I am trying to find some kind of supports for inside and outside corners in assembling / kitbashing a styrene ho background building. Would like to make the joints stronger.
Anybody have a link for some such supplies? Any help is greatly appreciated.
One thing you could do, is cut triangle and strip stock from the styrene you already have, and glue it to the inside of your structure, so it’s out of site. The triangle pieces will reinforce your corners, and the strip stock, glued perpendicular to the inside face of your structure walls, either vertically or horizontal, or both, will stiffen up the walls.
Mike.
LEGO blocks.
Hi Bryan!
If nobody has said it yet, welcome to the forum![#welcome]
There are lots of things that you could use to reinforce your corner joints but my first question is why do you feel the need to do so? I am not dismissing your need, but vertical styrene corner joints glued with solvent style cement are usually fairly strong just by themselves. Reinforcing is often needed along the flat sections of walls and roof panels to keep them straight, and to keep roofs from sagging, but wall joints will usually stay straight by themselves. However, you won’t be doing anything wrong if you choose to reinforce the corners.
As for materials, Evergreen Scale Models makes several different sizes of square stock which would work:
Scroll down a bit and you will see several sizes of square stock that will work. Even round styrene tubing will work just fine. I use the round tubing when I am “unfolding” a kit to make a longer background structure. The tubing fits quite nicely in the groove formed when the 45 degree bevelled sides are butted up against each other, as in this example:
Here is what the original kit was supposed to look like:
Here you can see the round tube glued between the wall panels. It has been painted black t
Hi
For inside corners you can use plastruct or evergreen styrene angles or square tube
that way you can reinforce the whole corner top to bottom.
With a little messing around if looks are not critical you can use the angle for out side corners.
the inside corner of the angle has a small radius in it the needs to be squared up.
I have seen adds for kit internal corner braces but it is often quicker and cheaper to make your own
and you know the ones you make will fit.
You are then not forced to make your building deeper than the pre manufactured brace you can have it the depth you want.
regards John
Thanks guys for the response. Every suggestion was certainly helpful and I will work more to put them to use in building my structures. I have no LHS, so coming by these materials is mostly an order online thing.
Dave, thanks for posting the pics of your “unfolding” kit project. It looks very nice. The kit I am bashing had an extra wall, but the thing was mitered as part of an outside corner orientation. Trying to make it turn into an inside corner. Makes a sharp edge to try and glue together. My original thought was to bridge the two walls together with a 90 degree plastic something. Was not sure if there were angular stock available or just sheet / strip material. I will check out the evergreen web page. The sheet styrene I have seen seems too flimsy to be much help as reinforcement…but I suppose with adequate glue and support in enough places that it would make the building a good bit stronger.
Again, thank you guys very much for the help. I know that this is a question which should have an obvious answer, but was not sure which direction to go.
Hi DGX GP 38
Don’t worry the tube strips and sheets etc. come in a variety of sizes and thicknesses
You will be able to find what you need
If not there is always Ferrero Rocher chocolates
Eat chocolate use plastic box as model material its actually quite useful if the kit you like.
Doesn’t have decent window glazing material in it and can make gussets for corners.
And a few other bits and pieces.
regards John
And if you use,John’s method,with the hollow sguare tubing,you can run your power wires thru,them,for lights…
Cheers,
Frank
City Classics makes them. http://www.cityclassics.biz/
For inside corners, I use a piece of 3/8 or 1/4 square balsa strip, which I attach with CA (cyanoacrylate) cement because it bonds well to both plastic and wood. You can see the corner bracing on the left side of this buidling, a DPM M.T. Arms Hotel kit:
I wanted to isolate the rooms of this hotel so that the interior lighting would be selective, so I used foamboard for floors, ceilings and interior walls. This is also a cheap way to make a structure dimensionally strong without adding a lot of weight. Looking at it from the other side…
City Classics also makes the venetian blinds and window shades, and the sign is from Miller Engineering. You can see how all the interior structure acts as a light block and adds realism to the scene.
MisterBeasley,
That is a great looking building! Have not considered adding an interior, but I think it is a nice touch and will give it a try.
The structure I am working on has just enough depth on part of it to add floors/lighting. The bashed part is going to be rather flat…but might give it a second look to make the whole thing deeper for adding the extra detail.
Hi Bryan, and welcome to the hobby and the forums. Not having an LHS really isn’t a big deal – you can get everything you need on line. The Walthers site is great. They are the largest distributor of model railroad products in the US (with the notable exception of products from Horizon Hobbies – Athearn locos and rolling stock, McHenry couplers and some other stuff – Tam Valley turnout servos, and a couple of specialty merchants. I would recommend that you spend some time on their website and get afeel for what is available. It may surprise you. I pay $15 for their catalog every year. I don’t buy much directly from them, because they go right for MSRP, but once you know it’s out there, finding it is easy (think “Google”). A great source for tools and modelling supplies is Micromark (www.micromark.com). The previous posters are spot on. Use triangles cut from thick sheet styrene to reinforce corners, and strip angles to reinforce long walls.
The brick structure seen in the background of the photo below was kitbashed using most of the walls from a pair of Walthers Waterfront Warehouse kits, with the unseen back and one end built from .060" sheet styrene, which was also used for the roof.
As Dave mentions, the walls, especially those from the kit, usually need little or no bracing. I buy the .060" sheet styrene in 4’x8’ sheets, which are much more useful if you’re building fairly large structures. Look in the Yellow Pages under Plastics Suppliers.
Since the tracks aren’t parallel to the wall/backdrop, the building is tapered to suit the site:
Here’s the back and the end which is viewable when the structure is in place:
…and a look at the interior bracing, basically partitions cut from the .060" sheet. They’re difficult to see in the photo, but there are strips (about 1/2" wide) cut from the same stuff and cemented with the flat side against the partitions and the edge to the long walls - it might have been better to cement the flat side to the long walls and the edge to the partitions, and with one on each side of each partition, trapping them in place. I use lacquer thinner as my solvent cement of choice, and buy it by the gallon. The roof is supported somewhat by the partitions, but strengthened considerably by the clerestory
Lookin
Cool stuff Wayne. Very cool.
Thanks for your kind words, Chip. [:D]
Wayne
Bryan:
I think your solution to the problem of turning an outside corner into an inside corner is fairly simple.
When you position the walls next to each other to form the inside corner, the bevels on the corners should form a ‘flat’ surface which is at 45 degrees to the wall joint. All you need to do is glue a flat piece of styrene to the bevel on one wall, and then glue the bevel on the second wall to the flat styrene so the corner lines up.
If your styrene seems a bit thin then you can always glue two pieces together like plywood. Just go easy on the solvent cement with thin styrene or it may ‘melt’ totally.
If that doesn’t make sense let me know and I will do up a diagram to show you what I mean.
Dave