Hi,

I am into building WWII armour vehicles , especially German panzers.

Currently planning to construct a diorama based on European street fighting scene. Since there are not many articles on model building, especially cobblestone street construction, I would appreciate if anyone could provide some tips and techniques.

Txs.

P.S. The buildings in Keith Magee's CAEN'44 and Orders-France 44 diorama is very impressive

Regarding the cobblestone streets, some have mentioned using Split peas (the dried ones used for soup). You just glue each one down and use a paste made of your groundwork (Pollyfilla in my case) to spread betweeen the peas to act as your mortar , then paint as desired. Keep in mind these are organic materials and break down over time, or worse little critters may take a fancy to them. Cobblestone streets are available from the aftermarket manufacturers but at a significantly higher cost than the do-it-yourself split peas.

JC Hayes

If you don't want to use the organic materials Ribble mentioned, I've thought about using some of the necklace material my daughter used in Kindergarden. You can get a lot of beads in different shapes and sizes for a low price. They seem to be easy to use and cut too.

Thank for the info, guys.

What about plaster of paris? Have anyone tried casting a flat piece using POP, then scribbing it with a screwdriver or sharp tool to give an impression of rectangular blocks that forms a pavement?

I thought of that too. There shouldn't be any reason why that shouldn't work. The reasons I turned away from that idea were weight and the pressure to have the item perfect the first time. A combination maybe...

I was thinking of making cobbles out of corkboard bricks and grouting with dyed drywall mud. what do you all think?

That might work out nicely, depending on the size of your diorama it might get tedious, but will free up funds for other things in the overall budget (always about the bottom line, even in a hobby); I bought a small bag of the drywall mud for under $15 and it will last me quite a while (and SWMBO "knows" it's for the house, win-win). It will also give a bit of authenticity since the individual stones are still laid by hand.

I lived in europe about 7 years in various places and also traveled around a lot while there. I can say I rarely saw cobblestones that were rounded. Most were flat on the top and usually rectangle or square with a lot of different layouts for their placement on the street.
I have seen pinkboard used very well using the scribing method that Nick likes to use now. I have used plaster and scribed it. It is cheap and easy but it does get heavy if you want something larger in a dio.
You don't have to scribe the plaster if you don't want to. You can use square or rectangle brass or alum. tubing and use the open end to push the pattern in the wet plaster. Very quick and easy.
J

Hi Colonel

Just my 5c worth:

There weren't as many roads in cobblestones around as people think. If you really want to include them, better try the cheap and easy way!!

Selitron (or Depron) is the ideal material for such tasks. It's easy to work with, is lightweight and cheap....!!!

The next best material would then be cork...a bit tedious, but really realistic!

PoP is messy IMHO. It's a good material,but not necessarily for cobblestone roads!

Cheers

Romain

And whatever you do if you go the scribed insulation board route, don't buy the green EPS board, it's not as firm as the pink board and tends to tear and ball up in the cuts. Ask me how I found that out... The blue EPS board is also decent to work with, I ended up with a huge sheet of it when we bought the house and used it on several occasions.

I made a cobble stone street for a friends dio he was building ,,i used plaster of paris .. made it quite thin so it pours easy ..waited for it to go bone dry ,then with the thin pencil drew the lines ,using a old No11 blade and a steel ruler i lightly cut the lines for the cobbles .
You get small chips with the cutting ,,when thats all done i used a small steel wire brush to clean and slightly soften the edges ,,results are awesome and its easy as hell to do .
This works on brick walls and anything else which uses bricks or blocks .

Phill

Plaster of Paris is my go-to material.

I use Styrofoam as the base material to get the major shapes and land forms. If necessary to use more than one layer of Styrofaom, I'll hot glue the layers together which is much faster and water proof than using white glue (PVA).

I then trowel plaster on to that. As the plaster sets, you'll have about 15-20 minutes where it is soft and plastic, and this is my optimal time for the carving and scribing. So, I only work in an area that's not so big that I can't do all the scribing in that time. With practice, you can mix, trowel, and scribe repeated areas fairly quickly.

Here're a couple of examples of stone work and cobbles done with nothing but plaster over Styrofoam - all scratch built:









It's "old school," but effective and very flexible. You're never limited to a design or composition created by someone else.

Hi Colonel,

For my North Africa dio I used Poly-Filla,Plaster of Paris would work the same.On my more recent British SAS I used a premade cobblestone from a roll that will last me years.It was made for miniature Xmas villages.Painting took a little time but a lot less than the plaster scribing.

Tom