What is the advantage of celluclay, say over plaster or outher ground material. I've been using plaster.

I tend to use both Cellucaly and Durham Water Putty.

Advantages/Disadvantages
Slower drying--- can be + or - (takes a while, but allow great manipulation of the base/terrain)
Does not dry well by heating or blow drying… tends to curl the edges.
Thicker so great controlthen pouring or spatula work on plaster.

Random thoughts on it -

-The Celluclay is great for terrain, but slowly drying.
-Add a good dollop (engineering term for a tablespoon +/-) so the edges do not curl up.
-It tends to be strong and less brittle then plaster, but not as strong as the Durhams Water Putty.
-I prefer it when I am doing non-desert terrain. Desert terrain I use Durham.
-I mix it adding a little ground color acrylic paint to it. This eliminates it natural gray tone showing through place my paint brush missed.
-After I lay it out I sprinkle good old road dirt - that stuff in the gutters in front of the house – on top, press it in with my fingers and leave it to dry… Blow or vacuum off the exceed and you are ready to paint and dry brush to your hearts content. See pix below

Useful stuff – one more weapon in the arsenal for me.

John
www.johnneill.com

Celluclay is all I have ever used. Speaking from experience, you may want to add 2 dollops of white glue to it when you mix it up. Make sure you seal your base, or it will warp. The edges do have a knack of pulling up, but if they do, tack them down with some CA. The white glue should help with the edge thing.

That said, I love Celluclay. Long working time, looks good, looks real.

Shaun

For ground work I usually use either household spackle or celluclay. It kinda depends on the look I'm going for as to which I use.
Deserts and packed dirt - spackle
Rough ground - celluclay
If I know I have to carve, sculpt or manipulate the dry product I will go with spackle.

I typically use plaster for cast items or reproduction of items such as road sections or walls or buildings etc. I haven't yet used plaster as a ground work material. Spackle is easy to use has a decent work time and can be worked as you apply it. Plaster is a pour and forget deal.

I only use celluclay for my groundwork. I have never had any problems with it curling around the edges or warping the base. I tend to add a lot of white glue to it though. I think, the more the better.

So I take it celluclay comes in powder form?

The celluclay I have is basically a powder that I mix with water and it clumps and solidifies kinda like a mix between grade school paste and spackle.

be sure to mix both correctly, or you could suffer shrinkage and cracking! I prefer plaster....

More the consistency of finely shredded newspaper... it is paper maiche.

John
http://www.johnneill.com