hey guys and girls
i’ve tried twice to scratch build stuff and have had succes but it looked horrible. i used wood. then suddenly today i realized i should probably not be useing wood. what should i use? and how to you guys get every thing to look so professinal? down to the little deatails? thanks for any feedback! pics. would also be great also thanks!
-jake
It might help to know what you are trying to make - a structure, a rail car, what?
Might be worth while to check on the Trains.com site for how-to books, there are plenty out there that will give you all kinds of help. Books are a lot more helpful than a few tips online.
Styrene is a common building material. Available in various thicknesses, shapes and sizes, it can be easily cut, sanded, glued and painted. As said before, books are very helpful as well as magazine articles, but you will have to look in older magazines for scratchbuilding articles.
As other posters stated, it depends on what you want to build. Another consideration is the scale you’re working in. For HO and smaller, styrene would probably be the best choice although you can use wood to build wooden structures and rolling stock. For the larger scales, especially O and G, IMHO nothing looks more like wood than wood as it is easy to work with in those scales. To represent non-wooden items, styrene and brass are excellent. Older MR magazines, RMC, and NGSL Gazette have excellent articles and tips on scratchbuilding.
This is a structure I scratch-built. I’ve been doing a lot of other scratch-building (like subways) but this is the first “building” I’ve come up with.
The walls are Evergreen clapboard siding. The roof is Campbell shingles. The doors and windows are from Tichy. I got the chimney at a show, but I don’t know the manufacturer. It’s a metal casting, though. The even cut stone walls are a hydrocal casting from Dave Frary, the rock outcropping is from Woodland Scenics, and the crude stone wall under the building is another thing I got at a train show. Oh, and that girder sticking out the attic roof is another Evergreen product.
I can’t see much wrong with that… bit of a weird photo angle is all… and you haven’t weathered it…
I’m assuming that you have painted the building with at least one coat as it is uniform in colour and there are no gaps or clear joints.
Quite often when scratch building a model can look pretty awful with different materials, fillers and colours. Even solder stain looks bad. Once it has been cleaned up, primed and then painted it looks a whole lot better. You can leave it like that if you like but a degrees of weathering will make it look more relaistic.
[8D]
You’re right, I haven’t gotten to weathering this one yet. In fact, this was a very early photo, and it was missing things like steps. As it happens, this building sits at the top of the rock-and-cut-stone wall, right by the coal dumping ramp for Burns Coal and Oil company. At the time I took the photo, any view from above would show substantial pink foam, so I took this shot from below.
MrB, That rock looks like our basalt in the Pacific Northwest. Great Job.[tup]
Sue
Jake,
There’s nothing wrong with using wood to scratch-build/kit bash with. IMO, certain elements of modeling still look best using wood - i.e. things that were originally wood and were not painted. (e.g. flooring, wood trestles) To me, the wood grains shows through and adds more realism:
Click to enlarge picture
On the other hand, styrene is a terrific material to use. I used it to make my one-person signal shanty below:
Click to enlarge picture
Styrene is not susceptible to warping and humidity changes like wood is. I like it on projects that are going to be painted.
Tom
I like wood, but it does take some care and is subject to warping. I also like to use styrene, so pick and choose what works best for each project. There are several structures made of each material on my PictureTrail web site
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=7427805&uid=3608462
I’m a big fan of using styrene for most of my scratchbuilding needs. I use brass when I need to fabricate something thin and strong, or for piping, but I rarely use wood, except for simple things like fences and grade crossings. Styrene is a LOT easier to work with than wood, in all regards, and I feel that I can crank out a higher quality model in FAR less time.
With the exception of the windows and chimney (which are Tichy castings), I scratchbuilt this depot entirely out of Evergreen and Plastruct styrene.
Freight cars come out faster and nicer in styrene. This in-progress gon only has about four hours of work in it (again, all commercial details are Tichy).
The shields on either side of the smokebox on this engine are scratched out of .005" brass. I did try using .015" styrene for these assemblies, but they came out oversized and too weak. For some things, brass is still the best option.
I use any thing thats not nailed down. I figure when it comes to model building anything is fair game.
I take pictures while I’m building if you’re interested.