Steel cable transmission

[Peter_T1958]

Thanks for your words!
Ok, I needed much more time as I had planned to select, as I hope, the right stuff for pouring the river. Finally I decided to try "Heki aqua Nr. 3550" (Thank you for the hint, Marcel!) which I poured in several layers. I'm quite happy overall and the stuff is very easy to handle indeed. There were only two or three air bubbles I had overlooked. But they were no problem, as they could be opened up by drilling and easy filled by the next layer. 



As I had described bevor, the whole arrangement is dividided in an underwater and a surface zone. So the unbeloved creeping up the bank and walls can be prevented. As a consequence I had to poure in all parts up to the waterline, i.E. the walls, the piling and the water gauge.



Notice also the shadowing sprayed directly on the riverbed.



So far so good, BUT ...
...now I have to add some wave structure. There are some good tutorials around, but all are showing the same problem: The waves look always too prominent and uniform.
Stop! One artist, I don't know his name, demonstrates the way it should look! That looks  wonderful!



So back to the workbench!

Cheers, Peter

[finescalerr]

Jean Bernard Andre achieved pretty subtle results and described his method in the 2013 Modelers' Annual. If you don't have it, send me a private e-mail and I'll send you his article. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Looks great so far!

[EZnKY]

Looks really great!

[Hydrostat]

Peter,

what the others said. This is going to be something. What came to my mind: To avoid the creeping effect is the best base for realistic water. You already attached some greenish color to the upper base part's lower edge. Not sure if some dark tones and a slight glance from dumpness may add to unify it with the lower water part.

Volker

[Peter_T1958]

Not sure if some dark tones and a slight glance from dumpness may add to unify it with the lower water part.

I am sure, you all know the phenomenon I am confronted with: When you have fnished some part of a project you feel great satisfaction... until that moment, when you add some other parts or, in this particular case, you bring two parts together. Then you have to realise, that they don't match as planned ahead. Volker, I have to give you right, even even if with gritted teeth 

No, seriously now, thank you for your input. I have to unify some other parts too, but I will do that, when all comes together finally. It is planned to hide the seam with a narrow band of algae and dumpness.

BTW. Does anybody know the artist in the last picture of my thread?   

[Bill Gill]

Peter, Here is a link to the posting of the water that you like. It was posted on the Model Railroader Forum in October 2014.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/238387.aspx?sortorder=desc
I am not a member of that forum, but Selector/Crandell is still a very active member of there. I have a person I can contact to see if he can give me an address for Crandell.

Here is the little bit of information about him available next to that post:
Selector  (screen name)
Crandell (first? name)
Member since
February, 2005
From: Vancouver Island, BC
20,582 posts

This is the very brief description of how he created that river that was included with the photo:

" I paint the plywood river bed and then pour banks of plaster or ground goop.  When I have dammed the open sides of the vessel that is to be a portion of river or lake, usually just with good quality painters' tape, I mix and pour over the painted plywood a couple of thin pours of finish quality epoxy.  Over the epoxy I smear and stipple a layer of either gloss medium or gel gloss medium."

[Peter_T1958]

Although I received great help from Crandell (the artist, I mentioned further up here) I didn't find the trick to do some proper water surface up to this day. So I will do some further trials on scrap surfaces.
Meanwhile I did what I love to do: scratch building and painting. Finally I managed to finish all gear wheels - huh! Here the current status on my kitchen table.



A prominent detail of the construction: The lower most gearwheels were protected (from flooding?) by some sort of fenders.

They seem to be of zinc coated sheet metal (may be it's more artistic license then reality), so I tried to represent that kind of surface by using a new technique copied from figure modelers: the wet-in-wet acrylic method. May be you are interested in a tutorial? Here is the link (in German but the pictures speak for themselves)
http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.ch/2008/02/tutorial-nasspalette.html

[finescalerr]

Adequately spectacular. -- Russ

[1-32]

good water Peter cheers

[Ray Dunakin]

Fantastic! And you've successfully captured the look of old, galvanized metal.

[Hydrostat]

Peter,

maybe I missed something. The tutorial is about using a wet color palette as a tool, but how did you finally achieve the look of that zinc coated metal? Which colors did you use?

The gears and fenders look great!

Volker

[Peter_T1958]

Thank you for your feedbacks!

@Volker
I forgot that! May be it's because I am not a great fan of tutorials, although I read a lot of them all the time. My problem is, that I never archieve the results shown in all those tutorials. For me it's much more important to understand the techniques. That's why I wanted to share that tutorial.

In this specific case I compared pictures of old, galvanized metal. After that I put them away and tryed to catch that cloudy, blotchy white hue over the dark metallic ground color.
As basecolor I used Citadel game Color, Boltgun Metal (or whatever else is close at hand; any dark metal color would do it). Then I applied very thin cloudy coats of creamy white and traces of dark and light rust. The forementioned technique allowes you to control the colors carefully. That's all!

BTW. One fender took about two houres of very relaxing painting!

[finescalerr]

For me, two hours of painting is anything but relaxing! In fact, construction isn't relaxing, either. I'm always afraid I will ruin something I spent hours creating.

But when I finally finish a model, it is relaxing and enjoyable to look at it.

Russ

[Bill Gill]

Peter, I sent you a private message with another technique for making slightly rippled water.