Building the Canyon | Bandit Canyon Railway

[Music] howy folks Dave here at Thunder maesa Studio coming to you with another project for the 8 Bandit Canyon Railway and this week we're going to be building some more scenery in fact I want to finish Bandit Canyon itself that's everything in the middle of the layout right here from where this bridge is going to be located down to the top of the benchwork I was just down at my local Home Center where I picked up a couple of 4x8 sheets of this pink polystyrene insulation foam this is the stuff I'm using for all of the scenery here on the Bandit Canyon Railway I've got one sheet that is 2 in thick and another sheet that is one inch thick and really that should be more than enough to finish all the scenery on this layout and have quite a bit left over for other projects coming down the pipe before I start cutting and fitting blocks of foam for the scenery I actually need to cut a piece of plywood to cover this area here this is going to be the canyon floor the lowest point on all the scenery and then the canyon walls will be built up on top of that so I've got some Thin plywood back in my garage that I think will work so I'm going to take some measurements and we'll cut that to shape [Music] this polystyrene insulation foam is scored I get the kind that has a score in it they're 16 inch wide 8 in 8 Ines and then 16 again there we go then to cut these big chunks down to the size you need at least for straight cuts I use the score and snap method I've got a nice sharp blade in my utility knife use a straight edge just like that to start building our Canyon walls I've cut a couple of pieces of foam just to sort of box this in using some of this U Loctite power grab adhesive all right now I want to start building up the back of the canyon with some uh 2in foam there's not really going to be a creek running through here uh but there are going to be some water pockets and just like the name implies a water pocket is a place in the desert and Sandstone country like this that fills up with uh water when it rains now we start in with the uh the hot wire cutter to start uh making some of these shapes and and this is where things really start to get messy go in here now with my wire brush and start sculpting this foam a little bit adding some strata at the same time and yeah this gets everywhere all part of the fun folks now the heat gun I'll just say that the heat gun is the magic ingredient that really makes this technique work you want to melt that texture back just a little bit gets rid of all the fuzz freezes it in place kind of making this up as I go I have a a rough picture in my mind so I'm using a 45 de square and going around and adding some angled lines here to act as guides for when I carve this so this 2in thick layer will have more of a unique look look and not just you know be this monolithic all all the rock layers going uh in the same direction and if you look close to Canyon Country that's exactly what you see it seems like they're all you know because there's stacks of layers but actually there's a lot of variation once you start looking more closely I'll go back and carve some of these out with my utility knife then with the wire brush we just follow that that same angle as we continue up the canyon wall so you've got a a piece like this which is ready to install it's all carved and and they're ready to glue in the easiest way to transfer this shape to the next piece is to cut a blank like this and then uh turn it all upside down like so and then just trace it these these por offs in these narrow Canyons they'll have these what are often called potholes or tanks and they're just places where the water has collected over and over again over you know the centuries sometimes and hollowed out and made these little natural Wells and depressions in the Rock and I think I've come up with a fairly uh Nifty way to model those I'm just going to use one of these uh aim and Flame lighters that you use on your barbecue and come down here and melt that until I get a nice depression do it on each of the levels here taking care not to light the layout on fire always be safe folks when uh using fire like this for anything the nice thing about this foam is that it'll just melt like this it won't actually uh catch on fire so you'll just get a nice little melted in depression like that now I want to concentrate just on this right hand side of the canyon for a little while because I need to figure out a this road there's actually a road that comes from right here or Trail I should say and switches is going to switch back around down to about here so we got a section of my trail carved out from this 2-in piece of foam did all this with the hot wire tool but for the rest of this probably better to use sh form tool with this I can take a lot of material off and really carve this down in a hurry okay that's not bad now I go ahead and carve the rest of this in the usual way for this topmost part of the trail where it meets the existing scenery up here I had to use a short piece of cardboard just to make this little s-curve transition and now I'll fill in all around this with the blocks of foam and once everything's painted and detailed should look pretty good now check this out over on this side of I've got this uneven profile of rock and I want to match that with the foam so I'm creating a a p pattern with some cardboard that I've just got pinned up here temporarily now I'll cut this shape out now I can transfer that shape onto a 1 in thick piece of foam and then cut it out with the hot wire tool now I should be able to just slide this in here get a pretty good fit now I'm not going to glue this piece in yet but all of the subsequent layers going up are going to be glued to this piece so I'll be able to slide the whole thing out as a single unit finish this side finish this side at the workbench slide it back in and blend it all together better make sure I didn't accidentally glue that in in that works pretty well okay I think that's about as high as I can go on this side right now and still be able to slide this in and out of here for access this is actually a piece left over from the Thunder Mesa lay out when I was breaking down rainbow Ridge this was an addit that was down below the town of rainbow Ridge Edge and I was able to save this whole thing and thought I would uh plug it in there I think it'll be pretty cool I'm going to have a short piece of O8 track coming out which may or may not have power to it I haven't decided yet and you know some flickering lanterns inside so that'll be a cool little effect back there in the canyon but for now I think the next thing is I need to start blending all these layers together with some sculpta mold and some some spackle starting off with a kind of a thick batch of sculp mold use that to fill in some of the bigger gaps it's like that kind of ease that transition my method is just to take a little little pinch of it like that pinch and just kind of shove it into the crack and then blend it with a wet finger get this all along this Edge so you won't be able to tell what's where the cardboard and the foam come together now I'm done with the sculp the mold and I'm using some spackling compound to fill in the rest of these smaller uh gaps going back and just hitting that with a weight wet paintbrush adds a little texture to it and works it back into the the crack a little bit better want to do all this want to get all this done at once because um all of it's going to need to dry overnight this side of the canyon is a little easier because I can work on it off the layout once again I just want to use some sculpted mold to fill in the bigger gaps the bigger holes and blend this tunnel portal in this isn't a difficult technique at all it's it's actually quite easy it's just a little time consuming mostly the time is waiting for stuff to dry as usual right and then just like the other side I can do the rest of these gaps with some uh spackling compound it's about this point while I'm waiting for the sculpt to mold and the Spackle to dry when this the scenery looks it's absolute worst this is the worst it's going to look in in this process and um sometimes it's hard to Envision the final outcome and that's when you have to kind of just you know have a little faith and trust the process fortunately I've done this enough times before that I know it's going to be okay but still I look at go I don't know it's looking looking kind of funky at this point but once we get some pain on there Everything Changes well most of this has had a chance to dry overnight so I'm going to go ahead and get a coat of the scenic base color on everything if you're looking for a color that's similar to this that you can get you know right off the shelf I would recommend raw Sienna it's a good starting point for this kind of uh Southwestern scenery color red rock country color and at this this point I'm not trying to do anything fancy I'm just getting a uh an even coat of paint on all of the uh scenery that I just built using a uh 1in filbert brush longtime viewers of the channel will know that this is my favorite paintbrush for scenery it's kind of become my lucky brush and uh you know I start to worry now how much longer it's going to last because I've used it on an awful lot of projects but you know it's like the Energizer Bunny just keeps going and going no reason to throw it away yet of course I just realized that the smart thing to do here would be to start at the bottom I work my way up that way I don't end up you know reaching through wet paint uh to get to these these areas also start kind of back here in the back of the canyon and work my way forward as much as I can some of you might be questioning the steepness of this Trail as it comes down into the canyon and um I was actually thinking of a couple of different Trails up at Grand Canyon as I was modeling this sculpting this out one is the H Trail which goes down to H Rapids and the other one is the the Tanner Trail which is kind of out uh East End of the canyon near Desert View and they are both incredibly Steep and the Tanner Trail in particular was used at least occasionally by horse thieves escaping from Utah so you know there's that uh Bandit connection right there some of them really are that crazy Steep and horses can negotiate a trail that steep mules do a little better down here where I don't want to get paint on the uh on the layout fascia this part down here that looks like uh old Barnwood using some painters tape and some frog tape to mask that frog tape is like painters tape but much better gives you a nice clean edge things like this I wouldn't go to this trouble if I had a painted this part of the faci it was going to be painted but since it's going to be just kind of raw stained wood take a little extra precaution now I just want to come in from this side underneath the arch and touch up here and there any spots I might might have missed get a different perspective on it again this right side of the canyon quite a bit easier since I can do the vast majority of the painting here on the table and you know that's kind of the way I planned it well there's really not much left that I can do right now except to wait for that first Scenic base coat to dry the next step after that Scenic base color has had a chance to drive let all the dry for several hours is to go over it with a dark wash dark but not black and all this is is um some acrylic paint and water and how I make it is I take about oh five six seven drops of black acrylic five six seven drops of dark brown this is these are some Vallejo colors in a container like this fill it up with water Stir It Up and you know check the transparency of it should be transparent and runny you're not looking for paint you're looking for a stain a wash and the idea here is that this is going to soak back into all of those cracks and crevices and deepen the Shadows now obviously since this is a wash you really want to start at the top and work your way down and just let that color run down some people use a a a spray bottle for this and you certainly can I uh for Close Quarters like this I just prefer the control that I get with a big soft brush also a good idea to have some paper towels standing by and to mask off things that you don't want to get paint on obviously a lot of that's going to pull up down at the bottom of the canyon so I just take a dry paper towel soak most of that up and this piece over on our work table gets the same treatment and if you've already guessed that the next step is to sit back and wait for everything to dry give yourself a prize so here are the the colors that I'm going to be using uh to finish off the rock work uh these are some inexpensive U craft store artist acrylics got some raw Sienna some burnt sienna uh some unbleached titanium some yellow o ocher uh burnt Umber and some black the black is used very sparingly uh so is the uh burnt sienna and the yellow ochre those are just to punch things up a little bit the main colors I use are these two right here the raw Sienna and the unbleached titanium those are the two main scenery colors in fact the scenic base color is really just those two colors mixed together before I get too far into the painting I want to come around and look again again at this side of the layout where I did improbable Arch a few weeks ago because I want to be able to match up these layers of strata these layers of color to start off with I've just mixed some of the uh Scenic base color with a little bit of that unbleached titanium to lighten it up a little bit just going over the tops of the texture on the Rock work to um create a little bit of definition just gives me a good place to start then I've got this thick middle layer which is quite a bit lighter trying to carry that color over it's got a lot of that unbleached titanium in it and a little bit of yellow ochre mixed in just to make it a little bit punchier and this layer it's got quite a bit more of the darker raw Sienna in it makes a nice contrast I think I'm also doing this side of the canyon at the same time so while I have this color mixed up I can get it on here so everything will match nicely and then this shelf down here the trail comes out on this is meant to be Limestone so I want to use that lighter tone again and I'll probably lighten that up a little bit more before before we're done good idea to slide this back in every so often and see how we're doing matching up the layers and the colors want the bottommost layers to be the to be very dark and dramatic so mix some uh burnt sienna about 5050 with the raw sien very powerful color but when I go back over it with a lighter shade for the highlights it'll tone it down quite a bit now I want to dry brush on some desert varnish here and there and that's just just these dark stains that run down the side of sandstone Cliffs like this so I'm mixing some some Ivory black with a little bit of that burnt Umber and I've got a semi-stiff brush get most of the paint off just come right down the sides like that just kind of scrubbing it on there now come back with the scenic base color and just dry brush over the top of that if ever anything gets a little bit too too distinct or too I don't know garish can always tone it down by just kind of dry brushing right over the top and this will help to uh unify all the colors bring everything together and you know I love it when a plan comes together I think I'm ready for some Final highlights and again I'm dry brushing these on got some of that unbleached titanium mixed in with my Scenic base color and I'll just keep going over this until everything looks like it belongs I I don't know a better way to explain it than that I know it's a very artsy thing to say but it's true just keep going over it until it looks right I keep adding a little bit more of the uh the unbleach titanium to lighten it up a little bit more as I go then for the final pass some pure unbleached tight titanium just using that on the Limestone layer to really make that pop that's the only thing that would really have that much wide in it well now I think I'm at the point where I can glue this side of the canyon in don't have to worry about access too much anymore I'm still going to need to get to those pools but I think I can manage and have this this in place I want to glue this in now because um now I I need to blend it in with the rest of the scenery we're at that point so I've made up one more small batch of sculpt mold which I'm going to use to fill in this Gap right there as you can probably see I came back and finished off this side with a little bit more carve foam a little bit more sculpt to mold I've got the scenic base color on there just finished putting the dark wash on and now I just need to come in with those final colors and blend it all together make sure it matches the rest of the rock work and this part of the canyon will be done [Music] well that is it for the painting so now I want to start adding some real dirt and small rocks Red Dirt from Sedona Arizona and then cover any of this remaining plywood down here with a nice layer of dirt to represent the the dry bottom of the wash and I've got my collection of larger rocks to sprinkle those right around the edges as if they've fallen down from up above now I'm painting some diluted white glue onto the trail because I'm going to sprinkle on some dirt there for the path I like to use a lighter shade which more closely matches this rock here now I want to wet everything down everything I just put in here uh and this is some wet water which is regular water with just a couple of drops of liquid detergent in it and that breaks the surface tension the reason you do this step is so that when you apply the glue it doesn't run it stays more or less where you put it and now it's time for some diluted white glue and this is uh just regular Elmer's Glue diluted 3 to one with water by the way if you can find the older glue bottles that have this kind of cap on them hang on to those because they work a lot better for this than the newer ones do so now I just squirt the glue on and dribble it on and you see how it pulls up like that that's what you want that's how you know you've got enough glue on there if you see it white and pulled up that's still nice and wet and some more dirt up here on the on the trail sure that's all nice and saturated with glue now I can go ahead and glue in this little formation that I made over at the workbench kind of a pinnacle sticking up in the middle of the canyon and there's one last thing I want to add today and that's a log that is helping to prop up this rather precarious overhang of rock here above the trail and now once again we're waiting around for stuff to dry in fact I really can't do anything else on this until this last step dries until this glue dries and there's a lot more that needs to be done I've got this bridge up here in the front to build I've got a mining track to install coming out of this mine add it I've got cacti and other plants little touchups here and there retain painting walls all of that stuff to build in fact I've got enough stuff to fill a whole another episode and that's what it's going to have to wait for because I'm out of time for this week we're going to have to wrap this one up I want to thank you all so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this dive into Bandit Canyon I had a lot of fun hope you did too you can also follow us over on Instagram at thunder. Mesa and see what's happening on the Thunder Mesa Studio website at Thunder mesa. Studio as always if you enjoy what we're doing here at the channel and want to show your support you can do what these great folks did and go over to patreon.com thundera and show your support there until next time when we'll be finishing Bandit Canyon for reals keep moving forward my friends adios for now [Music] [Music]