I recently made perfect snow out of baking soda and water. It even glitters like the real thing! It's great!!

One more thing, i'm thinking of spending about 100$ on some Verlinden ruins. Is it worth it, one city house corner costs around 43$! I'm 15 years old, a quite average modeler, using airbrush and other quite basic techniques. Are the ruins easy to make look good?


Thanks/Pelle

I recently made a building, they are really easy to build, I scratch built mine but it looks good. I used some 5 ply and carved out the details such as windows and Doorways etc. For the bricks I got about 5 different thicknesses of cardboard and made bricks, took me ages.And put the bricks on. Then got watered down PVA or Woodglue and applied it to the model, then put plaster of Paris on once the glue had a night to dry. Then door frames a window frames out of boulser wood were made. I dont know if you have Humbrol paints over there, but I used 70 for bricks and 65 for the mortar. Then once all bricks had been painted I did a wash on them, infact left 12 hours bettween each wash. I did about 4 each colour getting darker. Then drybrushed alot with a mix of 85 and 70 in humbrol. Then once window bays and door frames etc were all painted and weathered I put them on the model somehow, then I used Baking Soda to simulate snow, I put this on the areas which stuck out the most. Here are the colours I used.

85:Coal Black colour.
70: Brick Red
15(revel) yellow
65: Light Sea Grey

THese were the basic colours I used, most were mixed to make the bricks look like they had smoke, dust etc on them. Hope this helps. Martyn

Thank you that was very helpful, sir. We most certainly have Humbrol colours over here (Sweden)



Pelle

Im 14!!!

im starting a bob dio and this recent post will help me. it is nice to have young modelers like me on this site im only 15 and have been modeling since i was like 5 but justy recently started building armour and dios i mostly built airplanes before. thx for info it will be used.
Jay

Hi!

I've recently finished building a base for my next project and used plaster to simulate cracked walls, debris etc and it was 1. Easy 2. Convincing 3. Cheap 4. Great fun!!
I got two cakes of varios thickness and carved away. Brickwalls, for example, are easy to do by just using an hobbyknife and steelruler. The trick is to not make it look to "rigid". A stone here and there missing/damaged, bulletholes etc.
After finishing that base I was experimenting with the leftovers and it was amazing how fast you get the grip of it.
Actually a great inspiration for me was reading van Gils article in MM about "The last round". If he could achieve that masterpiece with those buildings in his first try, than the rest of us at least can come up with a shattered piece of wall?!

Go for it!

Ulf/SWEDEN

they are good but beware - you must do a LOT of work on em to make em realistic. they must be sanded and shaped because the edges are very rough. often they come broken into pieces and you must elmers glue them together. the secret I think is to give them many dark washes of thinned flatblack paint to seep into all the edges. if I were you, I would try one first and see if you like em - some people hate em and are pissed that they spent so much money. I think they are ok but require much work. also consider custom dioramics - they make good stuff too.

dave swann

First of all, it's great to know that we have so many young diorama builders in this group!! Keep asking questions and keep experimenting!

I have built many plaster buildings from Verlinden Productions and Custom Dioramics. For the most part I think they are great. Some of VP's buildings have some problems with scale size --- like 4 foot doorways on their Tobruk pit and Ardennes Chapel (and their vacuformed MASH tent). Some of these you can get around by enlarging the opening (like the chapel), others you have to live with and position figures away from the doors (especially VP's 6'6" figures). I've found Custom Diormics' sets to be less troublesome in that regard. I've also had less problems with broken pieces from CD since they were bought by VLS a few years back.

Both VP and CD buildings require the same kind of prep work --- sanding the back sides smooth and making sure corners are squared for assembling. Some people prefer to seal their buildings with primer before painting; I prefer just using paint, as it is absorbed much like real stucco or plaster would absorb paint. Do the wash and weathering as others have described.

The main asset to using these buildings is that they are "ready-made" to a great extent. Otherwise, you need to design your own structure and use various methods to build it (plaster slabs, foam core boards, etc.) You need to add all the little embelishments that are often found on buildings, like exterior sills, cornerstones, cornices, etc. So using a VP or CD set can save you time. On the other hand, creating your own building will give you something unique. You can also take CD and VP buildings and cut them up and rearrange them to make them look distinctive from their "out of the box" counterparts.

Make sure that if you have a ruined building, you use enough debris. Often I see dioramas with just a couple handfuls of bricks scattered around the base, when in reality there would be large mounds of bricks, wooden beams, interior wall segments, plumbing, wires, furniture and other personal belongings heaped around the walls of the structure. Use chunks of torn styrofoam to build up these piles and glue your rubble on top of them. It will look much more realistic.

Cheers,

Tim
(an "oldtimer")

Tim,
I'm another old-timer, just getting back into 1/35th after 25 yrs. I've just started getting into the Custom Dio line of ruins kits. Bought a few already, but was wondering if you could recommend some favorites, some you found looked "REALLY GOOD" especially in dioramas. I've not gotten any Verlinden kits, C.D. kits are about 1/2 the price, and I'm impressed with those I got. Any I should look for in particular?
D.J.

I've got a bunch of CD buildings. I used the three Stalingrad Ruins sets and adapted them for my Stalingrad diorama, along with VP's Normandy Farm Ruin (you can see the results in the Articles section on Track Link).

The German Village Ruin is a nice set that I reconfigured for my Aachen dio, and I sandwiched CD's Dress Shop between VP's City House Corner I and II. I also used VP's old Church Ruin (I combined two of these sets). Also for that dio I built, but did not use, CD's Commercial Ruins and Berlin Street Corner (don't let the locale designation keep you from using this elsewhere).

I like CD's Urban series, which allows you to make two full stories and a ruined third story, or one story with a ruined second story --- or two intact stories. This comes in handy if you want to create a scene that doesn't involve a lot of demolished buildings.

CD's German Stronghold is similar to VP's Tobruk Pit and Machine Gun Bunker, with the very undersized door. Perhaps that was standard in real bunkers, I don't know. As I mentioned, VP's Ardennes Chapel, as well as their Town Hall, also have short door frames. I bought but returned their MASH tent, it was laughable how underscale that was.

From VP, I like their Ruined Rathaus, Ruined German Trade House, German Village Ruin and German Old City Building. You can also use these buildings in just about any Northeast European country, not just Germany. I reworked their Ruined Mansion for my Aachen dio so that it's almost unrecognizable. I also have their Ruined Barn and Ardennes Farm, which are nice.

Some of these buildings can be puzzles once you examine the exterior architecture and try to match up an appropriate interior for it. For example, the way windows are placed in the Normandy Farm Ruin or VP's Garage/Workshop Ruin almost necessitate a half-floor between the main and second floors. If you don't detail the interiors that's not much of a problem, but if you do, you have to think about whether a stairway might be positioned there to account for the positioning of those particular windows.

VP's City House Corner sets (as well as their City House Front) include nice resin window frames. They require some cleanup, and the plaster window openings are not always squared so some filler is necessary, and they are rather simplistic (they don't account for how windows would open or close), but they really alleviate a lot of work building the framing. But again, if you detail the interior you'll need to add the trim molding and sill. My Aachen dio is viewable from all four sides, so I spent a lot of time measuring and cutting Evergreen strips to trim out several dozen windows.

For my next project I'm going to try to recreate some actual buildings. I've picked up some Balsa-Foam (made by Jiffy Foam, search for them on the web), with is a dense, rigid styrofoam that you can cut and carve. I've got a pack of two 6"x9"x.5" sheets I think it might be quite suitable to attempt carving brick walls. If it's satisfactory, the buildings for the next dio will be completely homemade.

Hope that helps,

Tim
t*k*b*[email protected]

The baking soda will yellow over time. Seal it with a semi-gloss varnish. Since you using an airbrush with your work, use that instead of a hand coat. The buildings are excellent. Like any other model kit, the more time and patience you spend with it, the better the results. Work slowly and with a purpose. Remember small details make the differene. Good luck and enjoy the moddelling. It's a life long interest.