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and narrow in a multitude of ways. I do, however, make up words, but so does she. After breakfast one morning, she suggested that I prove last month’s point by constructing something within that time frame. She dug out a stopwatch from her coaching days and handed it to me. “Here, now you can time each step as you do it.” Good idea, but how about some ground rules: I get to start with a clean workbench, since cleaning it up after a project usually takes up that whole “evening” we were talking about. She agreed. Stopwatch in hand, I was off to the basement. I could still hear her giggling.


Start by knowing the exact footprint of what you want to build, and then make a quick sketch of the building with some notes and exact dimensions. Gather all the materials required to construct this model, and then lay out all the tools you will need to build it. That took a whole ten minutes.


TOOLS


1. X-acto knife with a new #11 blade 2. Scale rule 3. 4-inch modeler’s square (the thin one from Micro-Mark) 4. Testors and Tenax 7R solvent cement


5. Sharp pencil 6. Fine brush 7. Wire brush 8. 2 ratt le cans of spray-paint, brown and fl at black


10. A new sheet of 1/8-inch Evergreen board & batt en stock


11. 5 sprues of Oregon Rail shingles 12. A 5 x 7 piece of plain 0.030-inch styrene (roof)


13. 2 24-inch strips of 1/8 x 3/16 styrene(bracing)


14. 1 24” strip of 1/8 x 1/8 basswood (foundati on)


15. Zona saw (foundati on grain) 16. A chunk (it was about 2” x 4”) clear 0.010 styrene


17. My weathering chalks & sti ff brush


20. My sketch, with some real numbers on it


18. Single-edge razor blade 19. Some pre-mixed yucky brownish- gray paint


21. 1/8 x 0.020 strip of styrene for upper molding


24. Tweezers


22. A tube of ACC (wood to styrene) 23. Trusty bott le of India ink & alcohol


Use the point of a new X-acto No. 11 blade to scribe in some wood grain. A fi ne wire brush will remove the off ending hairs and add a litt le more subtle graining to the boards. Strive to make adjoin- ing boards look a litt le diff erent.


NOVEMBER 2015 83 9. 6 windows and a door (Grandt)


Use the trim board as a guide, make a single cut only batt en deep, and then slice off the "chips" such that the board lays nice and fl at.


I chose an S-scale nondescript board and batten supply shed-type building with a 24x16-inch footprint. I wanted to make the styrene look like wood, so the coloring and texturing took some extra time. The model was going to be quick to build (why I chose styrene, folks), but it had to be a nice looking model. Cutting out the four walls, with their


too many window and door openings, took just over an hour. Being board and batten, they required some trimming to make the windows and doors sit down flat. Likewise, I had to remove a small “strip” of battens to accommodate the roof trim. I had to concentrate on not rushing this project like I was in some sort of race. With the walls cut out, I used an X-acto No. 11 blade to scratch in some grain, followed with a fine wire brush to remove all those unsightly burrs. That bit of distressing took only 20 minutes for all four of those walls. Next came the wall bracing, for which


I used some stout 1/8-inch x 3/16-inch styrene strips. Add them flush to the edges of the two long side walls, and in- dent them by the thickness of the brace and the thickness of the wall itself. I cut them a bit long, and then trim them to ex- act size with a single-edge razor after they are applied. Use the braced side wall to mark the location of the end wall braces. Notch the brace by the door, so it will sit nice and flush. Since styrene sticks are so easy to cut (simply score and snap them off), cutting all the wall braces (16) took only ten minutes or so. I used Testors sol- vent cement to give me a few seconds to get the brace exactly flush with the wall. It took about 20 minutes to get all four walls braced properly. I took a rattle can of black paint and blasted the interior walls flat black (a whole four minutes). I had no intention of putting an interior in the building, so I wanted to subdue the interior as much as I could. This is much easier to do before the walls are


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