More fun with foam.

I knocked up this little 7mm scale chapel/village hall using the remainder of the scrap foamboard. 

The stonework was scribed using an ordinary pencil but I've since found out that a black roller ball type pen works very well.  

The rounded edges to the windows were achieved by careful smoothing with the back end of my scalpel and a fingernail. The rounded window tops were 'moulded' with the rounded end of a Sharpie.

I've given it a couple of light coats of acrylic matt black car spray as a base for whatever method I decide to use for the painting.

If you think it looks familiar, that's because I used the 00 scale Dapol village church as a template and scaled it up to 7mm scale.

More to come. see here

Steamy Windows

Making window frames

I find windows difficult to make accurately, probably a result of advancing years and failing eyesight. I'm not about to go spending money on fancy etched brass things and resin casting seems to have passed me by, so scratch building is the only way.

Here is the method I use. The photographs are fairly self explanatory.
It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway)  that you should mark out your proposed window frame accurately on graph paper or similar, you could use a plan, if you have one, or even a photograph.
If you have a laser printer, you can design your window frames in the graphics package of your choice - I use and recommend  Xara Designer - and print them out. You could kill two birds with one stone by printing them out onto clear OHP film.

The glazing material usually comes from dis-guarded  packaging, the example here is an offcut of camera screen protector, but obviously  it can be anything you can find.

Many of my earlier buildings had windows made using thin strips of card/banner tape laminate for the frames and glazing bars, however styrene strip is far easier to handle and get accurate joints.

I make my own self adhesive microstrip simply with banner tape and 0.010" styrene sheet. Stick the tape to one side and slice it into strips with a straight edge and a scalpel. Cut slowly and gently to avoid the strip curling up or bending.

I lay down the outer frame first, followed by the either the horizontal or vertical glazing bars depending on the type of window - you can cover the joints with the 'moulding' you add later so you need to think about the construction of a real window at this point. Some windows, sash windows for example,  have to be built in several layers

The tool I use for cutting the ends of the microstrip is shown in the first photograph. A chisel blade, it will chop straight through several layers of thin card or styrene in one firm vertical press. If you are going to buy one, get a decent trusted make, I think that one was made by Exacto -

I stick the remaining glazing bars on as a whole length, then clip out the bits where they cross with my trusty chisel tool. as you can probably see, the hard bit is getting the glazing bars nice and straight.

Getting the 45° mitres in the corners is a bit of a cheat, overlap the two strips and cut through both at once, then remove the waste bits, that way the angle doesn't have to be perfect.

A few tips.
If  I'm not going to detail the interior of the building, or I  just don't want the windows to be too transparent, I rub the back with a bit of fine wet n dry or a track rubber. Rubbing  in one direction only and at an angle leaves the 'glass' shiny but less see though.

If you chose a glazing material which isn't affected by solvent, you can wash over the frame with MekPac or whatever is your styrene solvent of choice, this softens the edges of the microstrip and helps to hide the joints. It doesn't seem to affect the adhesive used on banner tape.

Once in situ in the building, I usually flood the whole window with 50% PVA/water mix. This fills any gaps betwixt the building wall and window frame, amalgamates the whole thing together and softens it down nicely. a spot of washing up liquid in the mixture helps it to flow.

You can make a quite good attempt at leaded windows by printing the lead parts or cames as they are called onto OHP film.

The Depron Hut

Well, 'It ain't Pendon' but it'll do...

I decided that I might as well finish off the little stone building which I made as a test piece when I was experimenting with depron foam. I added a roof of card, tiled using my usual method of scored strips of black card fixed down with banner tape. The barge boards and door are card and the windows are made from styrene strip. I'll explain my own method of making windows using self adhesive microstrip in a later blog.

I never intended for it to be a finished building, it's probably the quickest construction I've ever done. I'm reasonably happy with it and will find it a suitable spot on the club layout, tucked away in some foliage it'll pass as a workshop or something.

Fingers!

Tool Tips

Safety ruler revisited

Back in May I had a grumble about safety cutting rulers being less than satisfactory. I have medical as well as aesthetic reasons for wishing to retain my fingertips, so I finally got around to doing something about that.

Above is a photo depicting a Helix 'Non-Slip' safety ruler, a great stick for measuring and marking out, with nice clear and accurate markings, but useless (IMHO) for cutting anything with a craft knife. The blade drags on the soft aluminium edge, removing a sliver of material and eventually ruining the ruler, and the 'non-slip' rubber inserts make accurate cuts difficult as the edge of the ruler doesn't press down on the material being sliced.

So, I bought a cheap steel ruler and using my trusty banner tape, fixed it to the underside of the aluminium rule - result! Nice and straight, nice and heavy and hopefully safe fingertips.

Dabbling with Depron

Experiments with Depron foam

I had read a few entries on blogs about using foamboard for modelling, and when at the club, I came across a chunk of what appears to be part of an advertising sign for 'Focus' DIY, I thought I'd have a dibble.

The board has a quite a thick covering each side of  printed card which peels off easily leaving pristine white closed cell foam of a type known to model aircraft makers as depron. This isn't crumbly like polystyrene or the usual foamboard, but quite tough and resistant to tearing. It's very easy to cut accurately and can be sanded or edges rounded with the fingers.

I'm sure department and DIY stores, and commercial sign printers throw away mountains of the stuff.
A reasonably cheap source of Depron foam is wood laminate flooring insulation. One trade name is SELITAC available from B&Q I believe.

I made a few test samples including the little stone hut. First thing I learnt, keep it away from normal superglue which eats through the foam like Billy Bunter with a jam doughnut - Apparently, you can get foam safe superglue, but ordinary PVA does the job fine.

Scribing

I tried various scribes, and found that for me, a fine pencil with a rounded point works as well as anything. 

A superfine Sharpie eats slightly into the surface and conveniently leaves a black line, which is handy for fine brickwork with dark mortar. The triangular example in the photograph shows this. 

Clay modelling tools - either metal or plastic - are useful for modelling the surface.

Painting

I've tried a variety of painting methods so far, it's not quite the same as painting DAS covered models as the foam isn't absorbent to most paints, however it does seem to absorb 'Astonish' wood floor polish which leaves it with a harder surface which will accept acrylic and water colour.

You can give it a very light blow over with Halfords acrylic car primer, but you have to go easy as some component in the spray will dissolve the foam. Used sparingly in several light coats, does however, give the foam a nice stoney texture.

Once you have your mortar colour, with a few variations to represent staining, moss etc. adding the stone colour comes next using much the same techniques as with DAS skinned models.

I would expound further on the subject of painting foam, but during my experiments I came across this blog Trainscape which, although in Spanish (Google will attempt to translate) demonstates far better than I ever will, the possibilities of realistic foam modelling.

Fiddling on the Roof

More on the Dapol Village Church

But first the stained glass windows.

The windows are simply photographic images laser printed onto overhead projector film. that's all you need to do in 00 scale. In 7mm scale you can add the horizontal metal bars which in real life keep the windows from blowing in or buckling under the weight.

The roof tiles.

My method is first to create a grid of scale tile sized rectangles using your favourite graphics program or one of the free graph paper programs available online. The tiles should be about 50% taller than they are wide to allow some overlap. This is then printed out, preferably onto a sheet of black or dark grey card.
The verticals are then scribed with a fairly blunt knife. Try to scribe quite narrow lines but quite deep.

I cover the back of the card with horizontal strips of double sided banner tape before slicing the sheet into rows of tiles. I hope that the photo explains the process.
The self adhesive tile strips are then fixed to the roof overlapping in a typical staggered pattern as shown below. The roof here is made from stiff yellow card as the items supplied with the kit were twisted.
The lower edge has been scored and turned up a little to represent the gutter

The ridge tiles and edge capping are strips of the same card scored and bent accordingly.

The photo below shows the almost finished model. I'm fairly happy with it tho I may change the colour of the white cross and maybe add a little light weathering to soften the roof a little.

An Ecumenical Matter

The Dapol village church

You know that feeling when you are strolling around an exhibition and you realise that you haven't spent any money yet? Well, that was me until I spotted a trade stand with a selection of Dapol building kits. Thinking that such a model would serve as templates for a 7mm scale version, I bought one, and a village pub. I always wanted my own pub...

I first built this kit when I was a schoolboy, which means that the tooling for these models is over 50 years old, so the detail isn't as quite as crisp as it once was (which isn't really a problem here)  and some of the parts are a little distorted. However, apart from the roof sections - which in my kit are quite twisted and the slates ill-defined, they are still excellent value for money kits and the model church goes together quickly and easily.

Once the basic shell was made, I gave it an all over coat of acrylic grey primer. acrylic does key into the plastic, but doesn't melt it like non acrylic would. The primer is important as it gives the next coat of paint something to stick to.
Next I worked various dark grey and brown washes of watercolour over the walls, getting it well into the pointing between the stones, with a little bit of dark green here and there to represent moss.
A cheap childrens watercolour set is perfectly adequate and a spot of washing up liquid helps the paint to flow.

The beauty of watercolour paints is that they can be removed with a slightly damp cloth so a bit of gentle rubbing brings back the lighter colour of the faces of the stones whilst leaving the mortar a darker colour.

If you don't like what you have achieved, you can wash it off and start again. I think that smaller scale models probably look better a little lighter in tone and with more contrast than in  'real life'.

Once I am happy with the stonework, I'll give the entire shell an airbrushed coat of Astonish Non Slip Wooden Floor Polish which although it says polish on the bottle, is actually a very thin semi matt acrylic varnish and useful for lots of things including sticking down ballast, fingerproofing transfers, and flatting off too shiney paintjobs.

Next step, the stained glass windows and the roofs.

Instant Flora

Lucky Reptile Flora Mat

I don't claim originality for this, I first spotted it on a YouTube video whilst looking for ideas for making garden plants. 

It's a plastic mat for use in vivariums, about 1 foot square ( that`s 30cm in the new fangled measuring), and costs around £10, tho I have seen it quite a lot cheaper.

So, 1 mat gets you around 200 of these

or 200 of these

and about 1000 of these

Which can be chopped up into an awful lot of individual plant stems.

Here is an example flower bed using the product:

The red and yellow poppy like plants are disks of coloured paper made with a hole punch and crumpled around the point of a pencil, then glued to the top of individual flora mat 'stems'
The purple flowers to the front are individual stems dipped in glue then lilac scatter material.
You can also just dip the tips in paint for a quite passable effect.
Same goes for the other little multi coloured plants, they are snipped off bits of the lighter coloured 'centre'
The tall purple plants are simply old paintbrush bristles dipped in glue and scatter.

The brickwork is Oasis, simply scribed and painted with red car primer.

Here's another example:

This time the walls are made from cork tile and the whole top of the Flora Mat plant has been used.