Water world: Creating the falls!

The tournament has now come and gone.  Yes, I know that you are wanting some info on the tournament results, but that is going to have to wait for now...

You have heard over and over how time was running very low for the end of this project.  At this point, we were going to have to be leaving the house in about 5 hours.  I had not packed anything, not slept, and not even started the waterfalls!  Can't have a Fortress Falls without it.

So, out came the Woodland Scenics water effects.  It is a lot like Elmer's glue, but a slightly different set of ingredients.  I wanted churning water, so I took a relatively stiff flat brush to spread out the effects into the river bed.  If there was more time, I would have done a few layers, but there would only be time for one.

I started to get desperate, so I took the top off the bottle and started squeezing out huge chunks of it.  That really worked well!

The real fun part of all this was going to be the falls themselves.  To get this:

You need this.  It is a plastic sheet with all of the water effect spread out with a flat brush.  Once the effects dry, it forms a clear textured 'sheet' that looks like falling water!  Be careful though, as it remains sticky.  While this is great for getting it attached to the rocks, it also means that it will stick to itself like crazy!

So, you take some of your wet water effects and brush that on to where you want to attach your sheet.  Once the sheet is applied, you brush on some more effects to hide that seam, and make it have more of a nice 'edge' where it goes over the rocks

I worked out from the top center section, expanding outward and down to the river bed

Where it reached the river be, I went crazy with very heavily textured, churning water!

Here it is right after I completed that task.  I turned on an industrial strength fan to dry it faster, but that only worked partially well.  In fact, it was still drying today!

Here is a sneak preview of the finished board!  The water looks a bit different here, doesn't it?  I will have to go back over my river bed to do some more applications.  I will also have to mix in some white paint with 'hardcoat or some kind of gloss varnish to make the foamy, frothy, effect.

Flock me! The clock's tickin' ...

It is now day two of the tournament, and we are about to head out the door.  Before that, I wanted to do a post about the flocking of the display board.

By the time I got to this stage I was becoming painfully aware of the passage of time.  I still had an additional stage left after this, and this would have to dry for at least a little while before I could get to it.  So, out came the wood glue and the flock!

You can see that I have my two types of flock.  A fine mix and a coarse.  First, I applied the wood glue to all the cracks and crevices.

The fine mix and some static grass are applied over that glue.

The same technique is used on the island watchtower.  Using the flock in this way saved my the time of painting and weathering all those cracks.  I will still go back and refine all these areas later!

For now, however, this will have to do!

You can see that I advanced upwards from one level to the next, just as I did with the sand and gravel.

Here we have piles of flock everywhere!

Getting the extra stuff off the board is a very messy process, and one that could be a bit hazardous for your lungs if you are not careful.  The fine flock, in particular, is nasty.

I had some newspapers spread out on the floor.  The board was tilted on its side, and I tapped and shook the board so as much stuff as possible came off.  You can see this very dramatically on the tile areas...

Well, this meant one more stage remained.  Water!  Stay tuned...