always good to have good lighting too. You just stand back and look at it and see if there's any other places you could use some more color. As you can see it's really looking good now. Okay, now I'm going to go back again with the black that I had here and go over it some more with it. You can hit some of the places again to just get more definition and so it highlights all the crevices in detail. Very easy, just use a cheap paint brush, you don't have to be anything fancy. Now you may have to go back over it later after it dries a little bit, sometimes you'll see spots that you missed and just add a little bit and just keep getting it. Work it in, make sure you get all any white that might be showing through. No time consumption, that's basically it and if you want to add a little more color you can, you already have some mixed up, go back, add more color if you like and that's basically it for doing rock work stain. Now Tim you just painted the track here and you use this Krylon camouflage paint. I always like to use the Rustoleum Earth Brown but the color you used on this, this is a great color for track isn't it? It is. It was just a happy accident that I found that I ended up with that can and I started using it and it turns out wonderful, easy to paint, excellent nozzle. So what's the next step? What are you going to do next? Next step I'm going to take dirt. Dirt that I got from Arizona that I sifted and that's what I'll be using to put it on there next. Rock and roll, let's see. Okay, so what I'm doing now is I have some latex flat paint that is Earth Tone. I diluted it about 50-50, it'll help paint the surface. I'm just going to go ahead and cover places where there is no rock work but will be dirt and ground cover. And thinning it will help it flow better too and get in all the cracks and crevices of the plaster. I've been using the same brush throughout the whole process. I don't get different brushes, I just use the same brush. It doesn't matter if it's dirty from previous color, it all works out. Try not to hit any of the rock work, just stay on where you're going to have dirt or ground cover. Okay, so what I have here is some soil dirt that I got from Southwestern Arizona. I just found a dirt road that had a lot of powder dirt on it and I got a shovel and a bucket and I brought it with me and it's pretty clean. There's no clay in it. You don't want any dirt with clay. I'm just going to go ahead and just wet the surface here and sprinkle away. Don't worry if you don't get it all covered and don't worry about getting it on the rock. It won't hurt nothing. When I'm wetting the surface, I'm trying to get the dirt to stick to the steep angles and a little bit goes a long way. Okay, so there's a few spots that the white is showing so I went back and mixed some more paint and I'm just taking a small brush and hitting these spots. When I sifted this, it left me with the larger pieces so I'm using that for talus. I'm going to go ahead and just mix it in down here. A spoon actually works better than this cup, isn't it? Okay, so next I'm going to take this water and just wet all this down. Preferably, you want some drops of detergent in this. So what the detergent does, it makes the water quote unquote wetter, which allows it to flow and not bubble. Next out, I have a bottle of Elmer's white glue and don't get the school glue, get the actual white glue and mix about one part to three parts of water with some detergent also mixed in. This is a little drop-it bottle that I got from a girlfriend, she used it for coloring her hair. It works for this. What I'll do is I'll just go ahead and just drip it on down. Okay, next I'm going to take some spray glue. This happens to be the Elmer's Craft Bond 3M. Makes a great product. So does Loctite. Any of them work. You just want to make sure you get one with a good nozzle that doesn't blow it all out. It gives it a nice, gentle spray. So I'm just going to go ahead where the dirt is, where I'm going to put ground cover grass. I'm going to just get this coat again. Okay, this is Lifelike Burnt Grass, or excuse me, Woodland Scenic's Burnt Grass. This is the fine. I always start with fine first and I'm just going to take and start applying it. You don't want to go too green. You want it to be somewhat subtle. Even if you're in the East Coast or whatever, you still, you don't want it to be too green. It doesn't look right. In my opinion, anyway. Okay, now that I have the fine sprinkled on, I'm going to go ahead and go over it again with the spray glue. Just a little bit. Try not to get too close to it so it blows it away. Now I'm going to go ahead. This is some other colors. This is also medium to fine ground cover, again. Probably this is either, either Woodland Scenic's. I don't remember, or it could also be Scenic Express. I'm just going to just do a light sprinkle. I'm just basically highlighting. Here's a different color, but a little coarser texture. Never be afraid to put in too many different shades down. The more, actually in my opinion, is better. It just gives more detail, more texture. And that's what we're after. We wanted a lot of texture. Okay, so we're going to add a little bit more glue. It helps hold down what I've already applied, plus it'll make it sticky for the next application. I'm going with another color, but a little bit more of a green, light green. And this is a heavy coarse, and it's a ground film. Don't worry about where it goes. Do the tossing around. You need to. You can also take and pat it, too, with your hand. Just go along like that with a handful of it. Press down like I've been doing. Gently. Okay, same coarse, but another shade. This is a little bit darker. Just gently sprinkling this on here, just giving it more depth. Okay, so the last step here in this process, I'm going to get some real cheap, cheaper the better hairspray. You want to get the extra superhold, the stickiest you can find. And what I'm going to do is, from a distance, I'm just going to spray this all down. And also, well, it's a personal choice. This is unscented. You can get scented if you want. It smells pretty. If you want to be careful not to be too close, it will blow it away. Okay, now that I'm done, when it dries, it'll hold it all together pretty well. It's not bulletproof, but it will keep it from moving around. Okay, so next, I'm going to add shrubbery. I'm going to use scenic glue by Woodland Scenics. I'm going to get some small chunks and just haphazardly put it in places. Just put a dab of glue down and put it in. And just any crevice you think that might look good with some ground cover, go ahead and put them in. I think we had too much fun down here. If any of the glue shows later, go back over and add some more ground cover. Cover up any glue that might be showing. Okay, now that we have the lichen installed, I'm going to go ahead and start planting a few trees. Again, one of the things that you want to do is don't do what tree here and a tree here and a tree here. It's always good to try to do in threes, but I'm going to use a scratch all here to poke holes. In the safe time, I'm not going to glue each one, but I'm just going to go ahead and stick it in. Also try not to have them lined up. You want them haphazard. Another thing, don't be buying just one brand tree. I recommend you get several different brands. You want to mix it up a little bit. If you get all one brand they all look alike and it just doesn't look right to me. You want to try to mix up as much as you can. Okay, what I have here is a bag from Arizona Rock and Mineral. They use real rock. It's not like Woodland Scenics with the ground up walnut shells. It's a heavy feel. It's real. This happens to be Union Pacific Gray. I'm going to go ahead and utilize this spreader and slowly spread it. Sometimes you'll have to go back and forth a little bit to get it dispersed. Okay, so now that I have the ballast spread with the spreader, I'm going to go over with a paint brush and just gently brush away off the ties and get the ballast spread evenly, especially down the sides. Some places may be a little light and you'll have to go over and just use a little spoon to spread it if you need to. Now that I have it spread, I'm going to go ahead and use a squirt bottle with water and wet it down. Make sure you get it nice and evenly wet. Next, I'll go ahead and use the glue that's diluted. I'll start one end and just apply the glue down the middle. Then again, on the other side of the rail. You can see by having detergent like dishwashing soap like Dawn in the glue helps to let it flow and saturate the ballast. Okay, now that's it and then just let it dry. After it's dry, take a bright boy and clean off the top of the rails. Tim, it's absolutely amazing how quick you did this entire scene, the ballast, the thoroughness of all of the scenery and the rock castings. You made it look so easy. It's absolutely beautiful. Tell us, where else can we learn about your techniques? Do you have a website? I do have a website. It's timscenerycreations.com. You can also find me on Facebook, Tim Scenery Creations, as well. Thank you for sharing this with the viewers of What's Need, Tim. I can't wait to see what you're going to do next. And that's this segment for What's Need. All of the model railroad products seen in this episode of What's Need are available through Caboose in Lakewood, Colorado, or order online at MyCaboose.com.