Post by willc453 on Jun 15, 2017 11:27:39 GMT -5
While cruising thru Youtube, found a series of videos by Simon Kent aka 1/35 scale diorama builds where he's building a 1/35th scale damaged house using molds produced by a company called dioramadebri.com which are all 1/35th scale molds. They also offer other molds in different scales. They offer a wide variety not only of wall molds, but bricks, tiles, shingles, etc. That's the good news...now for the bad.
Wanted to order 5 of the English bond wall molds along with some others and every time I tried to order them, they were either out of stock on the wall molds or would only have one?! Took 2-3 months before they had 4 stretcher molds in stock and I think it took a month before I got them in the mail. Simon mentions using Herculite and something else as his casting material along with posting a link for the other stuff. But the link shows nothing for it on Ebay England and Herculite apparently is an English produced item, not available in the U.S. I've used Hydrocal on the Hirst Arts fantasy molds for a number of years, and now using plaster of paris because it's cheaper. The dioramadebri molds are THIN....REAL THIN, not at all like the Hirst molds. The problem I've had in using dioramadebri wall molds is while the wall section come out of the mold easy enough, EVERY end cap (or what ever it's called) has broken into at least 3 pieces! The end cap(?) is a section of the wall to make a flush end to the wall. It didn't matter whether I used Hydrocal or plaster of paris. In search of something stronger, going to try something called Perfect Cast via Amazon. Product says it's 5 times stronger than plaster of paris. When I get/use it, will let everyone know how good/bad it is. Couldn't download photos of diroramadebri's product. Sorry.
As to Hirsts Arts fantasy molds, think outside the box. They have several rock wall, along with cobblestone molds that I'm going to be using in my dioramas. Lots of places all over Europe that use these walls to define property, control their livestock, etc. Also used along some of the roads in the U.S., usually where there's a sharp drop off. I use white glue to stack the rock wall sections, then when dry, use a thinned out wash of plaster of paris between the stacked sections.
Simon mentions/shows how he adds color to his walls so he doesn't have to paint them afterwards and the results are very, very nice. He uses a powder and I've tried other things. From Ben Franklin's Crafts, got a bottle of this powder stuff, but can't find it or remember the name of it. Mixed it with my plaster of paris, poured it into the mold and now I have brown walls. From Walmarts craft section, tried Apple Barrel's new shamrock (a medium green) matte acrylic paint mixed w/plaster of paris. It came out okay, but think I'll stick with the Ben Franklins stuff. Used a small can of grey acrylic paint from Home Depot to paint my Hirst molds years ago and tried (after stirring) mixing some of the paint with the plaster of paris. Didn't work out at all. The plaster never dried and when I tried removing the dioramadebri wall section, it broke apart. Not only that, it was still not dry after 24 hours. Hope this helps those looking for something different to use in their dioramas.
Also check out Reapers dark heaven bones series of plastic barrels & wooden crates used by fantasy gamers. They come in a variety of sizes.
