Large Scale Central

Light weight foam "logs."

Modeling
#1

Bruce Chandler suggested that I make this thread, rather than clutter up his “Fairlie” thread… :lol: :stuck_out_tongue: Just kidding. He suggested I do it so everyone could see Chris Walas’ great idea.

So…

Chris Walas, for those who don’t know, is a special effects guy in the movie industry. He taught the guys on Myth Busters. His website is full of all sorts of ideas…

Chris has developed a way to produce light weight foam logs for outdoor use. I’ve tried those bachmann logs (hate ‘em) and real tree limbs cut to size (they last a month or so), but the ones that I have made using Chris’ method lasted for two years before my puppy found them… :frowning:

Thanks to Korm, I found his site again, and will be making another forest of them this winter (if I can get my other projects done and off the workbench :P)

#2

One word of warning about his technic, it is MESSY MESSY MESSY!!! Ya start hitting that foam with the wirebrush and the foam dander gets quite literally EVERYWHERE! :open_mouth:

You need to keep a running good shop-vac nozzle right next to where your doing the carving and every now and then (like every 2 to 3 minutes) police the area of escapee foam dust. :wink:

I am not kidding about this, I have two blue foam sceniced layouts to back me up on this :stuck_out_tongue:

PS I would recommend after cutting the foam with a shop knife as described, use a rough grit foam sanding block to get the foam to the rough round shape and then switch to the wirebrush to get the bark texturing, its a little easier to get the curvature with the sanding block, and NO, its not a Fig cleaner in terms of foam dander.