Colorant
In the past, I have not particularly encouraged the use of colorant in the cement mix when casting JigStones. My reasoning seemed pretty logical at the time, I wanted all the mortar lines to be mortar color. I felt that if colorant were used in the cement, that it would take away from the natural color of the concrete between the cast stones.
Just recently, I have been applying bathroom tile grout with a toothbrush to the entire finished product, and discovered that it enhances the mortar lines and joints even more. Based on this, I’ve decided to drop back and re-examine the possibility of using colorant in the cement, and then working with the grout between all the stones.
A trip to Lowes’ Hardware Empire proved very profitable. I found that the Quickrete Company produces 10-ounce bottles of colorant in 5 different colors: red, charcoal, terra cotta, brown, and buff. The selling price is under US$5.00 per bottle. There were no brochures specific to using colorant, so the only guideline I have to work with is the directions given on the bottle.
These directions are, of course, geared toward much larger projects than a JigStones structure, and reference to measurement is on a very large scale. For example, the 10-ounce bottle may be extended to color four 60- to 80-pound bags of concrete. They also warn that coloring may differ between batches.
I’m pretty sharp when it comes to ratios, I knew right away that one 10-ounce bottle may last several sessions of serious casting, even for me. So the next choice was to select a color. Originally, I thought that I wanted to cast brick.
That narrowed my choices considerably down to either the red or the terra cotta.
Questions started buzzing through my brain – would the red end up pink? I’m not real crazy about being forced to assemble a pink structure, although I could paint the whole thing if it turned out too ugly. And, the terra cotta - would it be orange?
I felt that there were too many potential negatives in the brick mode, so I decided to buy the charcoal and go with the Welsh Slate molds. I figured that this would be a good learning experience because I haven’t as yet used Welsh Slate in any of my building projects. Even if the mix was too conservative with adding colorant to the mix, the stone would look appropriately colored. Time will tell.
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If you remember nearly a year ago, Bill Fenton’s (Maryland), photographs of Welsh Slate castings made with Welch’s Grape Juice were featured on the cover of the JigStones Newsletter. In the newer photograph, he compared castings colored with charcoal colorant, as compared to his earlier experiment. This proved to be an interesting comparison.
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Gayle and Erik Zimmerman have evidently been using colorant for a while now. They wrote: “We read with interest your article in your last Newsletter about using colorant in making JigStones. Erik and I experimented with colorants last winter and had a lot of success. I bought the 5-pound boxes of color at our local cement company after having no success at Home Depot. Fortunately the young man who helped me in the cement store got interested in our project and couldn’t have been more helpful in suggesting colors.
I think I ended up buying 3 or 4 and we mixed and matched (2 teaspoons of that to 2.5 cups of that, and so forth). We have a notebook with our various recipes and what result we got versus what result we wanted. It’s important to keep exact records and to be very precise in your measurements. A teaspoon, one way or another, can make a world of difference. It’s a lot of fun and I’d like to encourage you and the other readers of the JigStones Newsletter to give it a try. You can vary the look of your village enormously with colorants.
I only saw the boxes of rainbow colors in powder form at the local cement company. They had it all in there and what they didn’t have in stock they would have been more than happy to order. Like buying paint, they had a brochure of color choices. For some reason coloring cement for a walkway or patio or driveway is very popular right now. Give your local cement mixer company a call.
Air Bubbles in Windows and Doors
As many of you who subscribe to Garden Railways Magazine probably are already aware, Marc Horovitz did a complimentary product review of JigStones in the June 2000 issue on page 122.
One item in that review worthy of emphasis pertains to final finishing of your building. I use a product made by Liquid Nails called Mortar Repair. This is a gray silicon sealant used to repair mortar. It contains a small amount of sand and works its way nicely into the cracks and voids in an assembled building.
Marc indicated that, “Once the basic structure is complete, the spaces between the blocks can be grouted. I used a sanded tile grout that I had around. This step is magic, for it is here that all of the joint lines disappear and the structure becomes a monolithic whole.” Sanded tile grout comes in small containers and is available at most hardware stores, or super stores like Lowes, Chase Pitkin, or Home Depot. This can be mixed loosely and then slopped on the structure so that it oozes in and between all the spaces and cracks. Because it comes in colors, you will achieve some interesting effects using this method to seal up your building’s walls.
Another portion of the article mentioned a difficulty he had molding windows and doors. Marc indicated that “The doors and windows I cast all came out of the mold with small bubbles, despite my best efforts at eliminating them.” in the JigStones review, he used Alumilite, a two-part urethane product that sets up in about three minutes.
In the October 2000 issue of Garden Railways Magazine, Marc did a product review on a two-part casting resin made by ThermoCast International called RP-40. Marc used the JigStones windows mold to test the product, and indicated that “The finished parts were very good. They were hard but flexible, with few bubbles present.”
More About Bubbles . . .
In the November 1998 issue of the JigStones Newsletter, I addressed the problem of pinholes present in the finished product when using resins in JigStones molds. For the benefit of those who have joined the JigStones Club during the couple of years and haven’t read the article and gleaned the suggestions contained in it, the following is a reprint.
Finding pinhole size bubbles trapped on the surface of window and door castings can ruin your finished product and be extremely frustrating. Avoiding them is easier than you think.
Silicon rubber molds encourage bubbles to stick to the surface. This is normal, and is called surface tension or surface stress by chemical engineers. Ridding yourself of the problem can be done in two ways.
First and easiest is with talcum or baby powder. Put some powder in a paper cup and using a small camel hair paint brush dust the entire mold with the powder. Pay particular attention to corners and detailed areas. Remove as much of the powder as you can, leaving a very fine coating on the mold. Then cast your window or door.
The second way is to paint the mold with whatever color you wish to have on your completed casting. Once the mold is painted and dries; the casting poured, the paint will bond chemically to the finished product. Use either an acrylic or enamel flat paint whenever possible.
Please don’t try to use cement to try to cast windows and doors . . . The detail is too fine and your casting will crumble.
Several products may be used for casting. Purposes, price, and personal preference will be the driving factors for each one.
If you plan to make structures with clear windows, the easiest would be to cast using clear resin casting the frames and panes as one unit. I use Clear-200 made by the Smooth-On Company (www.smooth-on.com). There is also a product called Enviro-Tex available. It can be purchased at most hobby or craft shops and is used to make rock-hard surfaces on bar tops or used in decoupage projects. If you prefer a challenge, skim the mold before the window has cured. Once cured, flake away the panes and attach the frames to either glass or plexiglass, and install them into your structure.
I prefer that the inside of my structures remain hidden, but like to have a dim opaque glow when the buildings are lighted. There are several products available for this. Alumilite is a two-part urethane resin mixed 1:1 by volume.
It is available by mail order from Gary Beck or M&S Productions. Alumilite sets within 3 minutes and produces an excellent product.
The Smooth-On Company produces a two-part plastic also mixed 1:1 by volume: #1506, less expensive than Alumilite and takes a little longer to cure, produces very good results. The finished product dries to an ivory color and takes around two hours to set and unmold – overnight to completely cure. I routinely use this product for windows doors and roofing. This product is not available over the counter, but can be attained via mail order.
Some people have had very good luck with Bondo Car Body Repair for casting. It is available at any automotive store, hardware store, or discount store such as WalMart. Bondo runs about US$12 to US$15 per gallon pail. Take care not to mix large quantities because it cures quickly and you’ll end up with a mess.
Dusting Considerations
In past issues of the JigStones Newsletter, I have offered suggestions about ridding your window and door castings of pin-sized bubbles left on the surface of your finished piece.
I suggested painting the mold before you actually pour the resin into it, in whatever color you’d hoped to have either the window frame or window glass. This painting can be done with acrylics, and when the resin cures, it bonds permanently to the cast piece.
The second method is to dust the molds with talc. I use baby powder shaken on the molds and then brushed clean with 1"-wide paint brush. If you don’t brush out the mold to get rid of the residual powder, the resin will form itself around the residue. Note the difference in the resulting molded doors. One
casting was dusted with powder, while the other was not. You can see the physical difference in the resulting casting. The dusted mold produced a very smooth product with sharp detail while the doors cast without dusting the molds look and feel rough to the touch.
Americanizing a European Portal
Included in the June 2000 JigStones Newsletter was an article written by John Andrews of Raleigh, North Carolina. He addressed the construction of a tunnel portal using the SM10 or SM11. These molds, designed in conjunction with the SM9, will create a European style horseshoe tunnel portal. The finished product, therefore, curves inward at the bottom.
In the article, John offered an alternative to the European style portal, by Americanizing the final product by using the SM10 or SM11 but eliminating the SM9 side molds. Straightening the sides of the portal from the upper arch would be accomplished by carefully cutting the ears off the large wall casting (above) before the cement has a chance to set and is still green.
Axel Bretzler in Boblingen, Germany, called and offered still more possibilities. He suggested that rather than cut off the ears, one could stop them up so the cement doesn’t run into them in the first place. As a sidebar, he also suggested that for those of you out there desiring a casting to look as though it were part of a structural deterioration (a building in ruins), a jagged piece of Styrofoam could be placed into the mold. This would give the effect of stone worn away by erosion and time
Damming Devices
| Richard Weatherby of Falstaff, Maryland, routinely uses aluminum damming devices for creating blocks around doorways and windows.
The device is shaped in a right-angled Z-pattern and fits neatly in the center of the large walling block before pouring cement into the mold. |
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Bob Collins of Columbus, Ohio, wraps a filler piece with transparent tape, and places one in each ear prior to pouring. Once the casting has set, he unmolds the piece and the wrapped filler is easily removed.
Roof Pitching
John Andrews of Raleigh, North Carolina, found that “my buildings were all beginning to look alike. Eyestrain, I thought. Nah, just ticky-tacky boxes. (You need to have gone through the ‘60’s to understand that reference.)
“Anyway, I could make’m taller, shorter, longer, etc., but they were still all beginning to look alike. It wasn’t until I began to try to make a building lower without decreasing the width that I thought about changing the roof pitch.
Nothing wrong with a gentler pitch. Here in the sunny south, roofs are generally less steep – less snow and all that – and a low profile for hurricanes, too.
“The easiest way to go was to cut a standard JigStones block on the diagonal. So I did and the resulting pitch looks good!” (See above.)
New Products
Mary Ann Clark of Keswick, Virginia, e-mailed me and mentioned a product she found in the artists’ supplies of Michael’s craft store. Gloves in a Bottle is a hand lotion that seals the skin against excess moisture, harsh chemicals, and so forth. She bought a small bottle for US$4.69, and says it works very well especially when using paint thinner, or mineral spirits. A small amount goes a long way, and doesn’t wash off your hands, even if you are cleaning them frequently. According to the directions, the manufacturer suggests reapplication of the lotion every four hours. It is odorless, colorless, and non-greasy.
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Kathy Mortellaro of Corfu, New York, called about a product that is new to me. She read about RP40 in the October 2000 issue of Garden Railways Magazine. It is an odorless casting resin made by Thermocast International in Michigan.
RP40 is a two-component castable polyurethane with good impact resistance, high heat-deflection, and excellent strength. It has a very low viscosity, making it extremely easy to mix. RP40 requires no agitation on either side, and contains zero solvents, making it virtually odorless and ideal for pouring against polystyrene foam. It also contains no volatile organic compounds making it environmentally friendly. It is mixed 1:1 by weight or volume, has a working time of 2 minutes and will be ready to unmold in 12 minutes.
Thermocast International is offering free samples of this product and only ask that modelers pay shipping and handling costs – between US$7-$10. (Contact Dan Wilson at 1(800)782-8535.)
Liquid Nails – Commentary
Bob McRea, a JigStoner from Massachusetts, called recently to discuss the difficulty he was having using Liquid Nails for small projects. The cement castings were simply not bonding together. He suspected that the problem might be caused by residual cement dust left on the pieces after they were sanded to fit. This combined with the thicker consistency of the Liquid Nails. He intended to treat freshly sanded parts for better adhesion. Until our conversation, I was not aware that Liquid Nails in the small 4-ounce project tube was a thicker consistency than its counterpart in the 10-ounce canister (used for large household construction projects). Buying Liquid Nails in the canister size provides more than twice as much, at half the cost. Bob tells me that he empties the canister into an airtight plastic tub – sounds like an interesting idea. If it works, the entire plan would be more economical. I’ve found it almost impossible to use a 4-ounce tube in its entirety.
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Kathy Mortellero of Corfu, New York, found the odor of Liquid Nails to be offensive; she has been assembling all her JigStones projects using LN Mortar Repair. Like Bob, she empties the 8-ounce tube into a butter tub and uses a popsicle stick to apply it to her project joints.
Following a recent hard winter, some of Kathy’s structures were in need of repair. She tells me they were extremely difficult to take apart and that in some instances, the pieces needed to be actually cut out. Evidently the Mortar Repair that she used as an adhesive for construction is very effective.
Cedar Shingles Anyone?
I now have hand-split cedar shakes for 1:22 /1:24 scale buildings. They are easy to apply with a waterproof wood glue and look excellent.
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Hand-cut/split individual shingles are approximately 1/16" thick, and range in width from 1/8" to 1/2" wide. The package claims to cover a 1/2-square-foot roof and contains approximately 500 shingles. The roof shown is closer to 1' square, and I counted 425 shingles to complete it. I had plenty of shingles left over. |
Do It Yourself: I wondered how difficult cedar shakes were to make myself so I went to the local lumber company and picked up some scrap shakes. Once home, I cross cut into 3/4" strips beginning at the widest edge, then proceeded to a chair on the deck with my Craftsman Handicutters to split the strips.
I found that the cedar splits like butter when cut with the grain, however it will crush when cut across the grain. Sitting there, carefully cutting the strips into 1/16" pieces, I easily had made about 100 of them in an hour. The shingles looked every bit as good as the packaged variety and cost no more than time to make. Precut shingles are available through Sticks & Stones at US$12.50 per pack.
Lattice Panels
Another 1/2" scale product is available to dress up a completed structure. A US$3.50 package contains four precut 4'x8' panels (in scale 2"x4".
Do It Yourself: The product looked to me very much like the plastic needlepoint sheets found in any craft department. I purchased a 10"x15" plastic sheet, and was able to cut four diagonal pieces measuring 2"x4" with a lot of odd scrap left over for my bin of odds and ends. A precut lattice panel package of four, 2"x4" pieces is US$3.50.
Another New Discovery
Cleaning the glue off your hands has just become a little easier by using any citrus-based cleaner/degreaser. I’ve been using a new one on the market that smells of oranges and find that it works very well. Orange Clean comes in a convenient spray bottle, and works well for cleaning the molds too!
Gluing
So, where do you put the glue when you actually put together a JigStones building? Below is an enlargement of walling blocks and keys.
| The shaded area represents glue in the illustration that follows showing that you’ll coat contact surfaces. Don’t be concerned about glue oozing when you press them together. Any residual/unwanted glue can be easily lifted from the surface with a cotton swab. |
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Mossing Structures
Peter Chandler suggests that to encourage moss to grow on structures, that the walling blocks be made from a mix of cement and peat. This creates a course mix which affects the detail of the finished block. During a conversation with Jack Verducci at the 1998 National Garden Railroad Convention at Santa Clara, he described another method that is quite simple: Put buttermilk and fresh moss in a kitchen blender – blend until you have a smooth mixture. Using a 1" paintbrush, brush the mixture wherever you want to sprout moss. It works!
Installation of Windows and Doors
I put a healthy bead of either waterproof silicon, or Liquid Nails along the perimeter of the window and door and install them as you build. Let dry rock-hard.
Bill Anonson in Maryland affixes a wooden slat across the back of the window or door and then cements the part in place by anchoring the ends of the slats along the inside of the structure. He then installs a cosmetic framework around the face of the window and door openings.
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Installing WM3 (Chapel) Windows: Triangular pieces are #10 and #11 from the SM1a walling mold (small keys). |
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Finishing the Inside of Structures
If you plan to have clear panes on your windows, and light the inside of buildings, you’ll want to have interior walls finished. Assuming that you have already poured a cement floor in the building which has set and cured, pour a loose cement mix in the building and roll the structure so the mix coats the inside walls. This may take several applications. Another method is to purchase premixed cement crack repair (I use DAP), and using a putty knife, coat the inside of the building.
