by wefalck » Sun Dec 06, 2020 5:09 am
Personally, I am not so fond of these overdramatic representations, as the fine structure of the spray is difficult to represent.
However ... if you support the outside of the wave and represent just at it hits the water around, this should solve the problem.
Acrylics need time to cross-link and the water trapped between the cross-linked molecules needs time to diffuse out and evaporate. That is why acrylic gels and paints stay somewhat rubbery for quite some time. The thicker the layer, the longer it takes. So you need some patience.
Woodland scenics offer some great stuff, but some of the materials are just ordinary industrial products adapted and confectioned for modellers. If you go to a shop with art materials, you can get acrylic gels of different viscosity at a much lower litre-price I would suspect.
There are many visible- or UV-light hardening acrylics resins on the market. These are not gels like the above, but monomers that are configured with different viscosities and different light sensibilities. Upon exposure to light, they will polymerise, forming a true acrylic plastic. They are sold as cements (Bondic being one of them, the Acrifix series by R�hm, now Evonik, the original manufacturers of Plexiglas, another one) or casting resins. After a day or two of curing, they attain a hardness as that of acrylic glass. However, per litre they are much more expensive than acrylic gels - but the volume change upon curing is minimal.
You can build up shapes from those acrylic resins quite quickly, some of them curing within a few minutes. One could make such wave 'tunnels' in situ over a former covered with aluminium foil that can be pulled out afterwards.
Personally, I am not so fond of these overdramatic representations, as the fine structure of the spray is difficult to represent.
However ... if you support the outside of the wave and represent just at it hits the water around, this should solve the problem.
Acrylics need time to cross-link and the water trapped between the cross-linked molecules needs time to diffuse out and evaporate. That is why acrylic gels and paints stay somewhat rubbery for quite some time. The thicker the layer, the longer it takes. So you need some patience.
Woodland scenics offer some great stuff, but some of the materials are just ordinary industrial products adapted and confectioned for modellers. If you go to a shop with art materials, you can get acrylic gels of different viscosity at a much lower litre-price I would suspect.
There are many visible- or UV-light hardening acrylics resins on the market. These are not gels like the above, but monomers that are configured with different viscosities and different light sensibilities. Upon exposure to light, they will polymerise, forming a true acrylic plastic. They are sold as cements (Bondic being one of them, the Acrifix series by R�hm, now Evonik, the original manufacturers of Plexiglas, another one) or casting resins. After a day or two of curing, they attain a hardness as that of acrylic glass. However, per litre they are much more expensive than acrylic gels - but the volume change upon curing is minimal.
You can build up shapes from those acrylic resins quite quickly, some of them curing within a few minutes. One could make such wave 'tunnels' in situ over a former covered with aluminium foil that can be pulled out afterwards.