daddy4count

Part Two - Carving Stone

I nearly regret starting this tutorial. Once you see just how simple it is to create a stone effect it will completely ruin my new reputation as master of home made terrain. I gave myself that title, in case you wondered where it came from...

The gaps in the vehicle ramps were completed with wall filler, thusly:




I used Patch-n-Paint spackling... which retails for around ten bucks. Though I used less than a dollars worth on this piece.


After it dries the surface takes glue and sand easily, was made to be painted and best of all is very light weight.

With that finished it was time to move on and begin carving out the shapes of my rocks. I use two basic techniques that I will share with you now. One creates roundish, boulder looking rocks. While the other creates something resembling slate. Either on or both can be done very quickly and easily. For the purposes of illustrating the procedures I switched to the other tile. From start to finish, including taking a few snapshots... the cutting portion here took me only about an hour for the whole piece.

Here is where we will start. A small, soon to be rocky outcropping.


For the first technique I begin by taking off the square edge. It is uneven on purpose. The top edge on both sides is carved off, as well as the sharp point at the end.


Next I cut "V" shaped channels into the sides of the foam. These are the outlines of each large boulder. Notice that for now they are simply vertical cuts, but the top and bottom of the cut are flared... this is to represent the rounded edges of each boulder... which we will continue to carve out a little bit at a time.


Here you see what it looks like after the process is repeated on each side, and then each boulder is slowly rounded and smoothed out by carving thin layers off of the square edges until they reach the desired look... on both sides.


No, really that's all there is to it. In just a couple of minutes we have rocks. No fancy tricks, no virgins to sacrifice... just simple cuts with a hobby knife. Repeat the process on all edges where you want boulder / rock outcroppings rather than sloped edges. But what if you want a different look to some or all of your rocky surfaces? Maybe you want some granite or slate type rockiness? You are in luck.

The other technique I will demonstrate is just that. And it is equally simple, if not more so.

First we make a short cut with the blade, like so:


Next, pull the cut up and away until it breaks free...


Leaving an unfinished, flat, cleaved edge


Keep repeating the process, made sure to keep the cuts uneven and not exact...


After working through the corner here, simply repeating the same cut and pull process both horizontally and then on the vertical sides in the same fashion...


Once all edges have been finished, and all other rocky areas completed... we have a finished terrain piece that looks something like this:



But wait... there is still part three to come, and flocking and painting!!