I’ve come to realize in the model railroad hobby that there are pros and cons to every technique we use for constructing a layout and that sometimes…one might be better than the other.
On my last layout, I used casting plaster to make the roads and painted the top using a blend of the Woodland Scenics Asphalt Top Coat and some gray acrylic paint. This worked great!
On my current build, I decided to blend the paint into some Woodland Scenics Smooth-it with the hope that the color would be blended throughout allowing me to create pot holes and other road details into the road itself.
However…I apparently made the Smooth-it mixture too thin and some areas settled lower than others resulting in a weird blend of different shades of gray and bumpy vs. smooth road. I tried to create the exact color I created last weekend so that I could make some more Smooth-it and fill in the areas that settled but after applying it, the colors didn’t match at all.
So…I decided to apply another layer of Smooth-it over the first coat across the entire road using the lighter blend. It has almost dried and after it does completely, I will create another blend of paint representing aged asphalt and I’ll paint in over the top. Even with the set back, I should still be able to create potholes and other details as planned. Here’s what the road currently looks like:
Bottom line is that while it is nice to blend the paint into the plaster mix, if something happens during the curing process, I’ll make sure to either have extra paint ready to go, or just utilize the simple technique of applying the paint afterwards. Either way, I’ve got a road now