Hi all
Does any one have a plan or know where I might find one of a tny store, a house or tiny something else that could easily be made out of little more than cerial box card.
Yet still nearly have enough detail to make it worth keeping and adding to my model railroad once built
I have been caught out with the ever changing anti Virus measures and can’t get any other materials at this time, I am slowly going nuts with boredom
regards John
With a cereal box, Xacto knife, and a set of colored pencils, you can have a blast.
I don’t have any plans, but I have entertained myself with these when travelling for work.
-Kevin
Hi John,
I’m going to suggest that you can make your own plan just by doing some pencil sketches. I’m sure you have a picture in your mind of what you would like to build, so transfer that image to paper. It doesn’t matter if you are an artist or not. All you need to do is decide how many doors and windows you want on each wall and roughly what you want the roof to look like. Don’t worry about the size of the initial drawings.
Once you have sketches of the four sides of the building then you can use a scale ruler to get the sizes more accurate. If you don’t have a scale ruler just use a regular one. One inch equals 7’ 3" in HO scale. It happens that 7’ is about the height of a standard entry door, so if you start by drawing a door 1" tall then you can estimate the sizes of the rest of the building. Exterior walls for a single story frame building will be a little less than 9’ tall (1 1/4"). The tops of windows will be at roughly the same height as the tops of the doors, and the bottoms of the windows will be roughly 30" (5/16" in actual size) from the floor which is where the bottom of the door will be. The roof slope will vary but a common slope is 5/12. In other words, for every 12" the roof goes across, it will rise by 5". If you are modelling an older building you may want to make the roof steeper.
Details like window and door frames can be added by just cutting out the shapes of the frames and gluing them to the walls. If you want deeper details then use a couple of layers for the frames. If you want to have crisp paint lines then consider painting the window and door frames and the walls separately before assembling them.
If you want to model brick walls or shingle roofs there are ima
Krafttrains.com has free downloadable, printable structures.
They suggest printing them on 110# cardstock. I don’t know what that is, maybe a manilla folder would suffice. Around here Office Depot allows one to pick up online orders, despite the lockdown.
Interesting site!
I still encourage the OP to try his hand at designing his own buildings.
Dave
Hi all
I have a nearly half maybe idea what I want or do I
Am thinking US Wild West come Colonial Australia Gold rush many many similarities between the two
That done right it could be either and believable in both.
I though maybe a tiny store / shop with some thing like a 10’ or 12’ frontage and a false front but not sure how tall and deep the structure should be or door and window style.
The small size is to try and avoid needing extra suport that I can’t provide no 1/8" square small wood.
regards John
Hi John,
First of all, the window style would definitely be multi-pained simply because shipping large sheets of glass in that era was not practical. Small rectangles of glass don’t break nearly as easily as large ones.
Depending on the ‘quality’ of the structure, the doors could be multi-panel for more refined buildings, or simple vertical planks with straight and diagonal crossmembers for more rustic structures.
Given your era, the roofs will be steep, i.e. 12/12 or 45 degrees.
If you are modelling a single story structure with a simple peaked roof, the side walls will be about 9’ tall. The height of the false front is up to you, but I’m guessing that the average false front would be about 6’ higher than the peak of the roof. Notice that I said that I am guessing. This is a situation where you have to use your judgement as to what looks right.
The length of the structure is entirely up to you. I would ask what will fit in your space if you have a place in mind on your layout?
Extra support can be had just by laminating a couple of layers of card stock together. If you are going to do that I would suggest weighting the laminated pieces down with a couple of heavy books or a couple of larger cans of food on top of a piece of plywood or a small cutting board - whatever will provide even force over the entire wall/roof section. Let them dry thoroughly before proceeding!
You can also use ‘L’ shaped pieces to keep the walls and the roof lines straight. Cut a piece of stock 1/2" wide and then gently score it down the middle. Fold it to 90 degrees and glue it to the inside of the wall or roof.
I hope that I’m not being overbearing with all my advice. If you want me to shut up
Hi Dave
The more advice I can get the better for me.
I have come a bit late in life to card construction only just started playing with it just before the virus thing started should have started many years ago.
I don’t really have many old enough magazines to get ideas and tips from.
Other than your going to go through a few blades as card does not like even slightly blunt blades and you change it at the first sign of that.
I thought part of the idea of the false fronts was to give the “look how posh we are” impresion and you just have to trade with us for quality merchandise.
Also to hide the more mundane less, may be a lot less impresive structure lurking behind it.
regards John
I totally agree! Dull blades are useless. Doctorwayne re-sharpens his but I haven’t either the patience or the skill. I bought a pack of 100 blades a few years ago and there are only a few left.
Cheers!!
Dave
I went for years not doing the scratch build thing thinking I couldn’t do it then I got the bug.
It’s a total blast!!!
This is a link to my blog on my first scratch build home. I’ve built them from paper, card stock, basswood and Styrene.
https://melvineperry.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-first-scratch-built-building.html
I have replaced all the plastic Kit structures on my layout with scratch built. I kept all the Craftsman kits but the rest are goners with the exception of my IHC Diesel Maintenance Shop and someday it to will be a goner.
The most important tool is a sharp #11 blade, like Dave I buy the 100 pack because old shaky hands Mel breaks the tips constantly. The last 100 pack cost $12 off ebay.
At one time, I built wood and cardstock structures, but when styrene modelling supplies became readily available, I pretty-much gave up on the old-syle modelling. I find styrene both easier to use and less susceptible to degradation over time.
On my other Forum, I’m doing some scratchbuilding of small structures using styrene, including door and window castings - much easier and better-looking than any I ever did using wood. Here’s the front of the one first-done…
…and the rear…
This is the rear (track side) of the second one…
…and the side facing the aisle of the layout…
I have at least three more to build, all railroad-owned, so pretty-much the same paint scheme, but various free-lanced designs. The two shown replace structures formerly represented by de-commissioned boxcars.
I always keep a good supply of sheet and strip styrene on-hand, and was surprised when starting these projects on just how much I have in the way of Tichy and Grandt Line doors and windows…unlikely to run out before my time runs out.
The building process can be seen HERE, and the other three (or more) will be added as I work on them.
Wayne
Dr Wayne: very nice looking structure! Are the shingles .010 styrene strips cut part way through? Just curious.
If one is using cereal box thick card stock, it will need to be reinforced with something or the structure will not last.
Some of the craft stores will do curbside pickup if you can get out of house at all. Try Michaels, Hobby Lobby, or Blicks, or Aaron Bro’s. Just a suggestion.
I would recommend .0625 (1/16) poster board for a more enduring structure. I think the std size of one of these is 36"x40" actual if I remember correctly.
Best.
Cutting cereal box (or dryclaner “shirt”) cardboard cleanly can be a challenge because it is both thin and soft. There was a Kalmbach video a couple of years back - I cannot recall if it was on the “free” part of the MR Video Plus part of this website - showing cereal box cardstock being laminated to coffee-stir type wood using double sided very thin transfer tape. That video is what made me start to use 3M transfer tape (the same stuff I think that makes peel 'n stick parts in laser cut kits). But the cereal box cardboard was strictly a medium to hold the wood in place.
I have known some craftsman/scratchbuilders who make their own windows and doors and do a great job, but I agree with Wayne that once you get used to the fine detail on Grandt Line and Tichy (I’d add Rix/Pikestuff/Smalltown) plastic windows and doors that sets the level awful high for those who still want to “roll their own” (or use the older era of cast metal winows and doors). That said I am impressed with what the laser cut kit folks can achieve in the way of multiple-part windows and doors in wood.
Dave Nelson
All I can add, is you don’t need a plan, just an idea.
Do a search for photos of what you want and use it as a guild. The folks who built them back then built by need and what they had on hand,both materials and tools.
I would suggest, that you shouldn’t expect a ‘‘keeper’’ the first time out.
More then a few ways to brace cardstock with cardstock.
A few of my noplan builds;
Real nice UncleButch. [Y]
Mike.
For shingles, I just cut a paper sack into long strips. Then I cut the strip about halfway through width wise and there you have shingles. Then you overlap the first run of shingles by glueing the second run over the first run. ( Glue them down on the part you didn’t cut, kinda overlap them , and stagger them a bit with the shingles below.)
I do a lot of scratch building for my layout and like to use Google Maps Street View for building design ideas. Look up an area you know to have a lot of buildings from the era you’re trying to model and use Street View to find a suitable candidate. Once you’ve found a potential candidate, use the regular street map and/or aerial view to determine the likely building footprint. Its especially fun when you can find a suitable existing building(s) located in the area you’re trying to model. For example, there is little historic photographic documentation for a particular area of a town I modeled on my layout (late 1950’s era). However, there is a Methodist church still standing since its construction in 1926, well before my layout era. Thus, I modeled this church as a landmark structure for this area and, along with the triangular street configuration, many vistors to my layout easily recognize the location even though the rest of the buildings in the scene are no more than a best guess.
SCRATCH
Some of you knows I scratch most of my structures using wood, plastic or any suitable stuff to build them in N scale
I also use left over cardstock piece, wood pieces like you, cigar box.
INSPIRATION
For the most my scratch models comes from pictures I find on the net; since I model the period 1930-1943, historical site are a never ending ressources to find a good looking building which is a real candidate to be build.
Inspiration comes also from model I see on layout tours or kit to be sold in HO since I model exclusively in N scale; but many comes from my own imagination; I try to build model which are very "eyes"catching, with numerous different roofs and materials to build the model.
THE WAY I DO
When I have make my choice of a nice model, I first sketch it on a page of paper, I also put numerous remarks around the sketch, most of the time I have on hand only one side of the building; it’s seldom to have the four walls with pictures; so the most of the time, the front facade is like the picture, but I use my imagination for the rest of them; this is not really difficult to imagine a back of a building when you have the front of it; also pictures of other building can help you to imagine the back walls or side walls if you need to model them.
I do the same for my own designed building.
A PLAN
When you are ok with the sketch and the way the building is going on, you need a plan to build it; Why, because a plan avoid for the most time to make mistake during construction, he also allow you to make change or adding some parts and see if all work together; a precise plan is very helpful to cut the pieces you need to build the model.
As a rule I don’t use any compression on my models; scale and measurements are done by comparing a car, a locomotive, a window or even a door from or around the
Marc, now that you’re in Quebec, how is your layout coming along?
I also do N Scale scratchbuilt structures. However, you are quite a bit higher level talent and ability than me. You do great work.
I once tried to do some N windows, but gave up and buy mine from Tichy.
Original poster John, I second what some others have said. Get an idea, maybe by just driving around an older section of town, and then just start working. Mistakes can be thrown away and new sections cut.
Good luck, and if possible, take some pictures for us.
Thanks for your kind comment, Jim. The shingles are paper ones, from Campbell. I used gelled contact cement to affix them to the .060" sheet styrene roofs, as I didn’t want to trust the bond to the pre-gummed backs of the shingle strips. The first structure’s roof was weathered lightly with washes of thinned acrylic paint, while the second one was painted, in a similar manner, to match the grey/green roof of the nearby station.
Wayne