gypsolite stuff

Yes. Gypsolite. I believe it is a product of US Gypsum Co. Our club used it 20 years ago, mostly because it was really cheap in 50# bags at the local builder's supply. We liked it because our club ran on a shoe string budget (we cut down a pine tree, had it sawn into lumber which we kiln dried and used for our benchwork) but it did have some advantages:

- it had a light to medium warm (slightly brownish) gray color so we never had to add color to it as a scenery base - if the surface was chipped, the natural Gypsolite color looked reasonable (unlike snowy white Hydrocal)

- it worked fine with wet newspaper or paper towels to make fairly hard shell terrain

- we never seemed to be able to mix all the small lumps out of it, and it seemed to have something like coarse sand in the mix, which gave a zip-textured-like surface without the extra step of zip texturing

- it was very light weight

- it was strong - one of our members made foundry sand impressions of some loco builders plates, and cast copies using the Gypsolite reinforced with a couple bent coat hangers - the castings held up fine as wall decorations for many years. Gary Q