petitors, come in some pretty useful railroad-type colors as well.
Appropriate bracing is usually stout stripwood such as ¹/₈″×¹/₄″ or so, but I will occasionally use styrene strips which are just as appropriate. Where it will not be seen, don’t skimp on the size. Make it STOUT! Where it will be seen, keep the stoutness, but craft a separate
interior wall. The quarter
inch or so you loose inside will not be at all noticeable. I use gel type cyanoacry- late for the braces, regardless of mate- rial type. With the gel you will have a few seconds to get the positioning right, whereas with the liquid, the bond is more instant. Old age and poor eyesight make instant bonds a bit trou- blesome on occasion. Some day I will do a column on old age, poor eyesight, shaking hands work-arounds...
per-
haps when I’m a little older (I’m not all that shaky yet). If you do not have a well made, pro- fessionally exhausted spray booth, take the walls outside to spray them. If it’s cold out, don’t worry, you won’t be out all that long. Even one whiff of that paint is dangerous in the extreme, and this is only a hobby, your health is more important than miniature trains. In most cases, the cardstock (Bristol board, Strathmore, junk kit boxes) is merely the sub-wall for the wood, pa- per, or plastic exterior, so the exact col- or is often of little importance. When ramshackle individual boards are in- volved, and you want some of that
tarpaper underlayment to show their cracks, atomic pink may not be the best choice of sealant (even though it was on clearance sale!). A nice flat black, dark mineral red, or “tar-paper” green might be a better choice. Regardless of the show surface, the sub-structure must be braced and sealed. Even when using thicker (¹/₁₆″ or so) cardstock as a floor or base for a structure, it still should
be paint-sealed. The stock
starts out flat with a certain dampness content already present. You want it to remain flat and straight, keeping the moisture content stable–none in and none out.
Cardboard is a very convenient sub-
wall for almost any material, but I find it most useful where individual board construction is involved. I once pains- takingly carved grain, distress, and knot holes into a multitude of O-scale 2″×12″’s made of styrene, then made a mold that turned out about 40 very de- tailed sixteen foot boards at a time. I chose 16′-0″ as the longest, knowing I could cut back to the smaller sizes as needed. These castings were then glued to a cardboard set of building walls. The methodology worked so well, that I made a few more molds of differ- ent sizes (and scales) of lumber. The thickness of the planks was of little concern, since the edges of the walls were covered with corner moldings (right angle basswood stock). I was never very successful casting the thin- ner cross sections, so the molds were of
¹/₁₆″ thick masters. The resin I used was a milky white, so coloring them to look like wood was more challenging than just staining basswood. The results are quite rewarding if you are willing to put in a little extra time and effort. I painted the resin boards with Kilz brand primer (kind of a flat pearly white), which I had thinned with 91 percent denatured alcohol to make it sprayable with the airbrush. I then hit it with a light ink/alcohol stain, when the Kilz was good and dry, and put it on with a gnarley old brush to purposely cause streaks and grossly uneven cover- age. When the stain dried, which was only a few minutes, I rubbed in a few shades of gray and dark brown chalks, which darkened the grain lines even further. That same coloring (Kilz/stain/ chalk) method can be used to make styrene look more like wood. But I di- gress (again!). Cardstock is less forgiving of dull blades than is wood, which itself is not nearly as forgiving as styrene. When I’m working any paper or card type material, a sharp, new blade is a must. I may be on the cheap side, but I hate dull blades. I go through a lot of No. 11 and single-edged razor blades, some- times several for a single project. The newness makes for nice clean cuts, without the torn and frayed edges ren- dered by a dull blade. You folks must be getting tired of the “new blade” talk, but the columnist’s union (local 233) says I have to give the blade talk four times per year. Foam board, both in ¹₈″ and ¹₄″
thicknesses, makes for good mock-ups and stand-ins for future models. I pre- fer the ¹₄″ thickness as it has more sta- bility. It is also good for bracing roofs to the proper angle. Just use enough “tri- angles” to make the roof sheets nice and stiff. A while back I made a foam board
mock up of a grain elevator. Wonder of wonders, I took my time and construct- ed the “mock-up” in a fairly workman- like manner (i.e. neat and square). It sat on the layout in that glaring white state for a while. At one of our Sunday night cocktail/train-running sessions, Donna innocently asked when I was going to finish the model. As I explained the pur- pose of a mock-up to her, she quietly said “why don’t you just stain up some boards and plank it over?” As I started to stammer a rebuttal, it dawned on me the pure logic of her question. The mod- el I thought would take three days or more to craft, was done in a single day, buying me time for some other worth- while project.
Once a mock up is made from cardstock or Strathmore and the bracing gives it stability, then windows, doors and siding can be placed on the sides to complete the model.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
Next month we will discuss other ex- otic building materials and methodolo- gies. I’ll try not to digress so much.
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