07-20-2010, 10:29 PM
You'd probably get the best representation of the rough bottom of those "floating" footings with a casting, but a mould around the pipes would have to be cut off unless it was made as two halves - that could cause a problem with alignment. Of course, the pour would have to be with the mould inverted, so that the rough bottom would be facing up.
You could try making a mould for only the footing (again, upside down for the pour, to allow for a rough bottom), then drill it for the pipes. You'd need a good, hard plaster - hydrocal, dental plaster, or Durabond might stand up to the drilling without cracking.
If you wanted to do it all in styrene, you could make the footings as hollow boxes of .060" sheet styrene, then drill for suitably-sized styrene tubing. This would give you a good, solid assembly that could easily be worked into the rest of the scene (this is coming into my head faster than I can type, but I like it even better than the cast plaster/tubing idea), allowing you to do all of the concrete work of the spillways, erosion protection, etc. in sheet styrene. To achieve the roughed effect on the bottom of the "floating" footings and also on the concrete pilings whose formerly-buried lower extremities have been revealed, moisten the area with lacquer thinner, then use a #17 X-Acto blade to roughly apply some Squadron putty. (Achieving that latter effect was eluding me with the cast-and-drill method.
)
Wayne
You could try making a mould for only the footing (again, upside down for the pour, to allow for a rough bottom), then drill it for the pipes. You'd need a good, hard plaster - hydrocal, dental plaster, or Durabond might stand up to the drilling without cracking.
If you wanted to do it all in styrene, you could make the footings as hollow boxes of .060" sheet styrene, then drill for suitably-sized styrene tubing. This would give you a good, solid assembly that could easily be worked into the rest of the scene (this is coming into my head faster than I can type, but I like it even better than the cast plaster/tubing idea), allowing you to do all of the concrete work of the spillways, erosion protection, etc. in sheet styrene. To achieve the roughed effect on the bottom of the "floating" footings and also on the concrete pilings whose formerly-buried lower extremities have been revealed, moisten the area with lacquer thinner, then use a #17 X-Acto blade to roughly apply some Squadron putty. (Achieving that latter effect was eluding me with the cast-and-drill method.
)Wayne