How is everyone?? im working on a free lance lumber lard for a track side mod. and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on making lumber for my yard or plans from lumber yards?? thanks for all the help this is my first post! i hope it works! thanks
brian
newjersey
first off welcome to the forums! I assume from your screen name you are a firefighter…so am I…well a volunteer I am not paid. For making lumber you could try glueing and stacking square tooth picks.
Hi, Brian. How’s New Jersey? Haven’t been there in 30 years!
You don’t mention what size lumber you want, but I think you will find that there are many suppliers of styrene shapes that are correct fo HO-sized lumber. Look in a Walther’s catalog or ask they guys at your LHS. A 2x4 in HO would be about .025" x .045". Just get pieces that are close to the sizes you want, paint, detail and cut them to length.
Hope this helps.
Darrell, dimensionally quiet…for now
Why not just use dimensional stripwood? It comes in all standard sizes. Just cut it up with a new single edged razor blade to ensure fine cuts. I believe Northeastern Scale Lumber comes in bulk pieces 2’ long, which should be cheaper than buying the expensive packages of stripwood. No need to paint.
Bob Boudreau
If you’re building stacks of lumber, you can save the more expensive scale lumber by putting a block of balsa in the middle and surounding the balsa block with scale lumber like I did with this lumber load on this flatcar:
The ends are time consuming but in the end you’ll probably use 1/4 of the lumber than if you built the entire stack out of it.
I have an old table saw. I put a really good blde on it, Forrester. I put a piece of 1/8" ply on top so there was no gap around the blade. I the can cut any good lumber to any size I like. I set the blade to just clear the wood and use a push block to get though. I have cut pine, oak, walnut, and others succesfully to as little as 1/16 x 1/8 . With great care it is safe and the exotic woods look very nice. I sometimes use an incajig, but the old fence works ok as well. Take care to miss your fingures and learn about kick back and it is fun.
MicroMark makes a hobby table saw that works very well to make dimentional lumber. I use small scraps of wood, mostly pine and Orange wood (popsicle sticks) to cut lumber for scratchbuilding. If you are going to need a lot of scale lumber or if you like to scratchbuild it is a good investment.
Check at a hobby shop for scale lumber. With a single-edge razor blade, you can easily cut scale sized 1x and 2x strips into whatever scale length you want. This would certainly be cheaper than buying a saw and cutting your own.
Even if you did have a hobby saw, getting the raw material could still present a problem because you cannot walk into just any building supply store and purchase heartwood. Regular pine or cedar would shatter when you tried to cut strips as narrow as a scale 2"
Take a block of balsa wood and scribe horizontal lines on it. That’d be quicker and hold up under casual scrutiny.
If you are doing a fairly good size yard, dimensional lumber can get very pricey. I agree w/ ARTHILL’s method and make lumber all the time. I realize not everyone has a tablesaw or experience to do this. Scraps of white or sugar (clear pine) are best to use. Most decent lumber yards will have a cut off/ scrap bin- many times this wood is free for the taking, HD also does this but there really isn’t any decent D select or C or better there. A very sharp 40-60 tooth combination blade is a must, and be very careful of the rip fence when ripping those thin strips. Screw/ fasten straight scrap of wood to the fence to prevent damage. Block balsa can also be ripped and score the widths instead of saw rips.-A bit safer for the less experienced and can be somewhat faster. Remember, Saftey First, have many years experience with shop tools, yet every time I fire it up, I remind myself what that blade can do. Seen too many accidents.
Bob K.