Pavement

The Pavement Project.

With the houses and docks well on the way it is time to actually get decent pavement to walk on. The idea is to make a small pavement section of which I can make a form, cast it and put it together to make a larger pavement sheet.

First step was to decide what kind of pavement I would like for my town. In the end I decided to carve a straight forward square tile sheet and a brick template with a fishbone structure. Besides the pavement itself I also carved a gutter so I am able to actually get a difference in height when it comes to roads and walkways.

After I made enough resin casts of the fishbone template I assembled a rectangular plate of 20x 15 cm. Since the individual parts did not connect perfectly I had to fill in the cracks using wood glue. In the end I had a resin template that looked awful! As you can see in the picture below the resin template clearly shows all the individual pieces so this project has been discarded.

Since I desperately needed my pavement I decided to actually cut up the desired template fully by hand. I ended up with a template of 24 x 48 cm (9.45 x 18.9 inch) which is the size that equals three straight dock elements and a curve/harbor door element. Also large enough to do lots of fun things with in future city expansions.

The plaster cast was made on a specific piece of foam that has a nice and dense structure on it that would suit the bricks structure well. After the cast I draw thin guiding lines that are 5 mm apart. The bricks will be 5x2.5 mm in size.

In the end I cut over 10.000 tiny bricks by hand. I worked with a schedule that forced me to start the day with cutting at least a specific area of the template. In the end it took me 5 days (cutting of and on) to finish this monster task.

After making the form I was able to cast some sheets and start working on the actual pavement project. I already decided during the cutting stage that I would make the pavement in a horizontal way as where the road will be laid in a diagonal way.
Immediately after casting the first sheets up I saw the benefit of working with such a big surface. No cracks and working with larger elements do speed things up. Next picture shows the first layout of the future pavement

The area behind the docks was cut out of a foam piece first. The thickness of this foam plate was about 3 mm less than the actual height of the docks themselves. Perfect for working with my pavement parts. I use a dense and quite strong type of foam so now worries when it comes to breaking or falling apart. I first placed the gutter parts of which I also carved up a bend so I can make decent corners.

The street part is centered in the middle. This is where the gate house will be placed upon. The left and right section are 3mm higher than street level. In all the pavement has to be raised 2 to 3 mm so it fits nicely with the top part of the gutter parts. I used a thin layer of foam to get the right height for the pavement. Since it has to be placed within the gutter edged area it has to fit perfectly. To get this done I made the thin piece of foam fit perfectly within the gutter edged area. I now can draw the precise outline of this area on to the pavement sheet and cut it out.

With the two pavement areas being glued in I used wood glue to fill any possible cracks that are there so it all become a nice closed area.

Next I have to paint the street, gutter and pavement. Before I decided how to, I did some test runs on small pavement parts and let the family decide along with me. I ended up with a yellowish pavement color and a teracotta-ish street color. The gutter is brushed grey.

After painting the whole thing I varnished the whole area with acrylic glossy varnish and did a second layer with acrylic matt varnish. The next picture shows a good birds eye view of the pavement colors and structure.

To add more detail I decided to add some static grass. Using a bit of wood glue and pushing little heaps of static grass on it. The final result looks fine and when looking at the full display you might not even notice it at once but that’s exactly the detail I want.

About the pavement project I can add that I will extend the gutter parts with a larger bend so I can make decent streets turns. I also think about other pavement/street structures. For now I just think about them because I am not thrilled to carve up another big chunk of plaster like I just did.

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