Making rocks for your terrain

I have been busy with making some more terrain for our games of Fantasy and 40K (click here for the previous post on terrain)and bought a starter set of Woodland Scenics cast-you-own-rock. First of all, it is completely unneccessary to do this, because you can find plenty of rocks in the yard that look just the same. But for me it is fun, messing around with plaster and coming up with a rock that looks like the real thing!

Allright then, you start with this

then you mix it with some water; click on this video link (it's real short but great)

http://www.woodlandscenics.com/FlashVideos/MakeARock.html

The molds look like this....

and they are cheap, running about 9.00 dollars per.

John gave me a couple as well and I decided to make two of them for real.

This is what it looks like after it has dried..(takes about 30 minutes)

Then the paint job: it's time for those washes. They worked great. I used the sepia and the brown and the cracks I shaded with black. Then I dry brushed with Bleach Bone.

The plaster is not very sturdy, so I added some balsa wood underneath to keep the edges from chipping. On the one I kept it flush to the rock, the other has a wider base. I added some sand and grass.

Here are the rocks scaled to some models:

They will sure give you a cover save..

So for 18 dollars you can get two molds, the plaster is 10 dollars. That's a whole lot cheaper then most terrain. You can add the rocks to foam and make them stick out in a larger piece, you can also just cast parts of it to make smaller pieces and it works great for basing your models.

Here's the website for this product: www.woodlandscenics.com

It's mostly a railroad site, but still very interesting.

Since I have cast these rocks, I have read about dental plaster being a much tougher material, but unfortunately it is much more expensive. That material goes by Excalibur and only come in 25 pound boxes...