Casting a stone wall.

[Saltwater Cowboy]

Well. I made the wall. Didn't use plaster of paris. Tried a new concept. I followed the mixing instructions on the WS hydrocal. How 'bout that idea?!? Anyways, I sprayed my frame with wet water this time and poured in the properly mixed plaster. I decided not to use any simulated re-bar.



I let this sit with some weights on it for 24 hours then carefully separated it from the frame.



At this point, I cleaned up the edges with a sharp blade and a very light sweep of fine sandpaper. Very little pressure applied.



At this point I got ready to scribe the stones. In this pic you can see the hobo came by from the campfire to see how he measured up. The scrap of HO scale embossed brick paper was just there as a visual reference as to how to size my stones. I think with a project like this we can easily make the stones too big and backfire on the realism.



I decided to do the scribing of stones on the ends and the top. Ignored the bottom and left that flush.



Now the tedious part began. Scribing all those stones! This took about 45 minutes but seemed longer. I used the point of the ole no.11 blade to scribe. With all the twisting and turning of the knife, I learned it was easy to twist the knife in such a way as to use more of the blade and not just the point and create gouges instead of crisp clear lines. Here's where a dental pick might have worked a little better. But I was careful to not do that too much and a little gouge here and there couldn't help but add to the effect in a positive manner. Most stone walls have some loose and missing areas anyway. Hopefully these pics will turn out ok. I'm not a photo expert by any stretch of the imagination!



Now it's time for lunch and after that I'll head back down to do the other side. Then the fun part begins; Adding color and details. We will soon. And if this project turns out junky, then I will go buy a wall and be done with it and may this thread spend eternity in the netherworld of cyber graveyards!

Matt