The Lake and Bait Store

that looks great, now im going to have to find a spot to do that now.

You seal this foam with a mixture of a white scenery glue called flexbond and powdered red clay the mixture has the look and consistency of chocolate pudding.

The water product (Magic Water) I used will leach into surrounding ground cover so I needed to accurately determine the finished water level.

I've attached a piece of plexi-glas to the back of the layout and sealed it with silicon sealer to contain the Magic Water

Will try to post some more this evening.

Wow! that looks Great!

Very very nice work.I cant wait till I am ready to do scenery and hope it comes out 1/2 as nice.

Very nice

Looks great so far. Can't wait to see more.

Thanks for your kind comments folks.

Both Roger and Dave at unreal details warned me that if you have even a pinhole in your basin Magic Water will magically disappear.

I felt confident that I had the basin sealed pretty well but I still wrapped a drop cloth behind and under the layout just in case.

I tinted the MW with a drop of green and a drop of brown ink to every 32 ounces I mixed up. The MW is a 2 part resin with a 2 to 1 ratio. I was pleased with the product it mixes easy and doesn’t have much odor.

They claim the MW won’t bubble but they didn’t count on some fool covering his entire lake bed with coarse sand. The grain size is roughly 1/32 and it trapped a lot of air. I blew on them poked them with a pin used a hair dryer but the bubbles just kept coming. I got rid of all them on the shore line where you can see the bottom and didn’t worry about the middle of the lake since it will have several more layers on top of the first layer.

Knowing what I know now I would have poured the first layer much shallower or even painted on a thick first coat .The MW did leech up into the sand on the shoreline and I had know problems with bubbles after the first pour.

They say not to pour any deeper than a ½ an inch but I only poured about an 1/8 inch at a time and adding fish to the top of each proceeding layer after it was set but still tacky. They say it takes approximately 24 hours for the product to cure depending on the conditions. I waited 48 hours between each pour although it seems like it is pretty well cured after about 36. I mixed 32 ounces for each layer.

I poured 3 layers and was only half way to the top of the spillway since I only ordered the 96 ounce I had to order another 96 ounce kit hoping that would be enough to finish the job.

If I was doing this again I would leave the center of the lake bed very shallow since I painted it black and dark green to simulate depth and I would have saved myself a lot of money. MW is a nice product but is a bit pricy but not really anymore so than the other water products I looked at.

When I was about a 1/4 inch from the top of the spillway I put my boat in as the motor extends a 1/4 inch below the hull.At first I tried setting the boat on a couple of 1/4 inch blocks and gluing the motor to the surface of the lake but the CA glue had a strange reaction to the stuff it took forever to dry and never really got hard it was set but was kind of pliable like the Magic Water.I was able to prop the bow up at the level I needed it to be with some wood.

You can see the last of my fish stuck to the waters surface in this next image.I had originally planned to tie the boat to the dock but it covered all the fish I had put in the water and kind of cluttered up the dock scene so I opted to tie it to one of the stumps instead.

This picture has the water at about an 1/8 inch from the top of the spillway.

When I was down to what I had hoped would be my last pour it was time to add the last bits of vegetation.The cattails are from scenic express but I didn't like the look of them on their own so I added them to some clumps of moss and ran beads of superglue across the clumps then cut the excess of just below the glue.

The plants beside the dock and along the shore are a scenic express briar patch I cut into pieces and glued to the lake surface so they would appear to be growing out of the water along the shore.

I glued some strands of moss to the surface to look like Hydrilla .

After I poured the last of my second 96 ounce Magic Water kit the water came dead even with the top of the spillway. I was hoping it would crest it and leave a light coating on the falls and in the stream bed.It has taken two 96 ounce kits done in six separate pours to get this far so I had to pick up an 18 ounce kit to finish it off.This worked out great it put about a 1/16 final coat on top that I could stick my canoes into and coated the spillway with only a few drops of waste off the edge.

Great work!!! I am starting on a fly fishing river scene.  Where did you buy your fish from? 

This is outstanding work!

Thanks so much for sharing the details!

Thanks ogaugedreamer and Rich883, I made the fish from wooden stemmed cotton swabs.Using a belt sander I put a point on for the nose then ground a v-notch about 2/3 of the finished length.Then flatten them in a vise putting more pressure on the tail then the body cut a v into the tail to finish them off.

I've installed a panel in the window and a friend of mine has it now painting it to carry the lake scene out to the horizon.

With so much time and money invested in this scene I was very hesitant to do this next step.

This is what I'm using to do the texture with, it dries clear.

The acrylic gel dried crystal clear.I'm not looking forward to painting the white tips on all the turbulent water.

Going to do a test and mix some white paint with the acrylic gel and dab it on a piece of plexi-glass and see what it looks like.I'll add teased cotton to the base of the falls for a mist effect.

That sure is looking nice !!!

Tremendous!  This would make a great video tutorial, wouldn't it?  

That is really nice work.  Seeing how great your lake and stream came out and the painstaking detail you added and knowing I could never accomplish anything half as nice I've decided to never add water features to my layout.

Love it, Love it. You should be very proud of that.

Thank you for all time.  Great tutorial. 

Mike   

This will be a bait store connected to the lake scene by a small foot bridge.The piece of MDF is not the base it's just a jig to hold all the piers while I build the project.

I used scale 2x6 for the deck, a very slow and tedious process but I think it looks pretty good and I'm interested to see how the area underneath will look with the light shining through the gaps in the deck.

This looks amazing, wonderful job!  I already bookmarked this for future use/help!

First let me thank everyone for your kind comments.

I'm using two Miller Eng. beer signs in this build they are really easy to work with.

Wasn't sure I would like the two color scheme but I think it works.

I'm going to hold off on installing this end of the building until I finish the interior.

Made this stack of beer cases to try and hide the wires from the window signs when peering in from outside.

super!! excellent worksmanship

That is really fantastic work.  Love it.  Will have to come back and check out the bait shop when it's finished.

Thanks for the kind comments folks.

I'm fortunate enough to count Roger Farkash of TW Design among my friends.He was able to finish and deliver the painting for my window last Saturday.It looked so good I hated to put the bridge back in place.

I'm just about ready to call the interior to the Bait & Beer store finished

just a few more details to go.

Your layout is fantastic! Gives me more ideas for mine.

Dan

Some outstanding work! Wish you would post some of your projects in progress on the Sunday morning showcase. Excellent work.

WOW - you're right - can't tell where the foreground ends and the background starts . . . 

Great work - particularly the shop interior

Absolutely incredible!!  Beautiful work "Papa"......  Can't wait to see the finished project. 

Alan

I like it.

Fantastic!  True artwork.

I've been following along with your lake/stream project.  Wonderful work.  Thanks for sharing.

Dennis

Glad you like it I call adding building interiors "Vulcanizing" You are the master.

Thanks for all your kind comments.

Well I'm still tinkering with the shop interior but I needed a respite from painting tiny bits with a visor and tweezers so I got started on this last weekend.I need a stream for the water cascading down the rocks in the corner.

Added a few embellishments to Roger's original paint on the stream.

Applied a hefty coat of acrylic gel.

It will take two or three days for this to dry clear.

Would it be too corny for me to say 'That rocks!"

This looks outstanding!

Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work!

Thanks Guys.

The gel on the cascade is dried now and I think I need another coat to give the water a bit more depth.

Stream ready for a layer of Acrylic Gel.

I think the proper way to do this is in several layers but that's a task for a patient man I put it on by the spoonful.

After a week the stream was clear for the most part still a couple of cloudy spots. For the final drop of the cascade I've brushed some of the Acrylic Gel on both sides of a piece of plastic.

I've dry brushed a little white paint on both sides.

I cut out the shapes I needed and attached them with the gel at the top and bottom.

It's time to get a roof on the bait shop.It's not that I can't think of anything else to ad I just don't know where I'd put it.

I'd like for the roof to be detachable but will see how it goes.

Not my most beautiful electrical work but I feel it's safe so lets move along.

The shingles are from Rusty Stumps

I bought the adhesive backed type but after reading that they some times did not adhere well I decided to stick all the shingles together then glue them in place as one unit.I printed a grid out and went to town.

For the ridge cap I used a couple of 1/4 x 1/16 pieces covered with a copper foil tape.I tried to chemically age them but ended up just using paint in the end.

Did a couple of test with ink wash but because of the shingles being fiber the came out to uniform and I feared what the alcohol would do to the adhesive.Got the mottled look I was after just dry brushing with some black acrylic paint.

Left the gap so they would fold nicely to the roof slope.

Outstanding!

Peter

Thanks Peter.

Trying to finish the area above where the Bait Shop will sit.

Found it easier to color white rocks with ink wash than to search for rocks that were the right color.

This corner is pretty much finished now all I need is 30 or 40 8 to 12 inch trees to finish it off.