Ground Goop recipes?

[Flatrat]

I would like to hear folks' recipes for Ground Goop as a base on raw foam topography. is it best to tint it tan, etc. or just paint over it after it sets up?

Thanks,
Scott

[w neal]

Tan? Who says it has to be tan? Depends on the area you are modeling. Study your chosen area carefully. I am modeling the north woods of the midwest. I color my goop with a darker brown latex paint as I am mixing it. After all, its going to get painted with that same latex paint anyways. If I mix it in beforehand, then it dries the right color - ready for static grass. If I were modeling Georgia etc., I'd use a latex paint closer to a rust color. (That would be cool!)

Ground goop is the great under - celebrated solvent of scenery making. I love it!

[Tom L]

 Goop is the way to go.  I use Sculptamold with pre-mixed grout added. The grout adds a little texture and makes it a harder. I color it with cement dye.  I usually use brown and black.  I like to pre color it so that I don't have to worry about any whte showing through and I can just leave it bare to represent dirt.

To add ground foam, I paint on a little thinned matte medium and sprinkle on the color of choice, usually a blend.

Tom L.

[Flatrat]

I did say "Tan, etc." and also asked if tinting was necessary at all.

I was more curious about what mix of glop makes a nice base at N scale. I have seen some mixes that call for vermiculite and other grit but thought vermiculite would look a little too big and chunky.

[Vince Gortner]

I tried a recipe listed by Mike Danneman in an article about modeling the flatirons...   sculptamold mixed to a consistency of runny oatmeal with a big dollop of yellow glue and some paint/tint/pigment to suit.  I actually used water soluble brown tempra paint - like kids poster paint - and I was thrilled and amazed when after everything was dry and happy (but too uniform in color) I sprayed everything with some very heavily thinned black acrylic and - ta da! - some of the brown actually washed away in spots giving me a really nice random variation in shading and color.  Unexpected, unplanned, but neat!

[MichaelWinicki]

I would think going with Sculptamold as a base product would be a natural. 

Coloring it is a good idea so that when you drill it for trees and such it won't leave the off-white color.

Yeah adding some additional products to Sculptamold could yield some interesting results, but I'll tell you, I went with straight Sculptamold is a terrific way to do your base scenery entirely on its own without adding anything else.

[Ian MacMillan]

I use the recipie that Lou Sassi published years back. I use about any brown I can find at the HD/Lowes "oops" rack.

[DKS]

Sculptamold is my goop of choice, although I sometimes modify it according to specific needs. For instance, I may mix in roughly 50% lightweight Hydrocal, which makes it a little smoother and harder--good for dirt or poorly-maintained blacktop roads and such. I will always tint my goop, no matter what is being added over it. As mentioned, drilling holes or making modifications produces white dust and crud that's a PITA to remove from any nearby finished groundcover. I've also found that photographing un-tinted dry goop, even when it's completely covered with terrain materials, can sometimes create a color shift. I am not certain why this is so; however, my working theory is that UV light (which a strobe will produce in abundance) reacts with the bleached white fibers in the mix, and fluoresces a little, just enough to skew the surface color. (This is the same phenomenon you see when shining black light on paper--the brighter white the paper, the stronger it glows under UV.)

The other thing I always do is apply a surface treatment over the dried goop, since it rarely if ever dries exactly the color I want. I don't care--as long as it's in the ballpark. I have two containers of concrete dye on hand to color my goop, black and a generic brown. I'll adjust the proportions to suit either rocky or soil terrain.

I do have an alternate goop recipe that I use if I can't wait the 24-48 hours for Sculptamold to dry (such as when finishing a diorama with a tight deadline). It consists of a roughly 50-50 mixture of very fine ballast and very fine ground foam in an earth color, followed by a big glob of white glue. I proportion the glue amount to produce a paste, and smear it on with a small spatula. It will dry in an hour or two, depending on thickness. The ballast acts as an aggregate, and the ground foam serves both to tint it and make it easier to manipulate. Naturally the glue is the bonding agent, and since that is water-soluble, you can also re-shape the surface by soaking it with water, making your changes, and letting it dry again.

[PAL_Houston]

This is probably heresy, but you don't need the sculptamold.  If you re-grouted your shower or re-tiled your floors recently, you probably have  leftover grout that'd otherwise turn to rock in your garage or basement in a couple of years.   You can substitute the grout for the sculptamold.

And, you know all that foam you vacuumed up after sculpting your foam scenery with your handy surform tool?  You can add that to your ground goop too, along with the latex paint and the grout.  It adds volume and is lightweight.

Mix a batch of ground goop in an old plastic coffee can with the handle built in like Maxwell House or Folgers comes in.  A third paint, a third grout and a third of the wasted foam, plus a little water to adjust consistency where you need it.  It should keep for a few days or a week.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Drywall compound.

Any texture beyond that is over scale for N scale.

[Flatrat]

All good ideas, thanks! I knew there wasn't a definitive mix, just looking for basic mixture and ideas to add a little dirt-like texture that wouldn't look like fields of boulders in n scale.

Tinting the goop to roughly the base dirt color of the area being modeled with inks or pigments sounds like the way to go as well.

Thanks again,
Scott

[Scottl]

I don't use goop in the conventional sense.  I've never understood the need to make a hard coat on the surface- sounds like a latent hard shell need to me  .   I just want a surface I can push trees into and covers minor imperfections of the underlying foam.

I put down a liberal coating of soil colored paint, and put down ground foam, ground up moss, rocks, whatever.  It is fast, forgiving, and best of all, I can push my trees right into it.

[w neal]

I tried vermiculite and found that the lumps were often too big for N Scale. They could be fine for some land forms. But for my locale, it was too lumpy. I now leave it out.

[davefoxx]

Drywall compound.

Any texture beyond that is over scale for N scale.

Yup.  Lightweight joint compound.  By the way, Woodland Scenics Foam Putty, which is much more expensive, seems to be the same stuff.

DFF

[chuck geiger]

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