At my school in my art class we use this material called plaster of paris to make masks. I’ve never seen celluclay in the flesh before (have’nt even built my first dio yet), but i’ve heard that celluclay is basically paper mache. Well P of P is the same but before you wet it it’s a meshy, powdery lace (fabric) type material and you just drench it in water and place it flat ( on the base suface and let it dry, but the best way to put layer upon layer is to do it while the previous layers are all wet. It dries hard and kind of shrinks a bit so the mesh grid goes away, but it’s always a bit soft and slightly flexible. Seeing how popular and apparently superior celluclay is I seriously doubt that P of P will get very far in modeling at all, but I thought I might just suggest it and see if anyone on here has used it and liked it. Also when I said that you lay it down flat that’s just how we did it at school for those gay, stupid masks. For terrain or whatever you could conform it anyway you want.
That sounds like plaster impregnated gauze, although that dries hard too, but not P of P. That is a pretty good terrain model material, but it’s expensive. If you are modeling terrain, I’d use a base of layers of foam board carved to shape, then covered with celluclay, sculptamold or even white glue and sawdust. Much lighter weight than plaster.
plaster of paris is a bulk powder sometimes called 20 minute casting plaster.
What you described is plaster bandage used to make casts in the medical field. very small rolls can be found in craft and hobby stores.
I use 6" rolls of extra fast drying because that is what I have from work. It worls fine. You can make a frame then lay the wet plaster over the frame as it drys it gets cold then after 20 minutes it has set and after 24 hours it will be hard
Plaster has myriad uses for the diorama builder. Frank Spahr has just about perfected it for water in 1/350 and 1/700th scale, I use it for small items I need to set up fast. It is a catalylized agent, though, and gets very hot. For cold applications that don’t need to set up as quickly, you can use thin coats of drywall premix compound.
True casting plaster sets up in five minutes or less, and can burn skin…be a little careful with it.
For an inexpensive casting/forming agent, it is hard to beat !
building supply houses carry 20 minute {standard is 30, the specialty is the really fast stuff} if you want it to go off faster, throw some salt in the bucket and use hot water [:-^] { this will go off like a rocket} the other thing you can do, instead of using plaster bandage, mix the 20 minute thin then soak cloth strips in the plaster and lay it on the diorama
I use plaster of paris (powder) routinely for dio groundwork. It’s cheap and readily available from hardware stores, but because of its fast setting time ( a few minutes) it can be tricky to use. There are a few things I do to make it easier:
-mix small batches at a time. You can always add more later on, even when set
-add some black poster paint while mixing, as the white colour is bound to show up through the groundwork in some places
-add some white glue to stop it cracking once it has set
-pour it only in thin films over contours built up with polystyrene foam. It is heavy when used in large amounts, but that can be a bonus if you want to add stability to your base.
Other than that, it’s quite versatile. You can drill, sand, engrave and glue it easily. Leftover pieces can be crushed up and used as debris for the terrain.