Great video, Mark. I discovered this method myself over 40 years ago. I found a few loose chucks of bark in the woods, while out bow-hunting one fall day, and thought it could look like the rock found in my area, when painted and weathered. I took them home, tried it on my N-scale layout, and was quite impressed with the results. And, like you mentioned, the cost could not be beat.
Just be carefull with bark. If it is too fresh, you want to put it in the oven first. Otherwise there are microorganisms or even worms still living in it that will slowly destroy your model.
Excellent video and again good value for saving money . As others have mentioned, need to make sure that the bark is 🐜 🐛 🐞 free and any safe cleaning method, but Don’t put the bark into a microwave, it explodes and also sets fire to the bark internally- like spontaneous combustion. But great stuff. I find leaving the bark outside on a sheet of newspaper, wash over with isopropyl, on a warm day any bugs 🐜 will soon vacate. Love the techniques for weathering, always learn more every video. Thanks for sharing Martin. Super.
Brilliant. In building up our lay out we are lucky living near a forest. You have reminded us earlier of the notion that many materials for scenery can actually be found in nature, and we’ve never forgotten about that advice. It does work a treat. We have gathered plenty of small rocks, rocky scatter materials and woods. To avoid decay of woods, we do apply a good varnish, and they seem to hold pretty well. Excellent content here. Cherio and ciao.
Most of the bedding mulch in my area has been through a grinder, and so its is difficult to find bark pieces large enough for an S gauge display. But, my wife grows orchids, and buys orchid potting bark (orchids don't grow in dirt) and picking through her supply, I found enough large pieces to fulfill my needs. Orchid potting bark is available in bags from most garden centers.
So funny. I was walking with my wife and saw a piece of this type of bark. I picked it up. Wife said, "What are you doing?" I said , look at this. It would make a great rock face my my railroad. Than a few weeks later this video comes up.
There is an old book on model railroading from the 50's which showed a lot of people using bark back then. I believe it was called, the complete book of model railroading by David Sutton.
Dude you are freaking outstanding. I learned so much from this video. But it isn't no cost because of the gypsum and paint LMAO j/k but fantastic freaking video. No on to your others :0)
Hello Martin. Another astonishing video and great idea. But, as the bark is a organic material, won't it rotten pretty fast? Wouldn't it be convenient first to soak the bark in some kind of diluted varnish to increase the durability of the material before using it in the model lay-out? Many thanks for your tutorial videos and best regards from Brazil.
@@lindaoffenbach Obviously a highly diluted clear/colourless matte varnish to serve as a fixative and prevent the bark from rotting and/or mold forming.
Will not rot at all. It usually is inside and thus kept from the water and bugs. If it rots fast you have more problems in your train room or house than the few pieces of bark.
@@lindaoffenbach let them set in the sun for a week and all the problems will be gone... That or put it in the oven at about 150 degrees for an hour...
Another informative, excellent video. Thank you, sir! For everybody at home: Just make sure to sterilize any bark/other materials that you grab from the forest before you use them. Add a drops or two of vinegar to your gypsum/plaster of Paris and it will prevent mold/fungus from growing.
You can probably blend the plaster and the rocks even more by using a wirebrush running in the direction of the "sediment layers". The finished product looks great.
Try using a "churn brush" when the stuff is not quite set. Stroke the brush on one direction. That gives a really realistic look. They are used in laying bricks to softly clean up the bricks and your mortar joints without digging into the bricks (which a wire brush could do) or disturbing them before the mortar has set hard. These brushes look almost like they have long splinters or maybe long pine needles for bristles. They're stiffer than a really stiff brush, but much softer than a wire brush. If you search for "lime mortar churn brush" you'll see what I'm talking about.
I’ve used bark for a while cause it replicates shale in my area. You should put in oven though to kill any bugs that might be inside hiding. These are the best looking rocks imo.
Do you think the bugs will survive after the rocks have been covered up in plaster? 😂😂😂. However I follow your advice when I use soil from the garden. I couple of minutes in the microwave and it is ready to be used. 👍 Greetings from The Netherlands
@@jefwisse1957 I don't usually use the bark on the road. I glue pieces of bark into a rock like form ( I have several ) they can be long and slender or square-ish, or any form you might want. I even have 2 that I glued together so I can put them together end to end, to make a very long rock face. After I am happy, I cover the glue up with rubber and gauze to make a mold. Then I can make as many duplicates of this as I need. Then you can throw out the pattern made with the bark. I usually buy a bag of garden bark in the early fall, let it sit spread out on the drive in the sun for a couple of days and that will bake the bugs out If there are any.
@@jefwisse1957 Jeff, I make molds for anything I may want many copies of. Once you get the mold, you can make as many castings as you might need or your club or friends. Just be safe and don't charge for the castings as that might not be right...
The toilet paper for water is one I tell friends about and they all go “No way!” Then they watch and just can’t believe it. A magician as some others have said :-)
Beautiful, simple, cheap. I'm doing my first diorama and at first I felt overwhelmed by the fancy materials needed. I got a Noch mold and the rocks are beautiful but way too heavy. Your ideas are a great help. So thank you.
I've used bark a lot to make many molds that i use. i also have used the bark itself. Now for a tip. To get plaster that will take a lot longer to set up I put a water bottle in the refridgerator (sp) the evening before I want to mix the plaster. Using very cold water will give you about 15 minutes of working time instead of just 5 minutes. i sift the plaster into the water and then mix it with a whisk from my wife's kitchen stuff. I load the sifter with plaster and then tap the edge with something hard like a spoon. I have found that adding 1 tablespoon of baking power into 1 cup of plaster will also lengthen the working time a lot. The next time I do any plastering I am going to try the backing powder with the cold water and see what it does. I might get 20 minutes of working time!!!!!
Very very nice. I was impressed with that white coring to show the highlights and the black wash. It looked like the hills around here before the highlights and black.
Here, in Brazil, we don't have acesss to many materials and we are forced to always use creativity and I ended up getting to know this technique some time ago! But this tip is very important and easy to apply. I like to mix white glue and acrylic paint with plaster to make it stronger. Great video! Thanks a lot!
This is a very old method for modelling rocks. I used this already at the beginning of the 1970-ties. Therefore I am very happy you make it actual again !!! It is an old method but still one of the nicest to imitate rocks. There exists an old book from Märklin (Art. Nr. 0327), written by Bernd Schmid, titled "Märklin Bahn + Landschaft". Im not quite sure but I think this book is from 1973. Here in chapter 21, page 129-136 Schmid describes what he uses and how he does it. Greetings from the Čech Republic 🇨🇿.
Good video! Good method! But as someone wrote. Vermin should be killed first. Then I would like to point out the possibility of making the mountains even more realistic by studying a mountain slope in real life and trying to copy its structure, and then not only its microstructure, but also the tectonic pattern. Different types of mountains have different structures. You should look at the entire area that you are going to build so that the structures are connected. Bark is excellent for sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks. The example is perfect for sedimentary rocks like shale. Crystalline rocks have another more flat surface with cracks. structure may vary. You have to be careful with the transition surfaces. Could there be diabase or another volcanic rock in the transition? The result in the video is a good example of slate stone.
I am going on a Bark search!...(I am in New Jersey, 1 hour south from NYC, so there should be plenty around!)... Although, (ironically), I did just literally get 7 sheets of foam insulation board today for free and I am anxious to try using carving foam for rock outcroppings as well. I usually used plaster, so looking forward to new methods for a large mountain HO railroad. I always enjoy your videos. Well done. Philip Jersey Shore Area
It came out really realistic! Nice job! I want to make a diorama for the first time and I’ll try to let it look like the area where my parents live. But the rocks there are white. It’s charcoal. I would start with white instead of grey base colour, but the black wash would be to strong. Which colour scheme would you recommend?
I came across this technique, or similar, when I watch Bard's Craft to make tabletop gaming terrain. That's kind of what gave me the inspiration to get back into model railroading. Also, when drybrushing, I really wish more people would use big fluffy brushes instead of tiny little brushes.
Get a bunch of make-up brushes. They cost far less (dollarstore??) and work really well! And you get them in every ridiculous size you can immagine. ( I am a female, and those things *never* touch my face, they always end up in the D.I.Y section. Painting faces is such a waste of time, think of all the great looking scapes you could create! Discouvered make-up bruses when I started looking for cheap&usefull things to really paint with ;) )
Have you ever tried using pumice stone for this? My dad used to collect it for free from a local laundromat (they used it for stone washing items). He managed to make some really cool rock formations via that method. I don't think they were better than this bark approach, just different.
I actually discovered that option some three years ago just by watching closely one of my favourite centennial willows in my garden ...and I started using it with my greatest satisfaction. A good idea indeed.
Since this is a natural material sourced from nature, isn't there a chance that it has microbes or other living organisms inside? I know that I'm supposed to bake sand and rocks if I want to use them for miniatures and dioramas, so shouldn't I do something to bark to kill anything living inside?
great idea! just wanted to add that in order to slow down the setting reaction of gypsum you can add beer, white wine or natural glue dissolved in water. watch minute 6:35 of ua-cam.com/video/Ho1O0CZli7o/v-deo.htmlsi=6sfNr1pfq8K7M0Y5
I really like how you explain details most people don't, like the reason behind adding a little alcohol to improve flow. Great video, thanks so much
I'll steal it from my own garden 😁 It looks awesome
Great video, Mark. I discovered this method myself over 40 years ago. I found a few loose chucks of bark in the woods, while out bow-hunting one fall day, and thought it could look like the rock found in my area, when painted and weathered. I took them home, tried it on my N-scale layout, and was quite impressed with the results. And, like you mentioned, the cost could not be beat.
Just be carefull with bark. If it is too fresh, you want to put it in the oven first. Otherwise there are microorganisms or even worms still living in it that will slowly destroy your model.
Microwave is quicker, no?
Excellent video and again good value for saving money . As others have mentioned, need to make sure that the bark is 🐜 🐛 🐞 free and any safe cleaning method, but Don’t put the bark into a microwave, it explodes and also sets fire to the bark internally- like spontaneous combustion. But great stuff. I find leaving the bark outside on a sheet of newspaper, wash over with isopropyl, on a warm day any bugs 🐜 will soon vacate.
Love the techniques for weathering, always learn more every video. Thanks for sharing Martin. Super.
Brilliant. In building up our lay out we are lucky living near a forest. You have reminded us earlier of the notion that many materials for scenery can actually be found in nature, and we’ve never forgotten about that advice. It does work a treat. We have gathered plenty of small rocks, rocky scatter materials and woods. To avoid decay of woods, we do apply a good varnish, and they seem to hold pretty well. Excellent content here. Cherio and ciao.
Beautiful in its simplicity! 👍👍
What a cool idea and process. Thanks for sharing it.
Most of the bedding mulch in my area has been through a grinder, and so its is difficult to find bark pieces large enough for an S gauge display. But, my wife grows orchids, and buys orchid potting bark (orchids don't grow in dirt) and picking through her supply, I found enough large pieces to fulfill my needs. Orchid potting bark is available in bags from most garden centers.
Great idea! Thanks to both Martin and Eric. Never thought that it could be so easy to make that kind of rock and it look so natural.
WOW! I am stunned. Wonderful.
Wow wonderful and realistic, thank for the demonstration, I will treasur it. 😍
Thank for your exelent teachings
Wonderful! I will be doing this! Oh yes! 👍
Simply great and marvelous !
Top notch. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for this very good and chip idea!
WOW this is Good Knowledge THANK YOU!!!
Great idea, I will be trying this.
Thanks
Looks amazing thankyou for the tips video
You are freaking amazing on anything miniature crafty I love it ❤️❤️❤️❤️
I like your tutorials! Thanks so much!
Thanks! You always share for us greats ideas!!!
Gran trabajo, quedo hermoso!! Saludos desde Mar del plata!!
Wow those are the best looking rocks I’ve ever seen. Thanks for sharing
Tom from Toronto
Cool material! I happen to have some trees.
Brilliant!
Eres realmente bueno saludos, desde México.
So funny. I was walking with my wife and saw a piece of this type of bark.
I picked it up. Wife said, "What are you doing?" I said , look at this. It would make a great rock face my my railroad. Than a few weeks later this video comes up.
Nice. No need to use very expensive modeling paint, like Vallejo, for terrrain, though. Cheapo bulk acrylic paint absolutely does the job.
BEAUTIFUL🎉
Amazing job!
Thanks !!! 😊😃👍🏼
Amazing!
That is amazing
There is an old book on model railroading from the 50's which showed a lot of people using bark back then. I believe it was called, the complete book of model railroading by David Sutton.
Genius! 🙂
Fantástic job
Very cool!
Very nice. I will try it to.
Nice
Great info
I will try this.
You are funny, lol 😂
Dude you are freaking outstanding. I learned so much from this video. But it isn't no cost because of the gypsum and paint LMAO j/k but fantastic freaking video. No on to your others :0)
Where are some good places to buy trees, bushes & grass?
Hello Martin. Another astonishing video and great idea. But, as the bark is a organic material, won't it rotten pretty fast? Wouldn't it be convenient first to soak the bark in some kind of diluted varnish to increase the durability of the material before using it in the model lay-out? Many thanks for your tutorial videos and best regards from Brazil.
Yeah, that's is exactly what we do with woods we find in nature. Just cover them with a good varnish.
@@lindaoffenbach Obviously a highly diluted clear/colourless matte varnish to serve as a fixative and prevent the bark from rotting and/or mold forming.
@@lbmsecundario9684 Any matte clear coat for woods will do as long as it has UV protection also. We do thin it down indeed.
Will not rot at all. It usually is inside and thus kept from the water and bugs. If it rots fast you have more problems in your train room or house than the few pieces of bark.
@@lindaoffenbach let them set in the sun for a week and all the problems will be gone... That or put it in the oven at about 150 degrees for an hour...
Steal mulch. Great tip!
Interstate construction 🚧
👌👍
time to hang around some kid's playgrounds
Do you have a materials list? If not what was the glue that you used again,
DJM I use real rocks. 😊
Es de balorar el trabajo k aces ojalá pudiera yo acer como tu pero no tengo espacio ni 💰
I've learned more in two Marklin videos than hours of watching others. Wow.
Indeed. Great video
iv got about 70 hours in now.... toilet paper and mulch here i come
Another informative, excellent video. Thank you, sir!
For everybody at home: Just make sure to sterilize any bark/other materials that you grab from the forest before you use them. Add a drops or two of vinegar to your gypsum/plaster of Paris and it will prevent mold/fungus from growing.
You can probably blend the plaster and the rocks even more by using a wirebrush running in the direction of the "sediment layers".
The finished product looks great.
Drywall strips works well with wire brush
Try using a "churn brush" when the stuff is not quite set. Stroke the brush on one direction. That gives a really realistic look.
They are used in laying bricks to softly clean up the bricks and your mortar joints without digging into the bricks (which a wire brush could do) or disturbing them before the mortar has set hard. These brushes look almost like they have long splinters or maybe long pine needles for bristles. They're stiffer than a really stiff brush, but much softer than a wire brush. If you search for "lime mortar churn brush" you'll see what I'm talking about.
I’ve used bark for a while cause it replicates shale in my area. You should put in oven though to kill any bugs that might be inside hiding. These are the best looking rocks imo.
if you get the bark from the "big box" store, it will be treated already for bugs. i have never had any in the 10 years I have used this method.
Do you think the bugs will survive after the rocks have been covered up in plaster? 😂😂😂. However I follow your advice when I use soil from the garden. I couple of minutes in the microwave and it is ready to be used. 👍 Greetings from The Netherlands
@@jefwisse1957 I don't usually use the bark on the road. I glue pieces of bark into a rock like form ( I have several ) they can be long and slender or square-ish, or any form you might want. I even have 2 that I glued together so I can put them together end to end, to make a very long rock face. After I am happy, I cover the glue up with rubber and gauze to make a mold. Then I can make as many duplicates of this as I need. Then you can throw out the pattern made with the bark. I usually buy a bag of garden bark in the early fall, let it sit spread out on the drive in the sun for a couple of days and that will bake the bugs out If there are any.
@@davidcurtis5398 Making a mold is a great idea.
@@jefwisse1957 Jeff, I make molds for anything I may want many copies of. Once you get the mold, you can make as many castings as you might need or your club or friends. Just be safe and don't charge for the castings as that might not be right...
Between the TP for water and the bark for rock faces, you have introduced us to some innovative ideas.
The toilet paper for water is one I tell friends about and they all go “No way!” Then they watch and just can’t believe it. A magician as some others have said :-)
"No cost rock wall"... Proceeds to use half a dozen things that are most certainly not free.
Really good at explaining that you my 12 year old starting his layout journey in two weeks
My 11 y.o.starting with a flat, plain sheet of plywood this week
Beautiful, simple, cheap. I'm doing my first diorama and at first I felt overwhelmed by the fancy materials needed. I got a Noch mold and the rocks are beautiful but way too heavy. Your ideas are a great help. So thank you.
AWESOME ! greetings from Poland
Fabulous work. Love your videos. Thank you so much. Why do you add a little alcohol to the water mix? I'm intrigued
Thank you! The alcohol reduces water surface tension so the water penetrates the surface of the bark and not only form drops and run off.
@@marklinofsweden Interesting, thank you
You sir are a true artist!..Those look so incredibly real. Besides running trains, half the fun is the creation of the world it will run within.
I've used bark a lot to make many molds that i use. i also have used the bark itself. Now for a tip. To get plaster that will take a lot longer to set up I put a water bottle in the refridgerator (sp) the evening before I want to mix the plaster. Using very cold water will give you about 15 minutes of working time instead of just 5 minutes. i sift the plaster into the water and then mix it with a whisk from my wife's kitchen stuff. I load the sifter with plaster and then tap the edge with something hard like a spoon. I have found that adding 1 tablespoon of baking power into 1 cup of plaster will also lengthen the working time a lot. The next time I do any plastering I am going to try the backing powder with the cold water and see what it does. I might get 20 minutes of working time!!!!!
Very very nice. I was impressed with that white coring to show the highlights and the black wash. It looked like the hills around here before the highlights and black.
Here, in Brazil, we don't have acesss to many materials and we are forced to always use creativity and I ended up getting to know this technique some time ago! But this tip is very important and easy to apply. I like to mix white glue and acrylic paint with plaster to make it stronger. Great video! Thanks a lot!
Thank you for this good idea. The rocks look really good, made from the bark. Greetings from MoBa Grandpa
Hey that's a nice technigue. The bark gives just the right appearance for slate. Been looking for exactly that for my layout 👍 thx for the video 🙂
This is a very old method for modelling rocks. I used this already at the beginning of the 1970-ties. Therefore I am very happy you make it actual again !!! It is an old method but still one of the nicest to imitate rocks.
There exists an old book from Märklin (Art. Nr. 0327), written by Bernd Schmid, titled "Märklin Bahn + Landschaft". Im not quite sure but I think this book is from 1973. Here in chapter 21, page 129-136 Schmid describes what he uses and how he does it.
Greetings from the Čech Republic 🇨🇿.
Good video! Good method! But as someone wrote. Vermin should be killed first. Then I would like to point out the possibility of making the mountains even more realistic by studying a mountain slope in real life and trying to copy its structure, and then not only its microstructure, but also the tectonic pattern. Different types of mountains have different structures. You should look at the entire area that you are going to build so that the structures are connected.
Bark is excellent for sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks. The example is perfect for sedimentary rocks like shale. Crystalline rocks have another more flat surface with cracks. structure may vary. You have to be careful with the transition surfaces. Could there be diabase or another volcanic rock in the transition? The result in the video is a good example of slate stone.
This was a stumble-upon for me. What an engaging host. I will be back.
I am going on a Bark search!...(I am in New Jersey, 1 hour south from NYC, so there should be plenty around!)...
Although, (ironically), I did just literally get 7 sheets of foam insulation board today for free and I am anxious to try using carving foam for rock outcroppings as well. I usually used plaster, so looking forward to new methods for a large mountain HO railroad.
I always enjoy your videos. Well done.
Philip
Jersey Shore Area
Thank you. My son makes dioramas using rocks. This will help him make his pieces much lighter.
Just found your channel, and I’m so glad. Thanks for the tutorial and inspiration!
It came out really realistic! Nice job! I want to make a diorama for the first time and I’ll try to let it look like the area where my parents live. But the rocks there are white. It’s charcoal. I would start with white instead of grey base colour, but the black wash would be to strong. Which colour scheme would you recommend?
What a cool technique. I have pine trees and the bark comes off the trees quickly.
Yeah we have pine trees too about 525 acres of them!!!
Pine bark is particularly good. I soak mine in sterilising fluid to kill off any bugs or bacteria.
Great idea. Thanks for sharing. Great layout! Greetings from Bulgaria.
I came across this technique, or similar, when I watch Bard's Craft to make tabletop gaming terrain. That's kind of what gave me the inspiration to get back into model railroading.
Also, when drybrushing, I really wish more people would use big fluffy brushes instead of tiny little brushes.
Get a bunch of make-up brushes. They cost far less (dollarstore??) and work really well! And you get them in every ridiculous size you can immagine.
( I am a female, and those things *never* touch my face, they always end up in the D.I.Y section. Painting faces is such a waste of time, think of all the great looking scapes you could create! Discouvered make-up bruses when I started looking for cheap&usefull things to really paint with ;) )
Have you ever tried using pumice stone for this? My dad used to collect it for free from a local laundromat (they used it for stone washing items). He managed to make some really cool rock formations via that method. I don't think they were better than this bark approach, just different.
Actually Elmer's is not a real PVA. I learned this from a bookbinding teacher.
Awesome idea! Thank you Martin!
*easily
I actually discovered that option some three years ago just by watching closely one of my favourite centennial willows in my garden ...and I started using it with my greatest satisfaction. A good idea indeed.
Genius! I never thought of that! My neighbors have bark in their garden. I'm going to the neighbors!
Outstanding information on portions mixing paints and Elmer glue🎉❤
Since this is a natural material sourced from nature, isn't there a chance that it has microbes or other living organisms inside? I know that I'm supposed to bake sand and rocks if I want to use them for miniatures and dioramas, so shouldn't I do something to bark to kill anything living inside?
great idea and it looks awesome
Awesome tip! What is the name of this material?
”decorative bark” is the name of the material
@@marklinofsweden TKS
Awesome idea!
Thanks!
this really looks real. excellent rock work.
Potting soil for orchids is just bark....if there is no where putside to get any.
great idea! just wanted to add that in order to slow down the setting reaction of gypsum you can add beer, white wine or natural glue dissolved in water.
watch minute 6:35 of ua-cam.com/video/Ho1O0CZli7o/v-deo.htmlsi=6sfNr1pfq8K7M0Y5
Looks great. As a wargamer, my pro tip is to use a giant makeup brush for your dry brushing. Much quicker and more uniform result.
It's called mulch!! You better cook it in the oven to kill any bug / eggs inside.
Excellent! Thankyou from Dorset, U.K.
Great idea! Thank you for sharing this :)
Great job. When you are painting,are you using a wash? Thanks
This is a great way to make rocks, I really want to build a new railway