Dry stone walls

This bit of the panel thinks you should wrap the shuttering in cling-film.
Dilute PVA will soak rather effectively into wood, so, I'd expect you get a wood-rock sandwich board. Probably quite strong, could be used as a polystyrene hat tester, but not a piece of scenery.
Otherwise, try a short bit and see what happens. I suspect its going to need manually fixing of the cap-stones, but might work for the bulk of the wall.
- Nigel

On Sun, 1 Mar 2009 17:42:57 -0000, "Nigel Cliffe" said in :
I put acetate sheet over the shuttering, having thought exactly that, but then I buggered it up by dropping the whole thing.
I think it would work, but Mk. I leads me to believe that you should lay the first course, sprinkle fines, add glue, lay second course and so on. Which won't be very time consuming.
Oh, an old pair of pliers seems to be the best way of breaking up the stone.
Guy

Presuming you mean shale and not slate then be aware of the sequence of remove water by put under pressure then lots of pressure and some heat (say around 600C) clay->mudstone->shale->slate
So test your shale with some PVA and water first. If it absorbs it and expands to mud/clay you have your answer. There was a suggestion in one of the mags recently of using coal - quite good idea (do paint it though). Am going to try cork soon, all depends on how can break it into suitable pieces though. One advantage is both cork and coal are a lot lighter than shale and may be easier to paint.
Cheers, Simon

On Sun, 1 Mar 2009 21:39:44 -0000, "simon" said in :
Both, actually. But neither seems to be a problem in water.
Guy

Best dry stone walls I have ever seen are on Hewisbridge which was at Model Rail Scotland last weekend. The builder rolled some Milliput modelling clay into wide thin sheets and let them harden, then broke then into tiny irregular pieces. He then literally laid the wall a course or two at a time, gluing as he went and in the exact position, up hill and down dale, where he wanted the wall to go. The top layer has the upright stones and, once painted, it looks quite superb. And of course it does not come out of a mould so is fashioned exactly to the contours and is not straight and level.
The time taken and the effort involved is very substantial, but IMHO that is what sets this layout apart.
Archie

Not wishing to put a dampener on your idea but what about your stones being to scale ?
You are building it to OO gauge so that's 1 to 76. A 6" stone ( about 150 mm ) will need to be only about 2 mm in size ?
This may help The idea of using waxed MDF as shuttering looks a good idea ... looks good to :-
Chris
It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of fight in the dog.

It depends on the type of stone wall, in the Peaks area stones are generally 12 to 18 inches with around 12 in copers with almost semi- circular round tops across the wall. In Kent they were mostly flints pugged together, and some in East Anglia are a pile of stones covered in mud with grass to bind them together. I'm sure there are 101 other regional variations. Interestingly there was film on TV the other night with a scene in Buxton, USA, where there were some very basic stone walls.
So come on chaps, if we're to worry about the exact years cars can appear on a layout, then lets get the correct flavour of stone wall!
Cheers Richard (slightly tounge in cheek)

well no, its a serious subject. Real limestone is very rough but if you look at the distance between humps its very small so at 1:76 then it appears smooth, unless you take into account the bumpy appearence where distance between bumps is more like 4-6 inches but with a depth of only a 1/4-1/2" so that means require surface with bumps say 1-2 mm apart but depth of ... (very small) so still smooth.
Then theres granite - well theres granite and theres granite within gelogical definition. But take famous Shap granite which is pink, but contains both pink, white and some darker crystals. Grain size probably varies from 2" to 2mm. So you cant use Shap granite to represent Shap granite unless you paint it.
Coal could be used for either as theres lots of different types of coal depending on its mineral content which gives it its texture. Minerals include (from memory) fusain, vitrain, durain and clarian - all forms of carbon.
Cheers, Simon

On that New Railway Modellers site I posted someone suggested using cat litter !
This is the Dry Stone Walling Association's web site which has a photo library :- and gives about a dozen regional variations
Assume you will show us the finished walls on your web site Guy' ?
Chris
It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of fight in the dog.