In my case, with some help, I used a radial arm saw to cut apart some retaining walls to make them taller. That is a tool most people wouldn’t think of using for fine scenery work. (I didn’t want to try to cut it with my hobby knife and it was too long for my micro saw.) To further this post: What is the most unusual tool you have ever used to do your finish layout work? In other words, what is the tool that most people wouldn’t think to use for the purpose it was used for?
Well, I used a router in a custom built router box to cut the pit recesses for my roundhouse. I had a shop vac attached to one end and a sliding cover to keep the dust in. My wife held the vac up off the floor while I did the routing. My layout is 57" high at this area. Worked like a charm (the router box of course!).
-Bob
I had foam layout surface coming unglued from the framework… I squirted some foam adhesive bonding stuff into the crack and weighted it down with a 12,000 year old fossilized mammoth thighbone.
Fine finishing on soft wood (i.e. balsa) and plastics – A set of dental drills circa 1960.
I used an automotive floor jack to raise a peninsula of my layout one leg at a time. I installed casters on each leg so I could rotate the whole peninsula 180 degrees from its original orientation. Then I used the floor jack again as I removed the casters.
This way, I was able to do by myself what might have otherwise required 4 adult males to accomplish.[8-|]
THe most unusual tool I have used? Well, to date, it would be a roll of duct tape.
It sounds crazy, but when I was building the benchwork, a roll of duct tape came in handy for holding the components in place untill I could get the wood screws in. Before that, I was getting tired of needing 3 hands to get the various parts together.
Propane torch. It’s not a new idea, but sure seems unusual. I poored an epoxy river and used the CO from the burning torch flame to help the outgassing and prevent trapped bubbles. Really amazing how fast those bubbles rose up and burst.
I asked my dentist for old dental tools. She gave me half a dozen throwaways. Those things are very well made, and great for scraping, picking, etc.
I don’t have any mastodon parts, so when I need to weight down track, roadbed or foam while the glue sets, I use Martha Stewart’s Hors d’Oeuvres Cookbook.
Well, I don’t know if I would call it unusual or not…
I don’t have any fossilized animal parts either…
but I put play sand into {like a million} zipper-lock plastic sandwhich bags and used those to hold down the trackwork about every 6" while it “dried”.
I also use them anywhere I need to hold something down while it “dries”, or to hold something in place.
I also used a bent coat hanger end on the drill to stir paint {very low speed}, and the long straight part to poke holes through the foam for wiring to go through {carefully}…
I have been known to use the “electric knife” {from the kitchen} to cut the foam…
[8-|]
At the risk of sounding critical, what is unique about using a radial arm saw in modelmaking? I have a shopf\ul of power tools and wouldn’t think twice about using any one of them as a means to an end. If used corrrectly, a radial arm can be a pretty accurate tool and quite versatile in production.
I do a lot of building in several mediums;a nd with the exception of plastic, which one has to be careful with, the operations are quick and easy.
RIch
Actually, I have to agree - none of the suggestions so far come to the level of “Weird Old Tip”, although the mammonth bone weight is a bit atypical - probably other even quirkier items have been used in a “Ack! I have to weight this down now! What can I use??!?” mad scramble.
Heck, decades of articles have covered dried pasta (construction debris), Glad press and Stick (small part holder), crushed aluminium foil and pencil shavings (scrap metal), Future Floor Wax (Gloss Coat), empty tape dispenser rolls (cores for storage tanks), flower pot coverings (weedy ground cover), hand-held hair dryers (heat guns) and thousands of others tips. I think the used dental tool tip appeared in 25% of all MR articles in the 1980s (the authors never mentioned how they conned their dentist into giving them used tools for free, but nowadays since MicroMark and Harbor Freight et. al. selling similar sets of tools, it doesn’t really matter now).
I’m sure we will soon hear, if we haven’t already, of hobbyists using carbon fibre sheets and OLED displays and used toner cartridges and cement backing board and so on.
I’m still waiting for my dang XActo Monomolecular wire cutting tools, to cut shapes cleanly down at the atomic level
In this case, the retaining walls were plastic. For cutting the framework, it is not that unusual but for scenery, I had never heard of it before.
My trusty Steam iron to soften ballast to permit clean removal of a section track where a turnout was to be cut in. Worked great.
I once used some scalpels for some flange way cleaning, but they’re too delicate. Xacto knives are much better.
Under the heading, “Not usual for most people,” I have considerable need for a real, honest-to-Murgatroyd hack saw. Heavywall steel studs, the kind used in load-bearing walls, are ideal for C-act-like-L girders. They DON’T cut with tin snips! I also make liberal use of heavyweight angle iron which is quite thick.
And then there are the things I use to weight the flex track while the caulk sets up - phone books, 2-liter soda bottles and, for real hard cases, 16 inches of 60# rail. That last item also serves as an anvil.
As the saying goes, “If it works, it’s good.”
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Here it is, the most unusual tool to build a model railroad!
The problem when ballasting track is to get the ballast to settle nicely around the ties.
After some pondering about how to solve it, I remembered seeing how the big guys do it; Vibrations!
I then tested on my new tracks to pour some W.S. ballast on there and level it along the tracks with a brush.
Then came the new stuff, vibrations… How to achieve it? Well in my case I happened to find a suitable object of questionable origin… If I say that women seem to keep them, and stop at that?
The resulting vibrations applied to the top of the rails, settled the ballast perfectly!
Unusual? 
Did you feel a compelling need to smoke a cigarette after you finished ballasting? [swg]
Don’t know how weird it is, but I use old cassette tape boxes as squares for fitting up building sides when I glue them together.
Jim
I don’t find it unusual or wierd, but I find it unusual that no one has mentioned a laser level as a useful tool. My “Laser LevelPro”(probly can get this at any decent hardware store) is invaluable obviously for track tangents, but also for laying out curves and gradients. At about 6" long this device is applicable to any area of a layout and is also handy for scribing a structure to an existing portion of the layout - just like my real jobs when I used to work(site-work, tunnels, structural steel, paving/roadwork, and, yes, railroad track!
LehighVic
Our club has converted many of our modules to steel frames to make them stronger and easier to manage for contraction and expansion (-20 F in a trailer to 70F in a mall). These are welded together with a welder.
Not really…
But it’s amazing how cheap you get those thingies on the web…
[(-D]