1/48th scale coral?

For the sunken corsair dio I'm working on I used lava rock. I used my dremel saw blade to cut the rocks in half, so they could be glued flat to the base. then I washed them in SAC Bomber Green, if you've ever been diving, or seen pics most coral, esp dead coral has a greenish or faded red color. thats mostly due to the color de-saturation caused by the water. The shallower the water, the more color.

As for fish and scuba divers and stuff, I haven't been able to find any kits in either 1/48 or 1/72. But you could always scratchbuild them, which is what I'm planning to do.

Probs way too much info, but hope it helps,

Lava rocks are a good idea. Pumice would work well, too. Heck, the natural sponges you can buy in the painting section at Hobby Lobby would work great, if you could figure out a way to "crisp" them up a bit.

What kind of fish are you going for? For something larger like a shark, manta ray or a sea lion or something, you could probably use one of those animal miniatures. If you're talking clown fish though...umm...no idea.

I'm thinking I will have to scratchbuild the fish with sheet styrene and maybe "beef" them up a bit with putty. As for the coral I think I may just use small pieces of real coral and paint them up because I am not sure where I would get lava rock from, and I dont have any Hobby Lobbies near my house.

You should be able to get lava rock and pumice at most garden stores. Or Lowes/Home Depot. Or pet stores since it's popular stuff for various critter environments.

Do you think sculpey clay textured would work fine? Also I have another question. Would the canvas on the wing flaps of a P-51 e gone after being underwater for a few years? If so do you know where I could get a good diagram of a P-51 wing?

Thanks,

101st

I think Sculpey would work, sure - but it'd have to be built up around something if you were going to make thin branch-like shapes. Not so much for basic mounds, although cracking might be an issue. For coral rubble, don't forget to check railroad ballast in the "coarse" grades at the hobby shop or on line, it comes in a variety of shades and you could sprinkle it around on the "sea floor" to give things more texture and visual interest.

And yeah, canvas underwater would degrade fairly rapidly, I would think, even though it was doped and painted. The wing flaps on the Mustang are metal. The fabric-covered control surfaces are the rudder (minus the fiber trim tab); and the elevators (minus the plywood trim tabs). The ailerons at the ends of the wings are metal with fiber trim tabs, and the flaps are metal. Aircraft Anatomy of WW II has a good line drawing of the P-51 wing and tail structure - shoot me a PM with your e-mail address and I will scan it for you.

For my lava rock I just asked a neighbor who had it in their garden if he could spare a few, that was right in my price range Hah!

Sculpey could work, you'll probably need lots of coral pics as reference to get the texture right though.

As for the canvas, you're right in thinking the canvas would be one of the first things to go. World War II Wrecks is a vid I found on youtube, At about the 1:45 mark you can see a Dauntless, and most of its canvas tail is long gone.

For the wings, if you don't want to strip them completely remember that you could cheat a little and overgrow them with very new coral and plant life, or cover them partially in sand, just like you can see in a lot of those pics. 

I just found a huge bag of lava rock in my garage! I think it will work perfectly!

Hey, thats awesome! Let me know how it turns out!

Generaldodonna - I will, Will

Here's a couple of progress pics on my own dio if you're interested

Y'all covered the coral, but for the fish, I'd make three or four "masters" and just cast the rest of them, either in resin (if you know what you're doing", or in plaster (if you wanna go cheaper but almost as good)

As for the Mustang's control surfaces, by the middle of the D/K production-blocks, they were coming from the factory with 100% metal-skins, and the earlier variants (B/Cs and early Ds) were having them replaced at depot-level...

One of the fun things on the www are that there's a lot of dive picture sites. Usually when I do a search for a particular a/c I come across at least one if it's IJN or USN.

http://www.google.com/search?q=corsair+wreck&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1024&bih=568

Thanks for the info guys.

Hans the model I am doing has the fabric covered control surfaces b/c they have a fabric texture on them. As for the fish, I am not sure if i will put them in the dio b/c they will be so small.

Your call, 101.. Just giving out the info.. Although, even the fabric didn't "look" like fabric, because of the dope... The early elevators, rudder,  and ailerons had a red-oxide dope applied to them, then a clear dope (that contained aluminum powder) applied yet over that... 

I included the fishies simply because you'd mentioned them.. Even if they're small, a few larger species, here & there, wouldn't hurt a bit, and would supply a bit more visual interest, since they'd add to the overall underwater "feel" of the dio...

So are you saying that all of the dope applied would not have caused the canvas to decay or something like that?