I have seen various methods for creating airfield tarmac over the years but have never saved the instructions nor tried any. From anyone’s experience, what is a good method to use and which will yield a good result for a 3D base (as opposed to the 2D paper ones). The diorama will be for an AH-64 Apache tied down to the tarmac either stateside or in the Middle East. Also does anyone have the measurements for the concrete squares formed by the expansion joints in 1/48?

Thanks,
Daniel

Sheet 'o' tar

Hey there daniel what i did once was take a piece of plasticard...or sheet styrene, and i rough it up a little with rough sand ppr. Then i spread a very thin layer of wall spackle on it with a trowel for texture. You can scribe in some lines for the separate blocks of tarmac, and take some static grass and put some growing out of the cracks if your going for the rugged airfield look. Hope this helps.
Ian

This was made in an easy (!!???) way. Interested in a "how to" description?

You can use some fine grit sandpaper cut into squares and glued to a flat base.

you can use a sheet of styrene as the base etch in the grid.

I've seen people on Armorama use sandpaper for this and it looks pretty convincing to me. Try different grades until you find the suitable one for your scale

Doh! How's that for great minds thinking alike?!

Frank, that looks excellent, feel free to submit the how to. If you need any help on how to do it feel free to PM me.

I would be interested to know how this was made looks first class...and you say it was easy...lets hope so as this will be my first attempt at anything like this and belive me with my skills I need easy.

I made one before I found out about sandpaper where i had a sheet of styrene and then troweled some drywall compound (used to patch holes in your walls) and make it smooth. You can then score some cracks into it later.

I used cardboard, the effect is very good



The same material of beer coasters cardboard

Nice idea Fabio
(And nice beer)
Brad

When you've gone through a yellow legal pad, about 8"X11", use the cardboard that backs the paper. Or I've even heard of some folks using thick Bristol board and the like.

What a great idea Jon.
The backs of sticky notes would work great and around my office I I will have an unlimited supply.
Already in the perfect size,no cutting needed.

Hey Daniel, an idea to make tarmac is to use Tamiya's Texture Paint "pavement effect." It comes in two colours, light and dark grey. I've posted the website addresses below:

http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/87115darkgray/index.htm
http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/87116lightgray/index.htm

Hope I have helped!

I like all those great ideas using cards and fine sandpaper. I will try the very fine sandpaper next time. What I have done with some realistic success, is to take a perfectly square piece of plexiglass and scribe the squares. Then spray paint a light grey. Weather it and place random oil stains. Then I make a wooden border for it with molding. The exact size of the squares is not written in blood. If they appear way too large or way too small, then they probably are. Use common sense................Al

I use sanded down plaster (for texture) and then paint it grey, I then add the seams using a syringe, finally weather it as needed.
Check out the bottom of this page:

http://armorama.com/forums/169651&page=1

Regards,

I tried thinly rolled out "air curing clay". One type called Granitex comes with a slightly grany texture. Roll out thinly, cut the squares and leave to dry. The stuff shrinks a bit producing nice expansion joints.

For more "tarmac" feeling you can paint this with an underlayer of a Granite color (again textured) and then spray over that in the desired final color.