Hi guys and girls

Recently I've decided to try out a new technique after seeing this cool looking wall:

Greenslate

It's called greenslate and apparently it is widly used in the UK.
I thought it would make a nice smaller wall as well as a building wall, so I've decided to give it a try. After around 1,5 hour I managed to achieve this:



This is just a test piece to get your opinion and advice. I will mix different thickness slates next time to make it look more realistic. These stones are 3mm thin and mostly around 1cm wide. I think they go well with 28mm scale, plus they also look good. What do you think ?? Any suggestions or comments?

cheers,
dsc.

Looks very nice to me . I like the unevenness although the top will appear a bit too flat if its exposed. 3 mm. is pretty thin even for slate. A bit of shadows and highlighting it would defintely look very nice and even better if the thickness of each stone could be varied a bit. Make a great stonework house too.

It looks very promising. For scale, how about putting a figure in the pic to give us a reference.

Looking nice, but I have a few comments.

You should make the slates in different hights. We have a lot of these slate walls in Norway, and the thickness of the stones varies from stone to stone. (See your own reference picture). Actually, my parents cabin in the mountains have slate tiles on the roof. We are a mountainous country, so we use a lot of rocks

The texture of the slate is not quite like the one you made. Slates usually consists of multiple thin layers. The layers are just a few millimetres thick. Sometimes the slates are cut so they get a nice smooth surface. But I have never seen them with this texture. For me, your fence looks like it's made by ordinary rocks.

Henrik, do you mean that with the example that Tom has made, that he would need to have far more horizontal grooves per piece, to represent his reference pic?

Yes, that's what I mean. I think the stones in Tom's attempt has to rough texture. The slates can be very different in hight, but they often have a clean edge. If the edge is not cut clean, the slate probably consists of several thin layers.
Some kinds of slates are actually so fragile that you can break it apart with your fingers (because of the thin horisontal layers).

Then again there are slates that are really thick.

This image is a good example of what I mean.

Excellent concept DSC.... for variety, try turning a few peices on their side, and also breaking a few peices into smaller chunks. Overall, I think this would be an excellent base for walls and stairs. Where did you source the materials?

Tom I think you have a great start. Using the same method as the others?

My suggestion to get more like your photo reference is to rethink your texture. You need to give it more horizontal marks to get the effect you are looking for. As noted in a few of the previous posts. I'm not sure how you are making your texture, but I would try scribing some lines in the individual stones to give it the layered look of slate. Maybe a little less roughness to the stone itself more flat.

Your building method of building the blocks is great and proving to be quite useful. You are headed in the right direction! I really like the time and effort you put into this. Your finished work will reflect the quality you are putting into this to get it right.

Well Done!

Paul

Ola:)

I would like to thank you all for your replies, it's really helpful because you can point out things that would be normally less visible to me.

@beachbum: this was just a test piece, the top will look different, so don't worry about that. 3mm in 28mm scale means around 20cm "in reality" so I guess it's ok. The thickness will be varied so it should look more realistic.

@Alan: I will make another test piece (with different stone thickness) and will put a figure in the picture for scale purposes.

@Henrik: yeah I will vary the thickness as I said before and will try to imitate all those layers on each rock. It might be a bit tricky but I will try.

@Keith: I will try breaking some stones into smaller pieces which should make the wall more realistic. I also think this method should work great for walls and stairs.

@Paul: as I said before I will try to add some horizontal lines to some stones to imitate slate.




What method are you refering to??

Enough answers, now some info on the technique:

1. get some dental plaster and cast some flat (1-3mm thin) plates, wait for the to dry

2. break them into smaller pieces, use some dental tools to add some texture

3. glue them together with pva glue, you can also use wall filler to imitate mortar

That's about it, pretty easy and looks nice, so why not give it a try:)

Again thank you for your suggestions and kind words and see you in my next "wall" topic:)

cheers,
dsc.