Rosin Paper instead of plaster cloth for mountains?

I've never thought of using it for mountains and such.  I use it from time to time for sheathing and lining, etc. I think it would be too thick to use: I like to make mountains out of paper (more below) but prefer thinner paper in several layers. Also not sure how much rosin paper would soak up throughout a glue-water mixture - that is important

 

Rosin paper is cheap, but so are the two sources of paper I use: brown paper bags from the grocery store (free) and newspaper (free, since I would just throw them away.  I make all my mountains and terrain out of them.  I build at armature or whatever you want to call it - frame for the terrain/hills/mountains, and they apply several coats of roughly 2 x 12 inch strips of those papers soaking it a diluted yellow glue mixture.  I apply severla layers. 

I haven't used it personally  but saw a demo of it at a local train club meeting and it worked really good especially after a light coat of plaster over it. Try going to the Bolder Model Railroad Club website at http://www.bouldermodelrailroadclub.org/ and look thru their clinic archive, it should be the most recent one as it was only a month or so ago.

This is a source for some fairly inexpensive plaster cloth. Not sure that you can beat it.  http://www.sciplus.com/categor...maxrows/11/srch.fp/1. Three rolls were enough to do this mountain. I also added structolite and rock molds to the outside.

 

 

Rick

When I was young, the accepted practice was to make hillsides and mountains out of paper mache. After building a basic framework with cardboard strips it would be covered with multiple layers of paper mache. Using strips of newspaper and either wallpaper paste or plain old fashioned flour & water paste, a very light, solid and inexpensive structure can be built. The only drawback could be that it takes more time than some are prepared to spend. 

Howard Zane --> red rosin paper....

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/...0/979179.aspx#979179

I hot glued the cardboard strips on and then got a 25lb bag of 20 min fast set drywall mud and dipped the blue paper shops towels from home depot and it worked fine.  I made all my rock castings out of the mud ahead of time so I could set them at the same time.  It is a cheap way to go.  Also the fast set mud does not shrink and crack and the 20 minutes is plenty of time to work with it.

One of the model railroad DVD producers featured Howards RR 3 or 4 times, think it was the 2nd DVD where Howard took about five minutes to explain his rosin paper full strength white glue then ground cover technique.

Hardshell materials should be selected based on the strength required.

 

The red rosin paper or other thinner coverings are great for places such as distant hills that will not be subjected to stress.

 

If it must be able to withstand a misplaced elbow such as near layout edges, nothing beats a good, thick layer (1/4" or more) of strong plaster such as Hydrocal or Structolite.

 

Jim

Lots of excellent info here that I need!  Thanks guys.

While I constructed the base out of this with plaster cloth and than a coat of structolite followed up by p of p rock faces, I'm looking to transistion to less rock face and p of p rock face due to cost. I've heard you can dip shop paper towels in structolite for a similar and less expensive base, however I have not tried this yet. It would certainly negate the expense of plaster cloth.

 

the best use of red rosin paper is as mentioned above,  by Howard Zane. his enormous HO scale layout is done all with this technique and is featured in Allen keller's series of dvds on model railroads.Allen has done three discs of Howard's layout ((#12, 44 and 58). I have only seen the first one (only available in VHS, I think) but there is a very good demo of how Howard uses this material. the caveat of course is that he is working in ho scale so things are lighter in weight (structures, etc) but I have to admit the technique was pretty impressive (cost, ease, ability to modify, etc.). 

 

jerrman

 

That's what I do for larger projects where the cost of the plaster cloth would be too much. Works great - just a little messier than the plaster cloth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jim

Jerrman

Howard provides a demonstration of his red rosin paper technique in #44, were he incorporates a prebuilt diorama into his layout.

This DVD can be purchased on line for $45.

Someone contacted me offline to say that the article was in the Jan 2007 issue - I have it buried away at home and will dig it up.  Apparently Howard Zane used 100% white glue.

Has anyone compared:

- soaking the red rosin paper in advance, and then layering it down.

- hot gluing the red rosin paper in place, and then "painting it" with white glue

- using the full intact width of the red rosin paper vs. cutting strips that are crossed over each other?

Thanks to everyone for the great suggestions and some of the amazing pictures.   Parts of my layout look right now like the cardboard cross-linking seen in Ranger Rick's first pictures.  I'm excited to proceed.  THANK YOU ALL.

if I remember correctly, Howard is using the full width or wide sections of the red rosin paper, not cutting it into strips. I think he applied it over cardboard strips latticed into a form. he definitely made it look easy, particularly for large areas. sounds like Charlie has the DVD with the demo and he might be able to confirm that. my copy is I storage right now.

jerrman