"Problems making a river." Topic

I have a terrain board I made, with a 4 inch wide wadi cut into it. What i would like to do is to be able to have the wadi bed as either wet or dry. In other words I want a river I can lift in and out of the wadi.

I've thought of using coloured cellophane or cut cardboard to do the trick. The question is, how do I make sure when I cut the river it will fit into the wadi bed?

Could you line it with a very thin barrier (so it will take the contours) and pour your water resin in as normal. Then you could take the river in and out.

A bit late for this now, but maybe making the river first and then the wadi/river bank to fit would work?

Otherwise a thin barrier (latex dental dam, or piece of latex glove perhaps) and pooring a resin or plaster river might work. I would hesitate to do this without a trial run on scrap first if you have a very nice wadi...

You will have to make a rough estimate of the contours of the wadi bank, then incrementally cut it to fit. This will be very fiddly.

If you have unlimited time or resources, try the following:

1. Line the bed of the wadi with aluminum foil, keeping as close to the contour of the bed as possible.

2. Spray the aluminum foil with an aerosol silicone lubricant, but be careful not to spray so much that the lubricant rolls away.

3. Pour a river using Woodland Scenic's meltable water, bar topping resin, or some other artificial water. Refer to train magazines/websites/books for ways to do this.

4. If done properly, after the "water" sets up, you should be able to remove the aluminum foil backing. Now you have a durable, solid, removable river that resembles the real thing.

Go to any craft store and find some clear lexan/plastic/whatever. Cut it to rough fit, paint it with blue paint and white glue. Let dry. Dry brush the raised parts a lighter blue (or whatever color you want it to be). Lift in and out when needed. Cover edges with clumps of moss, flock, whatever you feel would fit.
Cheers!

I'm just in the process of building a large permanent river (4'x 2'). Having checked out Woodland Scenics I decided it was impracticable given area to cover, also extremely expensive, given area.

My local hobby shop got me some 3D plastic sheeting, with a medium water finish; they also do calm water and more choppy if you prefer.

As my river is permanent, I just painted the styrofoam base, flocked with debris and stuck clear plastic on top. As you want to remove yours, paint underside of plastic instead, this way your wadi will be relistic when playing dry, and you won't have to worry about paint coming off river with use. Use greys, browns and greens. Rivers are almost never blue.

Suggest you cut river smaller than wadi, and prepare banks with lichen, sand, kitty litter and static grass (for reeds). If you coat with white glue you will have shallow water effect (which you may not want for dried up wadi).

The stuff I used is manufactured by Model Builders Supply in Aurora Ontario(Canada)as Miniature Accents as scale custom decor for dollhouses and costs $15 Canadian for a sheet 24" x 17". If you're in Europe, Faller of Germany does similar stuff for model railways.

Best of luck!

WARNING!!

Some resins produce tremendous amounts of heat as they cure . Quite enough to melt polystyrene as I know to my cost :0(

Couldn't you build the river in permanently and dust it over it with flock, sand or whatever for wadi-mode? I guess the size of the board would dictate how easy it would be to tip up + brush the sand etc out again.

neubauten : Thats a good idea .

I played in an ECW game that had the protagonists on a causway making it back home to a castle in the bay (Elizabeth Castle in Jersey if you want to look it up).

As the game progressed , layers of sand were vacuumed up as the tide crept in to reveal the water terrain undernieth.

Now convert that to huddleing in a dried up riverbed not knowing that those distant hills have just had a torrential downpour....

Nasty!

Thanks guys, some brilliant ideas!