Does anyone know how to prevent or fix cracked air-dry clay

Juststu82

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Aug 7, 2012
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I'm having a bash at making terrain for the first time. I have used air-dry clay on the board and whilst drying it has cracked and released from the board in some spots. I plan to glue it back onto the board where it has come loose and was going to try one tip of adding more wet clay to fill the gaps and add another thin coating. Does anyone have any other possible ideas? Is it a terrible medium to use or can it be fixed? It will only provide structure which will then be coated so aesthetically it makes no difference.
 
The way I do it is paint the surface with wood glue put my clay on to that then get a mix of wood glue and water and brush over it and wet it once you are finished,

Hope this helps
 
spud said:
The way I do it is paint the surface with wood glue put my clay on to that then get a mix of wood glue and water and brush over it and wet it once you are finished,

Hope this helps

Thanks, I'll try this out.

Scott Girvan said:
What type of clay specifically are you using?

I found some cheap air dry at a two dollar shop.
 
I'm with Spud, a liberal amount of white glue should straighten things out. In the future, you might consider using something underneath the clay to build up the height before applying groundwork. Essentialy, it's like applying groundwork "frosting" over a substrate "cake". That way you're using less volume of groundwork and it will tend to shrink and warp less. My favourite method is to use a chunk of foam inslulation and apply drywall filler over that. The drywall filler doesn't shrink much and it can be tinted with paint or pigment before you apply it.

Check out this like to some pictures of a small diorama I made recently...
http://www.scalemodeladdict.com/index.php/topic,1816.0.html
 
Splashcoat said:
I'm with Spud, a liberal amount of white glue should straighten things out. In the future, you might consider using something underneath the clay to build up the height before applying groundwork. Essentialy, it's like applying groundwork "frosting" over a substrate "cake". That way you're using less volume of groundwork and it will tend to shrink and warp less. My favourite method is to use a chunk of foam inslulation and apply drywall filler over that. The drywall filler doesn't shrink much and it can be tinted with paint or pigment before you apply it.

Check out this like to some pictures of a small diorama I made recently...
http://www.scalemodeladdict.com/index.php/topic,1816.0.html

I saw this. Very good. This where I would like to be when I learn how.

I ended up coating it with white glue then when that dried I added a mix of white glue, texture paint and acrylic paint. Just waiting for that to dry.
 
Applying the clay in thin layers will help. Also, letting your clay air dry a bit before using it will reduce shrinkage.

If you are very patient, (most of us model builders are not :D) you can control the drying with a layer of damp paper towel and let it dry from the inside out. I have done very large sculpture with earth clays and used wet towels to control the drying over a week or so.
 
Hayden said:
If you are very patient, (most of us model builders are not :D) you can control the drying with a layer of damp paper towel and let it dry from the inside out. I have done very large sculpture with earth clays and used wet towels to control the drying over a week or so.

thanks, I'm keen to learn how to use this correctly as it so super cheap at my local two dollar shop, I also found their texture paint is super cheap too but it is more of a coating than for building.
 

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