i am going to atempt my first scratch building i have a drawing of the building in feet how do i convert it to HO scale where is a good place to buy tools and materials thanks
Micro Mark should have every tool you’ll need and it’s 1/8th inch to the foot for scale.
Good luck, go for it!!!
Bob
I use Micro Mart
For lots of tool purchases
http://www.micromark.com/model-railroad-items.html
And a Scale ruler is the best way to convert 1:1 feet to HO scale feet
http://www.micromark.com/MODEL-RAILROADERS-RULE-HO-O-N-S;-12-,6476.html
Welcome to the forums. Walthers and Micro-Mark both have the tools you need. You could also check your local hobby shop (LHS) to see what they have. There are both plastic and metal rulers with several scales on them and others that are for one scale only
Again, welcome.
Have fun,
HO scale is 1/87, 1/8 inch scale is 1/96, a significant difference, so use a HO scale instead.
When you get comfortable with the math calculating the scale, consider getting a dial caliper. Combining that with a calculator will allow you to move between scale drawings of any scale and be as close to exactly accurate in HO as you can get.
If you are using a scale ruler, just take the measurements of the plan and duplicate the same measurement on the scale rule.
If you don’t know the scale you can use any finely divided ruler and a calculator to figure out a conversion factor for the scale drawings.
Best is to buy an HO scale ruler, (a rule marked in HO scale feet and HO scale inches). This eliminates the always error prone mathematical conversions. Even with a hand calculator, the opportunity for errors is so great, to say nothing of the tedium, makes the mathematical conversion approach (dividing every dimension by 87) impractical.
Tools. Last project I did, in wood, an Xacto knife with #11 blade did all the work. You can get them nearly anywhere, your local hobby shop (LHS) , Staples, hardware stores, Home Depot, whatever. Any materials you cannot get from LHS you can order from the makers web site. Just google on the makers name and the website ought to show up.
I get a lot of basic supplies at craft stores like www.acmoore.com and www.michaels.com. Both are big brick-and-mortar stores with a lot of locations. Both have discount coupons in the local paper and on line.
You’ll find a huge selection of acrylic craft paints, glue and other basics. They have balsa wood pieces, too, although not necessarily specialty items like clapboard siding or scribed decking. For those, you really need a hobby or train shop.
I think its great you’re taking the plunge into scratch building. I’m no master model builder, but I do scratch build quite a bit. This comment will probably get some flack from some here, but my advice is don’t stress yourself out scratchbuilding. Depending on your own modeling goals and standards, the idea is to get a model that looks right. I’m scratchbuilding a prototype grain elevator right now. I had some photos of it, and found a few more in the internet, but I had no scale plans or exact measurement references. So what do I do. Well, I approximate as closely as I can and make everything proportionate. I used a locomotive sitting in from of the elevator as a reference, because I know how tall an SW1500 is. My contrived measurements are certainly not exact, but on the layout it looks right becuase it is proportionate and its dimentions are close enough that they look right to the eye. Above all else, I’m having fun with it. That, after all, is the point, right?
Ron
It’s mostly since we can’t easily afford expensive RTR equipment… Many of my buildings are either scratchbuilt or cheap structures that I kitbashed, weathered, and detailed. Same thing with rolling stock. We make do with taking cheap affordable stuff and making it look good. That and building from scratch.
Wrong. Sorry, but HO scale is 1:87.1 (3.5mm=1 foot). Slightly more than 1/8th inch to the foot, which is 1:96.
If you know the prototype dimension, just divide the inches by 87.1. A scale rule from Micro Mark would be the easy way…
I don’t think I saw anybody else mention it, so I will:
Take your drawings and reduce them on a photocopier so that they are exactly 1/87th scale.
It’ll save a lot of tedious measuring if you can just compare parts to the scale drawing.
Also, if you put a piece of wax paper over the drawing you can often align and glue parts right on top of the drawing.
Good for you. I’ve begun scratch building myself. Not because I’m against kits but because there are certain designs that I want that aren’t available. And it’s neat ( did I just say “neat”?)to say I built that from scratch. I started out simple to get the feel and am building a structure a bit more complicated, though not much, just bigger. I read somewhere recently that real life can’t always be brought down to HO scale. That is true. Keep in mind the size of the layout when you “shrink” your building you might want to compress it a bit if it’s a larger structure. Good luck and have fun!
Oh and I might put an emphasis on getting a scale ruler. They are inexpensive and are so much less confusing (at least to me) when measuring to cut and place your material. May I suggest a metal one. They work well as a straight edge and a small square also. 3 tools for the price of one.[tup]
you may also need a couple of plastic right angle triangles to ensure that your walls are square. They can be bought almost anywhere that school supplies are sold. Also, get some alligator clips and spring type clothespins.
An HO scale ruler only works if the plan is in HO scale (or one of the other scales on the ruler). If the plan is in an odd (or unkown) scale then its calculator time. As long as you know or can determine at least one dimension on the drawings you can determine a conversion factor. Then you just multiply the measured dimensions from the drawing by that factor. It also works slick for pictures which will almost always be a odd or unkown scale. If you are printing drawings/pictures off the internet, it eliminates any concern about scaling between the original, the download, the format and the printer. For buildings, being dead on isn’t critical, for cars or engines being several inches off can start to look funny.
For example I had a photocopy of an elevation of a car that was in an unknown scale. I knew the trucks had a 5 ft wheelbase and the width of the eaves. After doing the math, I came up with a conversion factor of .391. So all I had to do is measure a dimension on the plan and multiply it by .391 to get the actual size in HO scale. I use a dial caliper because its so easy to use. So if the width of the door on the plan was 1.764 inches, multiply that by .391 to get the actual door width of .690 on an HO model. Doing a reality check, .690 is about 5 HO scale feet and the car had about a 5 ft wide door. Simple and quick. No conversions between feet and inches, etc. I don’t model to three decimal places, but the caliper measures to 3 so why not use them?
If I recall correctly the original posting concerned working from a plan in feet, which means a drawing with dimensions in feet. For this ordinary case, an HO scale ruler is all you need. Read the dimension (in feet) off the plan, use the HO ruler to mark the material in HO feet.
In the case of un dimensioned measurements on the original drawing, you want a ruler scaled the same as the drawing. An ordinary architect’s scale (couple of bucks at Staples/Office Max) does the trick. It’s a three sided scale with everything from 3/32" to the foot to 3 inches to the foot. Your original drawing (at least here in the US) is done in one of those scales. Use the architect’s scale to read the dimension in feet/inches off the original drawing and then use the HO scale to mark the material to cut in HO feet/inches.
Only in the most difficult case of working from photographs does the hand calculator method become necessary. Since photos are not dimensioned, you have to find something of a known size in the photo, measure it and use some algebra to compute a scaling factor from “photo scale” to HO scale. Actually, we used to use proportional dividers to do this sort of thing back before hand calculators. If I ever spot a pair at a yard sale I’ll snap them up.
Once again you have to assume that the drawing is in one of the 12 scales on an architects’s scale. If its not, which I find typical of drawings from car builder’s cyclopedias, the Historic American Engineering Record, the Historic American Building Survey, plans that have been photocopied or plans that have been downloaded in something other than a pdf format, then the architect’s scale is useless. On the other hand if you use a calculator, you really don’t kneed to know and really don’t care what the scale of the drawing is.
Its not really algebra, its just plain division, at least if you use decimal measurements (if you use a scale rule its just a tad more complicated).
I have a plan of a boxcar in front of me. I do not know the scale (nor do I care). The trucks on the car are 5’ 6" wheelbase or 66". On the drawing the truck wheelbase measures .945". So I divide 66 by.945 to get a factor of 69.84. I just measure a dimension on the plan and multiply it by 69.84 and I now know the length in inches. So I measure the width of the door on the plan and its 1.37 inches wide. 1.37 x 69.84 = 95.7 inches or 8 ft. If you are using a scale rule, you will have to convert things back into feet and inche
True, but who says all the dimensions you need to build the model are on the plan? 
The plan says the building foundation is 36 ft wide, but doesn’t say what the distance is between the door and the end wall. And when you compare the 36 ft dimension on the plan to your scale rules, it doesn’t match any of the 4 or 5 scales on the railroad scale rule or the 12 scales on the architect’s scale.
Why, do you think someone’s gonna come back and say, “Oh, yeah, you better stress yourself out scratchbuilding”?
MR:
It makes sense in context, though. What n2m is saying is, as I read it, is: don’t think the result has to be utterly perfect. Good advice, I think. The next one will always be better, right?
I imagine he was trying to head off misunderstandings.
Although I work in N scale, I made a point of acquiring scale rulers for all the popular modeling scales. Most plans published in the magazines are HO, and it seemed for a long time, Model Railroader published steam locomotive drawings in S. In some older magazine issues you might find drawings in 1/8" and some other odd (or at least non-model railroad) scales.