Base material for diorama?

[CaptOblivious]

So, I'm doing a series of small dioramas, to help ease me back into modeling. I used a scrap piece of 1/4" foamcore as the base. At the suggestion of more traditional diorama folks, I whipped up a batch of Cellu-Clay (using copious amounts of white glue) as filler and to sculpt the terrain. I have to say, Cellu-Clay is pretty good: It's somewhat easier to work with than spackling putty, my previous choice for the job, and it dries into something rock hard.

 

It also shrinks by a not insignificant amount. Which means the foamcore base is warped to hell. For durability reasons, I want to stick with the Cellu-Clay. But the foamcore warping is a problem. What would y'all recommend as a base material? It's gotta be thin and warp-resistant. Also cheap and easy to cut without power-tools ('cause I have none).

[Guest Bernard]

Do you have any photo of the Cellu-Clay, I not sure what it looks like. I use Sculpy-a-mold to help fill in gaps and build up terrain. The best I can describe it, it's a form of paper mache.

    A lot of layouts use insulation foam on top of plywood as it's base. Since you don't have power tools, maybe 1" or 2" thick foam board might do the trick as a base plus you can sculpt it with a bread knife. You can get the foam board at most any hardware stores like Lowes or Home Depot sold in sheets of either 4'x8' or 2'x8' usually in pink & blue. It might be more than what you need but if your doing more than one dioramas, you'll be set.

If you take a look at the construction platform under Bullet train USA, you see the early stages of my layout where you can the foam board I'm taking about. (It's green, as I said, usually it's blue or pink)

Also WS or craft stores sell beaded foam boards, but they can be messy. You can cut them with a hot wire cutter or  a knife.

Other members might have other recommendations.

[CaptOblivious]

Cellu-Clay is an instant paper mache, like the stuff you mentioned. It's recycled paper fibers with a dry glue. It might be not that the stuff shrank, but that, being wet, it caused the paper lining of the foamcore to shrink, and that's what's caused the warping.

 

So, here's what I'm trying to do. Each diorama is just under 280mm wide—the same as the standard length of Tomix sectional track. I don't have the space for a permanent layout, so when I want to play—yes, play ;D —I put sectional track out on the floor. The idea is that the dioramas are just additional pieces of sectional track that I can plug in with the rest. This way, I have both a nice display piece and a functional bit of scenic track to run trains through.

 

To accomplish this, the track should be 1/2" off the floor—the same height as Tomix's little viaduct transition piece, the one with the stairways on it. This means I could use a 1/2" thick base material, but...This is the prototype for my first diorama. See how the track is elevated above the rice paddy? I'd like to do the same, which suggests I should be using 1/4" thick base material.

 

So, these are the constraints I'm facing. I'm not ready yet to give up on them as unrealistic. Do you think it might be enough to varnish the foamcore first? Beaded foam boards might be just the trick, actually. I'll have to keep my eyes open for some of that.

[Guest Bernard]

Take a look the WS website and look in their index under foam products. I think you'll find something here that will solve your problem about the base. Here is the link:

 

http://www.woodlandscenics.com/

[Bernard]

Capt.

Any luck with the base material for the diorama? I think there is another product that they use in theater scenery that after you finish working with the foam board it will toughen it up, but at the moment I don't know what other results it might have on modeling.

[CaptOblivious]

Not yet, haven't had a chance to try anything. Between school, awful snow and the construction of my new workspace (a Valentine's gift from my wife! how wonderful!), I haven't had time to track any down locally yet. But I will!

[CaptOblivious]

Ok, I might have found something. I don't have ready access to a well-stocked, or even a poorly-stocked model railroad store, but I do have ready access to my campus bookstore, which has an art and architecture section. They have some small amount of WS and Plastruct stuff there, so I hoped to find...something? And I may have struck gold. In the painting section, I found this stuff called "tempered hardboard". It's basically resin-impregnated particle board. It comes in 11"x14" sheets (perfect!), is about 1/8" thick, seems pretty stiff, and claims to be warp-resistant. You are supposed to paint directly on it, like a canvas. I don't see why, if you can paint on it, you couldn't model on it (perhaps after a shot of primer or dullcote first). And best of all, it's cheap, as in $2 sheet. I'm gonna give this stuff a shot, and report back.

[Bernard]

CaptO,

Quick question, does this diorama need to match up to another existing diorama? In your first post you said you used 1/4" thick foam board. If you're going to use the tempered hardboard that is 1/8" thick, do you need to glue two pieces together to get the 1/4" thickness you first desired?

[CaptOblivious]

Yes, they all do need to match up. But the first one I started was scrapped. The warping of the foam-core was too severe, so I pulled the track off, and threw the rest away to start anew.

 

That said, I'm standardizing on having whatever the track is laid on at 1/2" off the table-top: That way I can use different materials or whatever and have them several dioramas match up. I chose 1/2" because the bits that the Tomix Fine Track system uses to start a grade are 1/2" tall, almost exactly, so I can just use a pair of these these (or something home-made) to mate plain sectional track with the dioramas so I can run trains through them.

 

Also, here is a link to the stuff I got: http://www.ampersandart.com/products/h_products/hard.html