Dry stone wall

[Skrapwelder]

I'm embarking upon a large VSF project for Kublacon in May. As part of that I'm going to need several yards woth of stacked stone walls to border fields in the English countryside. I did a few test strips last night and am looking for some comments from some people who may have actually seen one in real life.

I used a strip of cork tile with one edge cut and then broken up to roughen it. A coating of PVA and then a sprinkling of railroad ballast. The next step will be to coat it with thinned out PVA to lock it all together and then a painting a dark wash and a grey dry brushing.

Thanks,

Mike

[Alfrik]

The cork underlayment could use a Mortar color other than orange that it is. Then a bit of grass tufts from static grass along the bottom or bits of green here and there along the wall where moss might be growing to dress it up.

[Bungle]

Stones look a little small.

another method?

make a "negative" lego, plasticine etc.

Line with cling film

fill with cheap cat litter, the grey stuff in little clumps, push it in.

dilute PVA with water 50/50 pour in and leave to set somewhere warm for 24 hours

then remove mould.

[Burgundavia]

It is a good start, but there just isn't enough kitty litter on the thing. The wall looks like it is "floating", which isn't good. You could try painting the cork grey first, so that holes in the kitty litter are not as obvious.

[Malamute]

Mike, I don't see much wrong with it. Once its painted it should look ok.

[sukhe_bator]

The cork & ballast technique would look really great as flint walling, particularly if you used bricks/tiles or stonework capping and ends.
For those of you who want a more rustic look I got a reasonable effect using styrofoam inscribed with a pencil - in this particular instance a dry stone wall base capped with turf for those highland enclosures. I was going to use them for my Westfold Rohan project. You could scrub the textured top and adapt it to model say cotswold stone walling with little effort imo...

[Gluteus Maximus]

That looks pretty good. The stones may be a little small as previously stated. It looks more like a domestic garden wall rather than those used around fields. The ones used in farmland tend to be of differing sizes, to enable good interlocking and stability.

You've got a good basic concept there though and I reckon if you can find some slightly larger stones to mix in with your existing ballast, the effect will be outstanding 

Here's a pic of a real wall, complete with it's builder for scale:

[gamer Mac]

How about trying it with bigger stones first (Cat litter). The same way as you have done. Then use some watered down PVA to coat the surface again and cover it with your smaller gravel. This should fill in the gaps.
But even if your original was just painted to hide the cork it would look fine.

[Skrapwelder]

Thanks for the picture. That helps a lot. Looks like a trip to the train shop is warranted to try and find some larger rocks.

[Gluteus Maximus]

I look forward to seeing the finished results.

I could do with something similar for my Dr Who/ 19th C Torchwood ideas [that I stole from Dusser  ]