"Need a suggestion for a clay-like material" Topic

Hi all,

My son and I took a crack at making some corn rows with some JTT microscale scenery ( jttmicroscale.com ) and some air dry clay.

We modeled small furrows on top of basswood strips and inserted the corn stalks into the clay thinking the clay would dry nicely and hold the corn stalks in place.

What we wound up with was dried out, crumbly clay that in most cases, cracked in half or thirds along the wood strips.

I'd like to model small furrows but don't want to use pink insulation foam or green stuff ( would probably need more green stuff than I have and the cost would be more than I want to spend for the project ) .

Any recommendations on what kind of material I could use that wouldn't crack and would provide a decent weight to the base to keep the stalks from tipping over?

Thanks for lending your brains and suggestions.

It would be a few extra steps, but something like Super Sculpey might work.

Make the furrows, poke holes for the stalks, bake. Then glue the cooled furrows to the basswood, paint, and glue stalks in place.

I would suggest spackling/hole patching compound. Paint aisle of hardware stores, it is designed to dry and hold together. Does not need to be mixed just use it from the tub it comes in. Does not cost much. It comes in both lightweight and heavyweight styles.

Corduroy material from a fabric store, perhaps? Glue it to a wood base and terrain the perimeter to disguise the edge of the fabric.

Corduroy fabric is good and so is corrugated cardboard. Pull off one side of the flat sheet and you have ready made rows waiting for you to plant on. You can glue it to a sheet of MDF and spray paint it all with a textured paint so it looks more like dirt. Cheap and easy.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Pull off one side of the flat sheet …

That's what I hear a lot about corrugated cardboard, but how do you do that and remove the one side cleanly? Whenever I try it, the one side tears and leaves swaths of itself still glued to the corrugations. It never comes off in one piece and you can't get the remainder off without damaging the corrugation.

Durhams Water Putty.

Best stuff since sliced bread. Maybe even since fire.

Its a powder that you "just add water" to and you control the thickness. Dries rock hard with no cracks.

I've used it on a couple terrain boards and never been disappointed.

the wood is the problem here. You need to seal it with an oil base paint first or use plastic not wood.the corn also needs to be water proofed. The water in the clay swells the wood and sinks it back down as it drys out, this movement of the wood is breaking up your clay.

I had the same problem using clay as a base for my trees made with small branch bits, I sealed the ends of the branches and no more broken clay bases.

Good luck and have fun.

photo of unflocked clay tree base:

More photos of the woods table can be seen here:
link

Caulking gun and a tube of acrylic sealer is how I do mine.

I've experimented with air dry clay before and it always warps. For my paddy field s I used Miliput, but it would cost a fortune….
Ron, I may try your suggestion with sealing

When you talk about 'clay' what do you actually mean?

Air Dry Das is something I've used in the past to skin models with (a big castle I buiilt from balsa and such like is sitting 6 feet away from me as I type) and – 25 years later – it's still going strong. So it's a clay but one that actually sets quite hard in air.

Unlike 'pottery' clay (ie the sort we had in school when I was learning pottery as a subject) which needs to be fired.

John T

link

Actually, you buy corrugated paper and you don't have to peal the cover sheet off because it comes without it. It is sold as a packing material.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Thank you for all of the suggestions. I think my next go at it will be with spackling. I have a tub of that on hand already and will probably just do one row as an experiment.

@John Treadaway, it's an "Air Dry Clay" from Crayola ( link ) . We had a small tub that was given to my son as a gift so we thought we'd try that first but it's clearly not going to do what I wanted it to do.

Actually, you buy corrugated paper

Well, that's much handier. Thanks.