January 2008
Now that the holidays are over and it’s too cold outside to much of anything constructive (read as “The Honey-Do List”) I can spend more time in the slot cave and work on the race track! At this point and time, All of the track is down and in place, wiring is complete and cars can turn laps. Next we will scope out how to add the skid aprons to the turns and keep everything on the same level. I used Midwest brand HO train cork roadbed for my skid aprons. The Midwest cork is only 3/16” thick and the Tomy AFX track is 1/4” thick. So we needed to come up with a shim to level out the cork with the plastic track to keep the surfaces level. Here we used Midwest 1/16” x 1” balsa wood under the cork to get the proper height.
Use the track as a pattern to mark and shape your balsa wood shim.
I cut several small pieces to make up the radius of the turns.
Next we use a little white glue to secure the balsa shims in place.
I went around the entire track securing the shims before I installed the cork aprons. I painted the aprons to match the track and laid them to side, so this gave them plenty of drying time.
These pictures show how the balsa shims bring the cork roadbed up to and even with the track surface. Small finish nails are used to secure the cork in place.
May 2008
Once we get all of the skid aprons in place, we can hang those rear tires out on the edge of the turns! So the next thing on the agenda is scenery, or at least the foundation pieces of scenery. The level of detail you can add to a track is limited only by your imagination. Most tracks that I have built in the past, for myself or others, have been oriented towards competition racing. That usually demanded Lexan retaining walls, clear visibility on every turn and no obstructions for turn marshals to get hung up on while retrieving a car. I have always been envious of the train guys and the eye-popping scenery they can achieve. But countryside meadows and train stations didn’t have enough action for my tastes, but the scale racing world sure does. Before you start up, plan what you want your track to look like, scenery-wise. Pick an era of racing to base it on and what part of the country or of the world for that matter, you would like it to appear as. You can have Euro city-scapes, like Monaco or the red clay facilities of Road Atlanta, to the country settings of Nurburgring. But whatever era and place you choose, research it first. The Internet is a great tool for this, as well as bookstores and libraries. You can find tons of photos and references from the entire scope of auto racing and let your mind go from there.
Now that you have your ideas planned out and you have gotten past the table building, track design, placement and the nuisance of wiring and power, you are ready to start the scenery. I can’t say it often enough, plan your scenery as well as you do the mechanical components of your raceway. It will make the experience more realistic and enjoyable. One last thing about planning; try and make sure you keep “blind” spots to a minimum. Seeing a car flash past a small group of trees or rocks going down a straight is okay, but hitting a corner that can’t be seen, may be more of an irritant than a challenge after a short period of time. If your scenery becomes a frustration point, the track will be less enjoyable and worse, it will be harder to get your buddies to come over and race! Plan, Plan, Plan and then test, adjust and plan again!
Woodrum Ridge Raceway was planned as strange mix of two eras. First, the oval track will capture the feeling of a 1980s and 90s stock car racing facility. Big banked turns and lots of speed was the major part of the design, but scenery would follow along the lines of a Talledega or Daytona speedway. Second is the road course, which will be designed to follow in the sports car era of places like Paramount Springs or Bridgehampton. Rolling curves cutting through hills and valleys one could think would be ideal for Sunday drives….at 150 MPH! So as I continue to cover the scenery design, remember I’m looking to capture two environments from two very different times in motor sports.
Start with a plan, it will make things so much easier as you continue to develop your “world” in scale. I try to layout a map of where everything will go. I’ll be using ceiling tiles to craft the ground, hills and cliff facings. It’s easy to work with and another benefit is it absorbs noise. Since half my scenery is designed to look like pavement and is simply the tabletop with gray paint, the cars have a bit of a rumble when they go through, but quiet down once they hit the “countryside”. This makes for a nice effect. Below is my planning map and for over 4 years, it has remained the guide with few changes.
So let’s look at what I call the foundation pieces to scenery. I had planned on incorporating some of the local area scenery into my layout. Not too far from my home is a an outcropping of rock left over from where they widened the highway a few years ago. Once the blasting was done, the form of an alligator was left facing the north bound lanes coming into Liberty, KY. This is always a spot my girls will point out as we drive by. The local high school kids will hang sheets painted with the school mascot from the back of the gator, for the next big ball game. So this had to be added to the layout and where we will start. I can’t say enough about planning. Alligator rock is a huge formation in real life. I would use up most of my table to capture it in scale. But I was able to shrink the scale down a bit and still capture the feel of the real thing. Once my girls approved, I knew I had it done correctly (after several tries!). The following pictures capture the steps in getting this and part of the cliffs built up and sculpted.
If you decide to use these methods, please take the precautions of using a mask or respirator. The ceiling tile material creates a lot of dust that you don’t need to breathe!
The tiles I purchased are recycled paper products and have no asbestos or fiberglass fibers. However, you should always wear a dust mask or respirator when working with this material. And if you have other items in the area where you are working with this material (furniture, TV, knickknacks, maybe a slot car collection!), I highly recommend covering those areas with a drop cloth. The dust travels and settles on everything.
First off, always glue the white side of the ceiling tiles facing down on the table surface. The gray side absorbs more of the glue and will peel apart easier. Second, place your entire base landscaping down first, then build up your cliff sides. That will make the transitions between ground and cliff much smoother and you will have less back-filling to do. Next you lay out the basic shapes. I drew the shape I wanted on the table and then broke pieces of ceiling tile in 1-1/2” strips. I placed the strips, without any glue, inside the drawing, removing bits from the edges until I got the shapes to match the lines on the table. Do this step for all of your base pieces first. This process assembles like building blocks or Legos. Dry fit your “finished” pieces before gluing everything in place. It’s almost impossible to go back and slip a piece into the middle or bottom once you begin assembling the layers. I used wood blocks (leftover scraps from building the table) to fill in the center section of the alligator shape and to give the center of the formation some support (Above Left). After you get the base or foundation pieces in the general shape you want, glue them down to the surface. A regular white glue will do the job just fine. Don’t worry if your pieces are not exact. Once the glue dries you will be able to go back and shape the formation’s details. I do not begin the final shaping, until I have the majority of the formation built and after the glue has dried overnight. In the second picture (Above Right) you can see where I have begun stacking the layers to form the cut stone look.
As you build the layers, you can hold pieces in place with finishing nails or by placing a weight on the parts. I used 2” finishing nails to secure the pieces from sliding on the layers and then placed whatever was handy to weight it down until the glue dried. The pictures above show several layers in progress with spray cans and rolls of duct tape being used to weigh down the pieces.
There are several ways to sculpt the texture of the stone into the tiles. In the picture above on the left, you can see how the surface of the edge is smooth where the utility knife scored the board. I snap the remainder off, which leaves the jagged surface. The picture on the right shows how I make all of the edge have that jagged or natural, rough hewn appearance. You can drag the flat of a hobby knife across the edge’s surface as in the picture. You can also use a wire brush and scrub the texture into the surface. Use very little pressure when doing either of these procedures! The material is soft and you may wear away more than you wanted to. As you shape the tiles you will have some fuzzy bits left from the scraping or brushing. Save those bits. They will be used later to fill in areas or they can be used to make grass or foliage for trees. I store the bits in a zip lock bag until I need them.
The picture above shows how I’m using this material for ground cover and making hills. Notice all the saved bits and fuzz I’m keeping in the middle? We will use that later, so don’t throw it away. A pattern was made from brown packaging paper and cut out. I used thumb tacks to secure the pattern on to a piece of tile and used a utility knife to cut the tile around the pattern. Try to cut the tile as close to 90 degrees on the edges as you can. We’ll shape the edges in the next steps. Test fit your tile to the area you cut it for. Once you have the shape the way you want it, glue it down to the board and hold it in place with some weight. Don’t worry if you cut a bit too much from the edges. That fuzz you kept earlier, this is where it comes into play.
The picture in the above left shows the 90 degree cuts in the tile getting as close as possible to the track’s edge. The picture on the above right shows how the edges were scraped down to the same level as the track surface. This is done by holding the hobby knife 45 degrees to the track surface and removing the tile material in small amounts scraping along the leading edge until you have the surface to level you want. The gap between the track and the tile is filled with white glue. While the glue is wet, stuff the leftover fuzz into the gap. This will be a messy process. Keep a wet rag handy to clean your fingertips if you get glue on them. You want the fuzz to fill the gaps and not stick on your fingers. Let this dry over night. After the glue dries completely you can lightly brush off any excess that the glue didn’t hold. You can repeat this step until you have the gaps filled to your satisfaction. If there is some fuzz that is loose on the surface, it will get secured in place when you paint. You can also take your white glue and thin it down 3 parts water to 1 part glue and paint over the fill areas to secure the surface. I haven’t had to do this yet, but the option is there if I find any loose material. The lower pictures above show some sample areas, before and after they have been filled using this technique.
June 2008 – Grass, Hills and How to Fill All Those Gaps You Left
Ceiling tiles are great for making the grassy scenery too. Once you have it painted, it is effectively sealed. So a de-slotted car doesn’t get much of anything on it. Using sawdust or packaged hobby grass almost always sticks to your car, no matter how well you applied the glue. To add a grassy area, lay your piece of ceiling tile across the areas you want to cover. It will reduce your finish work if it can be done in one piece, but its okay if you need to make several smaller pieces. Just make sure the sections can match up closely with little or no gap as you can. If you do leave a gap, we’ll circle back around and fill those later on. The cork roadbed I used for the skid aprons has a 45 degree angle that is supposed to look like gravel slanting down from the track. I’m going to bring my tile right up to the top edge of the roadbed, covering that slanted portion. This will make the track appear to be cut from the land, not lying on top of it.
The image on the left shows the ceiling tile uncut and cork roadbed angle. The image on the right shows the ceiling tile after scraping the lower edge to match the angle of the cork roadbed.
The edge of the tile that rests against the cork roadbed will have to be cut at the same angle as the roadbed (See above). Do this by dragging a hobby knife across the lower edge of the tile, scraping until you have the same 45 degree angle. Save those scrapings!!!! They will be used in a bit. Check the fit as you remove small portions of the tile. The closer you make the fit here, the less back filling you will have to do later. You will notice that the tile is about 1/8 inch higher than the track and roadbed. We will scrape those to fit as well, after they are glued and dry. Curved sections are where the challenge will begin. I do not have any suggestions that make this slam-dunk easy. Since we do have the option of back filling, I will eye-ball the fit as close as I can.
Save those scraped bits of tile and dust. They make great filler and can add texture. I’ve seen the same material stained with watered-down paint and used as a foliage for tress and bushes. The image on the right shows the scraping tool I use to remove the bulk of the surface areas. It is a drywall scrapper, found in any home center or hardware store.
The pictures below show how far off the cuts can wind up. But the scrapings we saved earlier will be used to fill these gaps and level uneven areas. Now you have the section or sections trimmed to fit. Turn them over, white side up and place some white glue around the outside edges and through the middle, making sure to cover a majority of the board. Flip it over and place it in the section you trimmed it for. At this point, I place a weight on the glued sections to hold them in the final location and keep pressure on the glued parts. It dries in about an hour or so. Do not try to make any changes or sculpting of the tiles until they are dry. I will let them set over-night if they are a foundation or base piece. After the piece has set up and dried, you can begin shaping the tile. I use a paint scrapper to remove the majority of the large gray cover surface. Once that covering is removed, the pulp paper material is easily shaped with a hobby knife. Remove thin layers at a time. It is very easy to remove too much. You can also scrape the surface with a hobby knife or add texture with a wire brush.
This picture shows how I missed the fitting of the curve radius on my initial cut. But that’s okay, it will get back-filled later.
Here is the same corner after the first stage of the filling process.
Here is another example of gaps that can be left, but easily filled. This one is on a straight section of the track.
Fill in the gap with some white glue.
Using the saved scrapings of tile, lay it over the glue.
Stuff it down into the gap. Brush off any excess to keep it from getting glued to the track.
You should have something like this, waiting to dry.
Once dry, use a soft brush to remove the excess tile material. You can use a toothbrush for narrow areas or fine detail. Reapply as needed.
Organized Chaos! This process creates lots of dust. Make sure you wear a dust mask and cover anything that you don’t want covered in a layer of dust.
Coloring or painting the ceiling tile is very easy. I actually stain and seal the tile using a mixture of water base paint, white glue and water. I mix the paint and glue about 50-50 and then thin it with water on a 2 to 1 ratio: water to paint/glue. This makes for a very thin, watery mixture that is applied with a sponge brush, dabbing over the tiles. Don’t try to brush this on, it will cause the tile material to roll up under the brush. The tile is very absorbent and will sop up the mixture quickly. Try not to apply too much as it will take longer to dry. The paint pigment will stain the tile and the glue in the mix will help seal it. After you allow this to dry, you can begin applying your detail painting, air-brush, dry-brush or washing techniques to bring out your details.
Here are the ingredients for the staining/sealing mixture: Water-based paint, white glue and water.
Dab the stain on the tiles. The files will absorb the mixture and will be sealed for additional detail painting later.
August-December – 2008
Wow! Can things change fast. Now that we have the shapes and the foundation pieces in place and where we want them, it’s time to start making things look like grass, dirt and rocks. We will get more focused on images to show you how to make the grass look like grass or rocks like rocks and so forth. So what we will do this time around, is to look at each area on the track and its surrounding scenery as we build up the colors to make our little world look more like the real world.
How to Build the Illusion of Realism
I work with a gentlemen that began canvas painting a few years ago. He has moved from landscapes to portraits and has now started combining the two. Watching his technique develop has been a privilege and an opportunity to learn some techniques of my own all over again. I have been a professional graphics artist for some years. I started in the advertising world doing airbrush enlargements of photographs or “enhancing” photos with an airbrush. This was all in the pre-Photoshop era. Later I moved on to computer graphics and engineering, but continued to keep my analog skills tuned over the years by building model kits and race tracks. What ties my lessons together is the concept that we are trying to make someone feel like they are viewing a real racing environment, not just a scene. And if we do it right, it’s not viewed in miniature, but we draw the person in, to feel like they are part of the environment we created. My friend does that with his paintings. His latest painting is bunch of kids at the soccer field gathered around their coach. In his presentation of the picture, you feel like you are on the side lines watching the game, not looking at a painting. That is exactly what we want to accomplish with our scenery. We don’t want just a bunch of trees and grass tossed around, we want to feel like we just walked into the landscape itself. When you start thinking you smell the scent of oil and gasoline, or hear the engines roar or the crowd cheer, just from the sights you take in, then you’ve placed yourself in the scene and you are no longer just watching it, you are a part of it. This will add to the fun and build the excitement of your hobby to new levels. You are no longer watching a car zipping down the slot, you are in a high powered racing machine, power sliding through a corner and reeling in the leader as you fly by the pits and the grandstands. You are now the driver, you are now part of the world you built and that is when the illusion becomes real and the enjoyment and fun are at their best.
Painting: Base Coats and Color Coats
Let’s take a step back and look at where we are. All of the ceiling tile is in place, our rock formations are shaped and any additions, like hills and such are finished on the sculpting and shaping side of things and the grassy areas are ready for a bit of color. Before you start any painting, give the whole track a good clean up, Pick up all those stray tools, wire brushes, sandpaper and leftover debris and put them away. Then give the whole track table a good vacuuming to get rid of any of those stray bits too small to pick up by hand.
After all of the shaping is done, thoroughly clean up the track area to make the next phase easier.
Now that the work area has been cleaned and vacuumed you are ready to begin the painting phase.
Now you are ready to apply a base coat on your scenery. Always start with a light color and work your way to the darker colors last. Light colors are easily covered, dark ones bleed through and require several coats to cover well. That adds to build up and can leave an unrealistic appearance. So remember, start with the lightest shades and work up to darker ones. In the case of grass at Woodrum Ridge Raceway (WRR) we have a large area to cover. The track scenery at WRR is broken up into two distinct types, grassy countryside and the pit and grandstand areas. For the grassy areas we placed ceiling tiles down and scraped off the top layer to give that appearance. For the sake of speed I used an airbrush for most of the work in this article. However, a good portion of the grassy areas were done with a sponge brush by my kids, as seen in earlier sections.
The base coat will serve two purposes. First, it will be the initial cover or primer for each new coat of color and second, it will help seal the tile material and eliminate any dust issues. I use water based acrylics on all of my scenery painting. It’s easy to clean up and doesn’t leave a strong scent in the air. The ceiling tiles are very absorbent and will take a highly thinned, water based paint very well. I said in the previous section, a 50-50 mix of the paint and glue, and 2 to 1 on that mixture to water. You may add more water if you are using an airbrush. This mixture can be sprayed or sponged on the tile surface. A word of caution when using this mixture in an airbrush. The white glue will dry very quickly in the mixing chamber of the airbrush. You will need to take frequent breaks and clean the heads and mixing chamber often. The dried glue is removed easily enough but will eventually stop up the paint flow if not removed often. Apply the base coat in heavy layers. The tile material will drink this up. Once dry however, the glue in the mixture will seal the porous tile and the next layers painted will not soak in as before. Make sure to cover all of the grassy areas well with the base coat and let dry over night. You will only need to use the glue portion of this mixture with the base coat. All following coats are only paint and water. Tomorrow we will start on the next phase of color.
The pictures below will show one point of view from the track, with the next photo showing the progression of colors added. We’ll start with the base coat and review each technique as more colors are applied. We will also review some new techniques for enhancing the appearance of the scenery, using dry-brushing and washes to bring out details.
Picture From Top Left to Right: Picture 1 is the bare tile material. Picture 2 is the base light green coat with the glue mixture. Picture 3 is a darker green layer. Picture 4 is a layer of tan. Picture 5 adds a light gray to the layers around rocky areas. Picture 6 has a dark brown layer added to bring in some depth in areas. Notice that we worked from a light color to progressively darker tones as we built up the colors of the landscape. Borrowing from my painter friend, there are thousands of colors in a landscape. You can’t paint them all, but by picking selective combinations of colors you can make the eye think it can see all of the same ones that are in the real landscape. You are now building the illusion to make it real. The “step” in the hillside will be used to anchor bushes and trees later on.
The pictures above show the same progression from plain, to light green base coat, to dark green, to tan, to gray to dark brown, on a different area of track. The playing cards are used as masks to keep the over spray off other finished areas. Notice the more rocky areas have been left bare. We will fill those in with more colors and work out specific details using the washing and dry brush techniques.
Even though the temperature dropped into the 20’s here, the sock on the air brush is not keeping the paint warm! I wrap the toe end of an old sock around the paint bottle to absorb any back pressure that may cause paint spills. This keeps the paint off the parts of the track I don’t want painted in little spots.
I use old plastic coated playing cards as paint masks. They are thin enough to fit under most edges and the plastic holds up well to several applications of paint. Always wipe the excess off of your masking material. That way you won’t drag paint onto areas you are intending to mask.
These are the last few pictures before we start working on washes and dry brushing. Notice that with each additional color, we work to copy the colors and patterns in nature. The striations in the rocks come from erosion and layers of sediment that built up over thousands of years. Ours took quite a bit less time than that, only about 8 hours of painting. I took several photos of real cliff facings to use as guides to painting these. When you are ready to start detailing your track, get some references to go by. They will make your efforts more realistic and you will enjoy the results much more. Now on to the grand illusion, adding highlights and shadows using the techniques of washes and dry brushing.
Washes and Dry Brushing…
These are two techniques that I learned to do, modeling sci-fi and movie monster kits. The general rule is to use a wash to enhance recesses or areas that would be shadowed or that would blend in too much using the main color overall. A highlight is bringing out details by using dry brushing to accentuate a detail that is forward in the field of vision. Examples of using a wash would be to bring out the door or hood lines in a slot car body by filling them in with either a darker shade of the same color as the body or use black to fill in the lines. A highlight would be to pull out the details of a door handle or side trim in silver using the dry brush method.
So what are these methods and how do you use them? Let’s start with washes.
A wash is a very diluted mixture of paint and it’s thinning agent. Sometimes I may add a bit of ammonia or alcohol to an acrylic wash to help the paint stick a bit better. The mixture should be around 5% paint and 95% thinner, making the mix very thin. Using a soft brush, you “wash” the mixture over any recessed detailed areas you want to fill with the wash color, by moving the loaded brush across the whole area you are working. Working quickly, blot any excess off the surface area leaving the mixture in the recessed detail areas.
Dry brushing is a bit easier, but takes some practice to master. Have a blotter of some type ready to use in your paint area. A paper towel or old T-shirt are excellent choices for this process. Using a fine tipped brush, dip the end of the bristles into the paint. Brush the blotter with the paint lightly, removing most of the paint, but not all. Then very gently, graze over the raised detail areas you want highlighted, with the “dry” brush. This should take several applications to do, but will really bring out small details or create contrast with your washes creating a depth of field.
How does this work on scenery? Well, in this case, a wash is a bit more tricky because the material we are painting is so absorbent. So that leaves nothing to blot off. We will have to pick out places we want to see more shadows or darker shades, very carefully. You will be working with dark colors in a wash and they will be difficult to cover up if a mistake is made. So using the mixing rule we will pick a few cracks and crevices in our rock walls and get the brush inside those spaces, making sure not to get any on the flat protruding parts of the rocks.
Highlighting will use the dry brush method, only we will use a broad flat brush and graze over the highest tips of the rock areas. In and around where I live in central Kentucky, we have a lot of shale and other dark rock formations. So I will be using a dark gray and black for some highlighting. This will give the rocks the same appearance as the formations I see in the area I live. Some light gray and tan was also used to bring a few spots out as sun bleached limestone or sandstone.
By mixing these colors and using these techniques you can make some very realistic scenery only using paint and some creative thought.
You can bring out the details with washing and dry brushing. Dry brushing some dark gray brings up the contrast with the lighter background colors. Use only the very lightest of strokes to get the best results.