water madness

[Pritchard]

ok, so i guess i'm jumping on the dugout band wagon a little late, but who cares. I'm going to be making a sewer for my rats. Long, narrow, with a gutter along the back wall for water to run down. Also, in the DEAD section i'm just going to have an open pool of water where they are supposed to be thrown the dead rat bodies. Lastly, i'm going to have gutters running from the tops of the wall to carrey water and blood from the field. so my question is this, what is the best thing to use for water? How do i make it look like the water is running down the sewer gutter and into the pool? how do i make the dead rat in the pool look, well, believable? Finally, how can i, if at all possible, make water look like it is pouring down from the gutters if i have the gutters extend out from the walls? i was thinking of gluing a string to the end of the gutter and running whatever i end up using for he water down the string, maybe use red string so it will mimic blood a little. i really have no idea how to go about this. i've doen really bad water effects using the clear elmers glue stuff, but i dont know if i need to use osmehting a little more, i dont know, "mature".

[sean newboy]

Go to a train hobby store, they have the stuff your looking for, i forget what its called, but basically its an epoxy.

[sineater40k]

Woodland Scenics "Water Effects" is what your thinking of

It's good stuff for making waterfalls and the like, however for pools i use Smooth-ons Lite epoxy. Its a 2 part mix (1:1) and works great.

[boondog]

a cheap alternative to railroad water is just plain old wood glue. while it hardens, it can be put into shape with a toothpick. When dry, paint it in blue (or green, or whatever) and afterwards paint it with several coats of gloss varnish.

[Pritchard]

hmm...

[Chairface]

Believe it or not, the wood glue works just fine. Trust him

[Indigo]

you can also dye the glue so it has a colour tinge running through it when it dries.

for a regular river, paint the bottom brown, paint the sand/gravel etc. then do one layer of green dyed PVA. Once totally dry do another with blue paint in over the top then add waves using cocktail sticks.

you get the idea for changing it for a sewer make floating turds etc. for extra authenticity

[Pritchard]

hmm, i like these ideas. my sewer heads into the kiln this week, kind of too large of a scale, but i think it will still be good enough. i'll post some pictures if i ever finish

[Chairface]

I forgot to say so in my last post, but great idea!