Following an enquiry for the top section of a dry stone wall I was all of a quarry, sorry, quandary. The obvious method is to build a small section with real stone and mould from that. I usually use latex to mould with as it is very economical. The thing is, latex takes a while to dry and several layers must be built up to get the required thickness. The Cassini's plaster I use to make the finished article also takes up to a week to cure fully. With a vacation looming I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Pun number two.
I decided to get the mould prepared by a mould maker. Transporting a dry stone wall in real stone posed a bit of a problem. You can't easily lift a complete dry stone wall, not even the top section. I could have built the wall on a pallet but had this been handled roughly, my short section of wall may have crumbled.
I decided, therefore, to make a section of wall from scratch. Using a box section as a base I used plaster to make the basic shape of the dry stone wall and then added cracks, notches and general rocky features by hand. Here is the result:
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| Artificial dry stone wall |
I haven't painted it as yet as it's still wet but I have converted the image above to greyscale, added some colour, added more of the lower wall and dropped the wall in to a farmer's field. Digitally as opposed to literally, that is! Aye, that'll do.
