"Soft Rock" Cliffs and Mountains

Making mountains and cliffs out of foam rubber using the ‘Soft Rock’ method

1. Get some old sponge rubber or rubber foam (I used and old mattress).

2. Shape foam to make rock faces by tearing out big pieces length ways and plucking out smaller pieces to give the texture you want (the removed pieces can be used for making foam foliage).

3. Buy cheap acrylic house paint the colour you want your rocks to be, look for mis-tints going cheap at the local paint store

4. Pour some of the paint onto a flat tray and push the foam rock face into it to wet the foam.

5. Get some fine sand either brickies or fine sandpit sand will do and spread it out on another flat tray and press the wet foam paint side down into it so it sticks to the foam.

6. Shake /scrape of any excess paint soaked sand into a container for use later and allow it to dry; it will dry to a hard crust.

The saved excess sand can be used as a gap filler to fill in any joints and to blend around the base of the rocks where the scenery glues to the baseboard.

Mix the excess paint soaked sand in a sealable container (I used an old ice cream tub) with some acrylic gap filler ( mine comes from from a $2 shop) and PVA glue, both diluted with water, to form a paste and keep it moist.

If it dries out and goes hard it will be no good but if still mouldable then adding water will improve its work ability.

Below are some pictures of my old HO layout showing cliffs that I made using this method