Recently I was chatting with a MR friend, on another forum… Sort of a Q&A sort of thing and he was telling me about some of the structure kits he had recently built, and how none of them were really anything like the houses around where he lives and I said so why don’t you just build some… I thought he was gonna have a heart attack… What you mean from scratch?.. yeah why not?.. I dunno how… He does fine decorating the kits he buys, but won’t try to do one completely from scratch…
I asked this question once before, and maybe it was on another forum…
Is there an interest, or from a time and money point of view a market for structure kits that would be very basic- not a finished structure but a frame and sheathing, easy to assemble over which a modeller could put their own siding, moldings, gutters, downspouts, roofing and such to create a more hands on model, without having to create it totally from scratch?
This idea occured to me during the chat with my friend… And I drew up a couple of sketches of homes I saw recently, and designed a very basic detached garage on which the roofline could be changed to run either back or across the door, and a couple of basic houses…
The kits would be embossed on 1/32 and 1/64 aircraft plywood with corner studs attached to make assembly of the structure simple, the same with the roof and porches, or carports. I am not sure how I will handle base’s because so many modellers don’t use the base even if it is included.
I would appreciate feedback on this, in so far as its practicality and usefulness. I am by no means an expert modeller, far from it, but I am a good appraisal contractor and pay close attention to detail, unlike the manufacturer of a station kit I recently assembed on which none of the rooflines matched up.
The idea of a model producer doing that would be great. I have a devil of a time finding stucco buildings to represent the great Southwest. To date almost Nada. I was forced to create in resin casting a stucco building wall set that I will build into a city hall on my small town layout. So many buildings out west are stucco or stucco looking. This is the set of walls that I cast:
I think it is a decent idea. There is a small company called KingMill Enterprises that offers a service where you can design a basic structure using some software that they have developed and then send them a file from which they create a laser cut one-off model for you. They use basswood, which I think would be better for structures than balsa.
That looks great, , is it textured like real stucco???.. I live in Ohio, and most of the stucco houses I see have the appearance that somoe used a small broom dipped in concrete to do the surface, though the modern ones, we call them Stucco trim because its done with drywall mud, look liike they are trowelled on and then dabbed at with a brush, am wondering if you couldn’t model this with plaster of paris and a stiff watercolor brush- you have to teach me how to do castings…
i am going to look into this for several reasons… up front being- think of all the cool stuff I can get for my railroad, second… If I can sub out manufacturing of my own designs, at a low enough cost to pass it on to those who might want to buy them… bonus points.
To answer one question: The texture kinda disappeared in the casting process. But I should be able to re-duplicate it with a texture paint. In this process I had to close off the pre-made doors and windows in order to get a blank wall. My door and window positioning will rule.
About the modular items mentioned above. They don’t have enough blank walls in the modular lines DPM or Walthers to create unique buildings IMHO ! They’re too much cookie cutter walls and buildings with their ideas of where door and windows should go. [2c]
Why bother with a "kit’ if you are going to have to “add” 95% of the rest of the stuff. Skip the kit and just assemble the sides etc. You don’t need a frame and sheathing most of the time. I would think it would make it harder to scratch build since you would have to get the sides precisely to match th core in addition to making the window openings match the holes in the sheathing.
How about picking out a house you like, photograph each side (keeping an element of a known size in each photo), puting it into your computer & printing each side on card stock. Use the card stock as a pattern on styrene, brick sheet, Evergreen clapboard, or any other material you want. Heavy cardboard used for photo moumts has a surface resembling stucco, or you could combine materials, as many homes have more than one kind of “siding”. Look in the Walthers site or catalog under details and pick out the Grandt Line or other windows/doors you want to use. Just my [2c]
Quite honestly, I don’t see much of a potential market for such an idea. First off, most serious modelers have no particular problem scratchbuilting or kitbashing a wide variety of modest-size residential or commercial structures. This is simply a basic part of becoming a real model railroader. Secondly, in my view the newbie segment in the hobby would probably be scared off by the challenge, or simply lack the ingenuity to create structures uniquely their own over such a shell.
I would further note that those who normally facbricate their own buildings rarely require/use any complete substructure shell to start with. Working in basswood (Northeastern Scale Lumber, etc.), you normally just modestly brace the exterior walls from within. Styrene is pretty much the same but usually needs even less interior bracing. Opening up a substructure/shell for doors and windows, as well as precisely sizing and attaching self-made exterior walls to a shell, is really just wasted modeling effort. Why bother trying to work around a separate substructure when all that’s needed in the first place are the outer walls?
Incidentally, Bar Mills already offers their “The 1 Kit” for whatever conceptually-challenged individuals do exist. It incorporates walls with many partially pre-cut door and window openings of varying sizes and placement…plus multiple doors and peel-and-stick windows of many sizes, allowing one to frabricated just about any sort of modest-sized building you can imagine. You have to admit there’s a lot more potential there then in a simple, solid, subframe/shell kit.
You can do that same thing using foamcore board, then add what ever siding you want. With all the differnt choices of sidings in wwood and plastic, and different window and door sizes, it’s really not that hard. mike h.
There are several tpes of “stucco”. There is a basic smooth stucco that is either brushed or sprayed over concrete, bricks or concrete blocks, and there is textured stucco where a trowel is used to swirl a finished coat on over the base “scratch coat”.
I have built two Crow River NH “Pagoda type” signal towers that are cast plaster with bricks. I plan to use contact cement and apply sandpaper of the appropriate courseness to cover the bricks and replicate smooth plaster.
As for modules, Westport Model Works http://www.westportmodelworks.com/index.htm offers some beautiful and authentic building panels . I have purchased his NH Union Station prints and they are an absolute work of art.
