New Scenic Building Material

Here we have Dusty standing between 2 pieces of Foam Rubber, the one on the right is a tube piece with a hollow center, the piece on the left is from a similar tube cut in half. The thickness of the foam rubber is only 1/4 inch. In the next picture I place a pair of Pliers on top slowly to get the pic and not endanger the fearless Dusty. Notice that the full tube collapsed while the half circle on the left is standing with a minor dent.!! Originally I was thinking of making a small bridge and thought that the half circle would provide me with the shape I needed to form the arch, then apply brick or rock to the other edge and in general build up from there. But. The foam rubber buckled easily.... Hmmm... Foam rubber, diluted PVA.....I saturated the foam rubber with diluted PVA and stood on end on a piece of wax paper so it would not glue itself to something. And waited. A full day, it was still a bit soft, moved it to direct sunlight on a windowsill, wax paper and all. Next day nice and firm! Hey, you could cut it with a knife, nice and straight! And the surface is great for making a stucco type coverage!! And its strong to! Last photo shows it supporting the pair of pliers by itself.

So, by using really thin pieces of foam rubber and saturating it with Diluted PVA... DPVA !! tired of typing Diluted, leaving it on wax paper to dry, if it will not lie flat, then another piece of wax paper on top and a Light weight on top of it that is not as large as the piece of foam rubber so the edges are open, park it in the sunlight and leave it. Each day you can check to see if it will remain flat if you take the weight off. If not, reduce the size of the weight and peel back more of the wax paper.

So, thinking about that, a Large Cone, wrapped in thin foam, shaped and tacked in place with a few pins, then soaked DPVA, wrap in wax paper to make the foam conform to the cone shape and the wax paper can be taped down to hold it, no weight required. Set in the sun for a few days, then remove a shaped foam Cone that you can cut easily, apply any texture or paint to. Will be giving this idea a definite go.

And there you have it.