I have been putting off working on the facades of my DPM buildings because I thought I would mess things up with my ten thumbs approach. I also put off starting these because I thought I wanted to use thinner styrene than I had on hand. But I found a reason to use the thicker one.
These are my first attempts. I had thought I might try to put in realistic sags etc., but all the photo examples I Googled and saw downtown for real were nice and tight.
This one is just 5/8 " strip of 1mm styrene sitting on some plastic L brackets cut from old sprues. My covers are ordinary paper which, when printed looks somewhat fuzzy and faded already.
The thick styrene allowed me to bend some florist wire underneath this flat rain cover and then hold a solder point on it until is set down into the plastic. I drilled shallow holes into the building face and touched the iron to these as well to “set” them. I worked better than I hoped. Later I painted this flat rain cover green.
On the hotel I used the center hubs cut out of a matte spray paint can lid and glued them in place.
Then I added some actual fabric, painted over with acrylic to reduce the out of scale weave, and a paper circle with the hotel name on each.
Nice work! Some interesting ideas on getting things in place. I have an old building from my past that I want to scratchbuild. May use styrene instead of wood as it has rods supporting the overhang from above, and your work looks like a good idea.
You mentioned trying to hand cut a scolloped edge. My wife bought a set of scissors for one of the grandchildren that had a number of different pairs of scissors each with a different pattern. I’m sure scolloped was one of them and there may have been a couple of different sizes. If she was around I’d ask her where she got them. They weren’t too expensive, if I remember correctly. May have been one of those mail catalogs.
Looks pretty convincing to me for a first serious try. I wanted to give some personnality to my DPM kits looking too much similar. You gave me the idea.
Scolloped edge scissor are useful to make diamond tiled tin roof in such manner as “à la canadienne”. I didn’t know there was other patterns than the traditionnal zigzag. That open a lot of possibilities. I think we always underrate how paper is one of the most realistic material to work with at such small scales.
I like’em, especially the ones made from the spray can plastic covers. Very innovative! I wouldn’t have thought of using a heated iron in this type work.
