I was at my LHS today, and I realized they don’t have much for styrene for scratchbuilding. I began looking around, and found the for the main walls, 1/16 or1/8 bass would would work. I’m curious as to trials, error, and opinions of other model railroaders on the subject. I know there are some materials around me, but i want to just know about balsa/bass wood. I tried building a house out of this a year ago, and i chose to thick of a wood, and it was hard to cut and get flush corners and all that junk. I didn’t know if I used a thinner thickness, it might work. All opinions are welcomed on this topic, and advice about this is greatly apreciated.
Hi Noah. I’ve done alot of work using both types of wood. Not sure what scale you going to be using but here are some pics of a house I made. There is both balsa and bass woods in this model. It is 3ft by 4ft and 26 1/2" high so it’s a rather large model. I had to make three of them. I used 1/8 X 1/4" strips and had to strip wider lengths for door ways and girders. Not sure if these will be helpful or not but I hope it is.
Noah, It certianly depends on what the wood would be used for. Basswood would be my first choice. It has very little grain so would look right in HO Scale. Balsa wood can be used in many places, however it will show grain. Also note that balsa comes in different hardnesses hard, medium and soft. I would use hard or medium for trestle bents or other structural wooden timbers. It may boil down to price, and I am unsure of which is least expensive of the two.
Noah, I can’t argue with the above replies, they are all very good. I only want to add that after 50 some odd years of building model airplanes and using a lot of balsa, that there is a “filler/primer” type dope (paint) that seals the grain and gives a smooth non-porous suface on balsa and other woods for your finish paint. I have made a couple “concrete” tunnel portals for our club layout, useing some scrap balsa and they turned out pretty good. It is refreshing, to me, to see people attempting scratch building and explore other methods of building. May your talent prevail and you spray for termites. [(-D][(-D]
Now that Erie D mentioned portals, etc. There has been some interesting pictures in MR latelty where balsa blocks have been used for retaining walls. They look very good and I may try my hand at it.
To answer several questions, I’m building an HO scale Transfer caboose. It’ll hopefully look like this when i’m done:
Thanks to all of you who replied, I think I’ll use bass wood for it.
To Juby, that’s way more extensive than what I did, and I wish I coulds do something like that. I had a few beams and such, but only the outerwalls and the second floor floor, not through the whole thing.[:O]
