I am building a lufwaffe plane that worked in libia and I wanted to create a base for it. How do I do the sand? Any article you can recommend? Thanks

(++) B H (++)

If you've got a nursery school next to you you can go there and ask for the sand they've got to let the children play. It's a very fine grain quartz sand that you can sprinkle on the base base where your model will sit on whhich you brushed a mixture (I do it at 50%) of white gle and tap water. Usually they don't mind to give you a couple of handfuls of it for free.
Ciao

One big factor will be scale.
I've seen a 1/72 scale sand tarmac done with sandpaper. Since the tarmac will be flat, they just took the correct grit sandpaper glued it down and painted it.

scoccia has offered another great way to do it too.

You can experiment with different 'sands' using scoccia's method. Coffee grounds (seal them well), crushed kitty litter, sifted earth, and you can check out RR shops and see what kinds of balast product they offer.

One other thing I have done is to put down a layer of household spackle and press the 'sand' product into it, an other time I let the spackle dry then used the white glue water base.

I went to a local gun range to target shoot with my dad, and picked up some fine grain sand that they use on the burms. it looks really neat, and authentic.

If you go to the nursery do it when there are no kids there or they are inside. It would look a little weird!

~CHip #:-) #:-) #:-) #:-) #:-) #:-)

I use regular dirt from my yard sifted thru an old nylon stocking....

The fact is that I dont want it to be volatile .. if I turn it upside down the sand wont come off .. is there any way to glue it? Or to emulate sand?

Diluted white glue (with water) applied, then I sift the dirt over that and let it fall into place...

Kitty litter or oil dry is good for sand. If you are looking for really fine grains of sand, go to a machine shop where they do sand blasting. Get a couple of hand fulls of that stuff. Works great.

Patrick

To seal it, I coated my B7N Grace dio in testors dullcote. None of the sand even moves now.

~Chip

I recommend sand paper unless the dio has ridges and cliffs.

Ola Boarhead

I would reccommend going to the animal shop and buy a pack of birdcage sand. This sand is made from crushed clams and shells. It`s white and really fine grain sand and it`s really cheap. Use the diluted white glue mixture mentioned before and sprinkle it on.
When dried you can paint/spray it in every color you like

My 2 cents

I use the sprinkled sand method like Sciossia. I get my shape,(wheel/track marks and ridges etc) then wet it with a pump spray of white glue, sprinkle sand/dirt on it, then a final spray of the white glue. Key is to build your base shape and paint it close to or the same color as the sand/dirt

I do the same thing as alot of you, and i find its the best way, using real fine sand, its free and works great, cheers

If you see a picture of a desert you will notice that the wind creates a pattern in the sand; some kind of ridges appear. What element would you recommend me to create those elevations? (then to be covered with glue and sand).

A couple of years ago I used in my house a kind of insulating foam that dries and it's easy to cut... Is it any good in this case?

Thank you (++) B H (++)

Boarhead

To create those ridges I suggest smearing a layer of Wallspackle on top of your base and while that is still wet go with a pice of cardboard wich you have cut to shape first and creat this ridges by pushing it in one direction into the wallspackle and repeat these steps over and over with a distance of a couple of millimeters between it. Once the wallspackle has dried you can overspray it with diluted white glue and add/sprinkle the birdcagesand over it once that mix has dried you can paint the whole thing