Thanks for getting me straight. Hopefully you will be able to get it a home where it belongs.
Tom

That tree is one of the best I have seen for a while. Your project is breathtaking. The only reason that I can see for your local town to seemingly ignore you is that they figure, "It'll take him a few years yet for him to finish it, no need to rush to RSVP." Your work is really enjoyable to follow.

SCOTT

Thank you Scott! You may be right


Claude

Hello Claude! Your fine, autographed book, arrived recently. It is more fluid and revealing than the internet. I hope to press you for more, about making stone-work, in two aspects:

1) regarding the process of pressing hard particles into plastiline (p. 12-13): how has your working process changed? Particularly, with regard to the out-standing wall made from air-drying clay, as shown recently in Armorama, under the diorama thread started by WikingPanther...how have you scribed such thin, parallel, courses of stone-work along the length of the wall? Were they measured? Were the parallel courses scribed before, or after, the clay dried?

2) I am further impressed with the ground surface of the courtyard, as described in a paragraph on page 56, of your fine book. Please comment further, herein, and refine my judgement about what I gather you have done here:
>>The styrodur was gouged or scraped into a slight depression [where years of wear and weather have sunken the level surface, as this portrays original stone].
>> Next, wood-glue is spread across the styrodur.
>>Next, clay is laid over top of the glue, for adhesion.
>>Next, the articulate stone pattern is carved across the ground surface, before the clay hardens.

--Right?

Thank-you for clarification here.

My sister shared your book, when visiting Saturday. With myself, sister is truly impressed.

Rick,

Thank you very much for your buy and i am glad you like it.
As i say on my website, every buyer of the book can ask me as much as he wants to get further infos if something is unclear. Just drop me a mail.

Regarding the questions above (point 2) give me a few hours until i'm home again. I must have some more pics to explain this further.

Claude

So, back home again and able to anwer this questions.

As for the first question, my working process is basically still the same. To the process featured in the book regarding the castle wall you can add that (after a few years) i finally got the absolut brilliant idea (allow me a bit of sarcasmus as this would really have saved me a lot of cleaning hours) to make a rubber mould of a plaster copy, thus having a negative again, but a lot easier to make copys of. No need anymore to clean the Lego stuff and no risk to break the plasticin mould.

So, the order is: first make an mould of plasticin, then, of the first succesfull plaster copy make a new mould of rubber and use this one for mass copying.


This is all good if you really need a lot of the same wall or archive your pattern.

I want to alternate the look of my walls throughout the Clervaux build , to make it visually more interesting and because there exists many styles. Slate walls are with or without grout, nicely finished or roughly put one on top of the other.

To make this other walls, and as long as i do not need a ton of it , i make them using other stuff including clay.
The model for this kind of wall is something like this

Here is the result (it is the first i made like that)

You must scrib before it dries of course. The best moment is dependent on your brand, the thickness and room temperature .
My clay was supposed to dry in 24 hours. Used in thin layers on the tree to make the bark it was dry in half an hour!
But here, in 1 cm thick stripes, i started to scrib in directly but it was still to soft to make defintive patterns.

In the end it took 48 hours to dry correctly and i was able to redefine my pattern throughout this period a few times and rectify all errors. This wall got at least three treatments and it is all eye work without any measures and lines.
Refining directions, correcting the look, splitting too big ones, deepening joints or even deepening complete stones to get an irregular level, all this can be done in the time it takes to dry completely.

Regarding question two :



LOL, i don't find this in my book !?
Anyway, the styro is adapted to the houses and has the slope of the inner courtyard, but nothing special was made with the styro itself.
Overall the procedure is the same as for the other wall, with the difference that to get better adherence for the clay to the Styrodur i put some white glue on the Styro (you may otherwise risk that the clay is simply lying on the Styro and not be fixed.

Here is the only pic i have from the work in progress and it does not show much

I started with red clay and changed to another white one later.
Here is a bigger picture from the end result (i admit the one in the book is small but i had to make a choice and you never know what really interests people.)


The pattern simply tries to follow the orginal as good as possible and is, as you see correctly, scribed during the hardening time. So i did not do that one in one stretch.
Bulges will persist here or there but you can take care of this later with a bit of sanding.

I may also add that in order to make bigger level irregularities, instead of using more clay (who will take long to dry)put some plasticine under the clay.


I don't know if i answered good enough, but please, insist, i will try my best to give you entire satisfaction and offer optimal after-sales service


Claude

Thank-you for answering all my questions, down to the fine points we modelers are always addressing. I have indeed been working with plaster lately--carving and scribing it. You help me see that clay might serve the purpose better.

"...my judgement about what I gather you have done here: >>the styrodur was gouged or scraped into a slight depression [where years of wear and weather have sunken the level surface, as this portrays original stone].""

Claude, this comes from pages 55-56. Look closely at the first picture on page 55 and you will see scraping and gouging in the blue styrodur. Proceed to page 56 where one reads: "The castle is set on rock and the ground of the courtyard is probably still the same as 800 years ago."

The irregular look of this courtyard stone-work, which you have sculpted, is truly awesome. I just could not rest without hearing all about it from you.

Oh, i must read my book one of these days ! LOL

Yes, the scrapping and leveling of the Styro replaces the adding of plasticine to make different heights. It all depends if you are able to plan such things in advance or not.

Cheers
Claude

Hi Claude!
I finally bought your book from the source you mentioned (a few months ago) and I can't wait to read it! I've already got a shopping list for my next trip to buy things to start my very own first super dio and I look forward to using your blog, website, and book as an invaluable resource! I would love to see your dio sometime.
How did you get so good at this, just practice?
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what sort of town to base my dio off of and a hoping you can point me in the right direction. I would love to do something like you are doing, WW2 based and either Europe, Germany or France would be great, but if you have other ideas, please let me know. I finally have the space and tools and time to really get into this and I'm excited about it!
Thanks for your help. I'm always lurking around your Blog and these forum. haha.
Hope your Spring is off to a good start! Keep up the amazing work, Claude! You truly are an inspiration to me1
-B

Hi Brandi. Forgive me for butting in here, but I had been kicking the idea around of doing something grand as well. Lord knows with as many unbuilt kits as I have the subject could be anywhere, anytime. My own thoughts about what you asked would be to just make up a location to get the practice in building the streets and buildings, scenery, etc. I think that's an easier goal to reach as a foundation than starting off trying to exactly duplicate a scene and location. At least it would be for me. I think that finding all the available goodies out there is an education in itself and getting an idea of what to buy vs. what you can scratch gives a sense of the financial commitment involved. Sometimes that's the make/break factor. I'm currenty looking at building an T-80U Russian tank and to correct what is out there would requires an investment sizable enough I have to decide if it's worth it for that one model or to take the same money and buy 3, 4, ot 5 other less troublesome kits.

Brandi,
At first, thank you very much for buying the book, i hope you will not be disappointed.


I feel really flattered , but i don't see anything special in what i do.
Putting down thousands of tiles and cork pieces is an exercice of patience and not really big quality.

I don't know really how to explain that. If you look at all the nice buildings presented on this forum, be it by Mister Cork Carlos "Blockhaus" or Guygantic's (where is he?) or the Osweiler build just down this thread (who just does one of his first buildings)and eventually my own buildings :-), i believe there is one line going through this builds, we simply dare to do it. Dare to do a complete house, dare to apply a coat of something on an already nice surface, and not be afraid to take it down if it went the wrong way.
Just do it!, and listen to others.
If i say to someone that his stair steps are to high to be reasonable, do not say like he did, they are good enough. No, they aren't, your whole house will look disproportionned. Take them away, try something else.
People say, the look of my houses is good. Well, i don't play by strict rules. This was a proplem i had when i started modelling (with 2 LL :-) ). I wondered how people knew what color to use?
Now i sit before my scene and play in my head what could look good and simply start choosing different color bottles and mostly mix something together i don't remember anymore when i have to repaint a part. If during the paint process i am at a stage where i like the look , i simply stop and leave it like that. Look outside, imititade nature , not this or that modeller.
That was a long answer to a short question, hope you can find something in there.
To the second question there is also a lot to say but i make it shorter.
Motivation is the biggest point to make a big dio! I am doing a piece of national history (due to the size of Luxembourg you would even call it local history), that's a big motivator.
What is yours? Perhaps you have a military unit somewhere in your region or a veteran in your family? Look for a motivator there.
Otherwise your dio will end like most big ones. You will stop completely or rush to get it done and it will not be worth the effort.
As you will read in my book i started the castle and immediately stopped again when i saw my first try's. This could not work.
I made three houses to get a bit of experienced before the real start (the one's you see now popping up in my Blog, the Café and the Hotel).
Perhaps you should do that ( i checked your message history and found no actual build but just thoughts of a winter scene with a tiger :-))
Try a house and train your self. The year you loose while trainig will be worth it later.
Do a normal dio first with every feature in it. You have no idea how much plants are needed to convincingly fill a square feet of ground (if you don't want to model a tennis lawn).
As for the location of your big dio, my best tip would be to read some books aboot different battles. Slowly find interest in one theme, deepen your knwowledge, try to find infos online about surroundings, houses and of course armor and uniforms used, and slowly fix on one spot to model.
I have for example a problem finding enough german soldiers in this gray winter coats as the where at the begin of the BOB. Camouflage is not easy also because most on the market are SS i don't need) That's the kind of thing you should check.
I can recommand a good book for the Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg, that's "Alamo in the Ardennes" (available at Amazon). This is the kind of book you need to recreate complete scenes as they concentrate on small areas.
Other very detailed books are the two of my compatriote Roland Gaul (curator of the museum in Diekirch) , books in english and also available at Amazon)
The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg: The Southern Flank - Dec. 1944 - Jan. 1945 Vol.I The Germans
and Vol. II the Americans

It is a very detailed description of the the BOB on it's most southern part.

I am of course not the right one to point you to books usable for the modeleller regarding other battles.

I want to show you a dio presented last week at the expo in Nurnberg (D) . I don't know who made it, sorry.
But i really ike the way he managed to make a relatively big dio and avoid alot of work with complete houses. The layout is really clever. His painting is very nice to, i really like it and you may find inspiration in it.


That wa not so short after all, hope it helps.

My start in spring is very good modellingwise, a bit stressy as i put myself in a tight timetable to finish for the Euromilitaire expo in Sept.

Claude

Been working on a house dio for many years now, but so many other things come in the way, but after seeing your builds and other nice dio's i have decided to take time to start again.
It's all scratchbuilt in plaster and wood




Looking forward to see more of your town dio

Hi Matt

I'm really honoured of being source of motivation and inspiration for you guys.

You did not ask for a comment on your house, but here is it anyway :-) (can't hold myself back)

You absolutely need second floor windows! Your facade is to empty.

I am having 10 days off from tomorrow so i am hope to call my actual module finish after those days.

Cheers
Claude

Hi and thanks for the comment, i am working on the second floor wall it's not in place yet that's why it looks a little empty, and this is supposed to be a backside of a house not the street side.
were on vacation in belgium and found alot of ideas, the houses here in sweden look so completely different from those.

Hi Guys!
Wow, Claude, thank you SO MUCH for all the info and for taking the time to answer my questions. I can only hope to ever find someone to model with or find someone locally with the passion and experience for this type of thing. I think my next stop is going to be to try to join a modeller club of some sort.
I am taking your advice as well as the prior poster before hand and am going to start smaller. I always think to try to do something with no buildings, but it's the buildings I love doing the most. I should get some photos of the first ones I ever did. I built them out of foam board and I loved it, it was easy to add holes into and add realistic cracks.
I do just love building things. I've spent the better part of today doing some research and a ton of reading on possibilities and my end goal is going to be Ranville Church and Pegasus Bridge, hopefully next year, when I have the experience and practice to dedicate to it. I started a build bog, but I'm sure I'll just update it when it comes time.
Thank you so much for the advice, kind words, and honesty. I look forward from literally learning from the best!
-B

Jim,
Thank you for your advice. Interject anytime, it is appreciated.

So, back to my thread !

You remember that i said ( hint hint, more timely updates on my Blog) that i need to redo the Cfé doors of Hotel Central.
They are made of plasticcard and bended to much. I also did put frosted glass behind so nothing was to be seen from an innterior.
I decided to redo them with plasticcard, but this time it wil be glued on 2 mm plexiglass, what i hope will provide enough support to keep them strait. Because of that the interior will be seen.

I quickly build up a Café interior wit mostly Plasticcard. Please remember (this is also a little excuse for imperfections and a less elaborated painting), this will be viewed behind glass, restricted light, and viewers forced to bend down to have a short glimpse inside and already overwhelmed and saturated from the rest of my dio! LOL

A bar, a cabinet, tables and chairs, the space is a bit small, but initially it was not meant to be displayed opened.


Meanwhile a also placed the wall behind the houses. A lot of work to do, but you see , here again, this is a wall of 3 foot length, i never to it small :-)



Have a nice week


Claude

Claude,
Looking amazing, as always!

So, one week later, a week off from my work and completely dedicated to modelling with nearly 100 hours done.

I glued firmly the buildings and made all the surroundings, based partly on reference pics and partly improvised becaus of restricted space.
I found hardly the time to take pictures and made just a few from hand.
Remember, the buildings are (except Kratzenberg) 5 years old.
Here, a picture of the garage, doors repainted and rusted, signs remade partially. An Airfix Alfa Romeo, placed on pieces of woiofd instead of tyres is put inside.

The space from cobbles to the buildings is also filled.

A view from the Hotel, stairs build, Café doors closed again with clear windows and full interior now

On the right side, under the terrasse, a complet new entrance has been build.
The pillars are probably the only commercial thing in this 1.50 x0.70 dio.
I do not wish to do more weathering on the Hotel, it was a functional building in a neat rural town, so i think there is no need for overweathering. (i have according ref. pics)
The Hotel from the backside.
Notice the Army Theatre sign! A mix of improvisation and reference for this part, i spear you with the original pics.
The long wall beside the parking is finished

A lot of work also for the modules 2 and 3 to get them at one height with Mod.4.


Except some work on the weeping willow and a few wire trees (started already) i managed to finish this part in May like i hoped.
Not one single figure is planned here and merely a vehicle.
Do't know how this will be seen be the public. I may add a house battle later when the dio is finished an get make an overall battle plan .

Hope to hear from you on this

Claude

PS: My Blog is update regularly and i also still have some books to sell.
Avis aux amateurs

Wow Claude, just looking at your work wears me out, knowing how much work and time you put into it! I'm still in awe of it ever time I look at it!
I to have the book "Alamo in the Ardennes". It is a good read. I think tomorrow, on my day off, I'll read the parts about the battle for Clervaux again.
Keep up the good work!
Kirk

your gonna need a bigger truck!


the mother of all dio's?

Thanks guys!

Cheers
Claude

Magnificent!

Thank you Jim!

Amazing Claude! Nice work.

Martyn