HINTS AND TIPS - THE FOLLOW ON
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Yet Another way to make trees quickly By Trevor Nithsdale
I have been gathering Pine Cones in at the bases of trees near me, making sure they are dry and spray canning them green and coating with ground foam. They seem to make a good little fir tree.
Last edit: by xdford
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A thin easy to make cartridge/cassette for a fiddle yard By Phil Parker and Trevor Gibbs
Phil spotted and reported in mremag, using a cartridge made from older Triang platforms stuck together and used upside down with the end bits removed. This to me was clever but it could be duplicated by using communications box conduit which is also about the same size as the Triang platforms, could be cut to any length and several sizes for that matter, probably available freely as offcuts from any network installer. Cut to length, lay and glue some set track or flextrack and your cassette is made!
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Fixing Bachmann Ezy Track and Kato Uni track to bases By Several Modellers
The easiest way to fix track base track could be to place a dab of PVA glue on the outside of the base. A small drop is usually strong enough and some hot water will be enough to break the joint should you change the layout.
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Making a Wheat Field By Several Modellers
Got an old brownish coloured doormat you cannot bear to throw out? Need a wheat field for that farm to represent mid/late summer? Well, satisfy both of those conditons and use the door mat as a wheat plantation
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“Un-Caulking†a Caulking Tube Pt 1 By Several Modellers
I use a drywall screw. Then I can just pull the congealed plug out with the threads using a pair of pliers – Neil Edwards
I either plug the opening with a drywall screw or put a sandwich baggie over the end of the spout and wind it tightly around the tube.
Another trick is to use a Unibit to drill a tapered hole in the end of a scrap block of 2x2 wood and push the tube's spout into this hole. The wood block only needs to be about 3 inches long. - Chris Cole
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“Un-Caulking†a Caulking Tube Pt 2 By Crandell Overton
Among the other many materials I always seem to have within arm's reach in my train room, besides at least two partially used cylinders of latex caulking, is a role of the green painter's masking tape. I simply tear off about 2" and spiral wrap it toward the top with the first wrap about halway up the plastic nib.
At the top, I pinch it all together and have found that to be good for several months. After a year, I often must cut off more nib to make a wider opening, insert a Swiss Army Knife corkscrew into the nib, yet another tool always with me, and twist it down to its full depth. A vigorous yank outward, and my access to usable caulking is once again restored.
Last edit: by xdford
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Kick Lighting to avoid shadows on backdrops
By Richard Lawn
Room lighting can cast shadows on your backdrop ruining pictures and viewing. A shadow of a tree or structure looks horrible on the backdrop. I have a tip on how to eliminate lighting shadows on backdrops and have used this method successfully on my previous Richlawn Railroad layout. The trick is to leave a small (2 - 3") gap between the back of the benchwork and the backdrop / wall. Next, place a light or lights underneath the layout where the light can shine up in the gap onto the backdrop. I used can style uplights with standard (dimmable) bulbs. The uplights must be connected to a dimmer so that the light level can be varied to a level that "erases" the shadow. Finally adjust the uplight light level and presto! - the shadow is gone!
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Painting Styrene to look like wood…
By Dave Starr
For painting styrene to look like wood, light gray auto primer in a rattle can will give a nice driftwood gray look, good for things like flat car decks and unpainted stuff like fences and cedar shakes. It dries dead flat and will take any kind of top coat or drybrushing.
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Straightening Warped Plastic Carriage frames
By Frederic Begin
Many plastic passenger cars have plastic underframes that over a period of time warp. To solve this problem, you have to disassemble the car to have just the under frame, then, with a hair dryer and the under frame upside down on a flat surface such as a small square of particle board or a flat surface, carefully heat the plastic to make It to soften it to straight.
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Removing unwanted glue from Rolling Stock Pt 1
By Several Modellers
If a carriage has a small amount of glue through a mistake or similar, the spot may be removed by several methods as outlined.
If washing/ cleaning will not work, and before having to repaint, try carefully scraping the glue with a new blade or Xacto chisel. Just try not to scape too much of the paint. Mask and dullcoat. If area is too blemished, scuff w/wet/ dry paper #600 to #1000 blend into surrounding area and maybe the entire roof before dullcoat. I use this to remove/ reletter- number and usually have decent results. Of course even some light weathering will help. - Theodore Boag
If it is a factory baked on paint job, I would use hot salt water solution, 1 tsp salt in 6 oz hot water, dab on area a few times, if the cement was not a weld bond, it should remove it without a scar. - Frank Zapata
Last edit: by xdford
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Removing unwanted glue Pt 2
By Dave Starr
If it is a molded plastic car. I would try hot soapy water, let it soak, use a toothbrush on it. That will If work if the glue is white glue (Elmer's). Might work on other things. If that fails, you can try alcohol (shellac thinner or stove fuel) or mineral spirits (paint thinner or charcoal lighter fluid). There are more active solvents, but most of them will eat paint and/or plastic.
Think about repainting just the roof of the car. Mask it off, spray it with a rattle can. For an old heavy weight car, dark gray auto primer gives a very realistic roof. For an bright metal colored streamliner, an aluminium paint will look like they scrubbed down the roof to get the soot and crud off. Painted UP cars had a gray roof, maroon PRR cars had a black roof. Do a little research on your car to find a plausible roof color.
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Fitting Point Ground throws to a Foam Base
By Brent Davis
I use Caboose Industries Ground throws so to fit them to my foam base area or my raised areas where I have cork roadbed, I pour “little pads of concrete†around the layout.
Actually it is plastic molding. It is the same thickness as the cork roadbed. It comes in a 8' length for about $1.00 a length here in Canada. You could also use wood, hardboard or something else. I cut about an inch off and paint it gray to represent a concrete base. Caulk it to the foam and caulk the groundthrow to that. I have never had one come loose yet.
For track mounted directly to foam, I just cut out a little square in the foam and set my little pad of concrete into the foam.
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Sealing Rivers and Creeks
By Kevin Brennan
I have carved my ponds and streams into pink foam, so they really do not need much sealing. Even so, I cover the rough foam with plaster cloth to get a more even bed, and then I rub that with white glue until all the little holes are gone before.
Sometimes the first pour seems to disappear, but it's being wicked up into the plaster surrounding the pond. Nevertheless, I always cover the floor below the pond under the layout, just in case there is a leak.
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Ballasting trackwork across baseboard joins can lead to expansive and expensive problems!
By Tauranga Model Railway Club
On layouts where track work crosses the joins between MDF or chipboard boards, problems
can occur when the diluted glue/detergent mix used to ballast the track work seeps down
into the join. The glue soaks into the edge of the board causing it to swell, lifting the track
into a pronounced hump. If this happens, the swelling and the hump are there to stay!
There is no easy way to cure this once it has happened other than to scrap the lot †boards
and all †and start all over again! Ouch!
Fortunately the problem is easy to avoid. Before laying your boards, seal the edges where
the track is likely to cross with undiluted PVA such as Unibond. Later, when you are ready to
start laying the track, paint the entire track bed area with a coat of PVA †it must be
undiluted †making sure you include all areas to be ballasted and allowing a generous margin
on either side. Take particular care to seal board joins, screw holes and any other breaks in
the surface of the board. When dry, repeat with a second coat. Once your track has been
laid, before you start ballasting, check for and PVA any new holes such as wiring or point
motor holes. Hopefully this should stop any problems, but it is always wise not to be too
generous with your ballasting glue just in case.
This may sound like overkill †it probably is, but the alternative does not bare thinking about!
Of course, if you want a humpâ€shunting layout, please feel free to disregard the above!
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Preventing “Light Leakage†from LED's used as Headlights
By David Wood
If you are using 3MM LED's for headlights, light leakage can be a problem. I use heat shrink. I use a size that is smaller the the LED and stretch the shrink until it will fit over the LED. Then cut to a length that will just let the tip of the LED show. Then hit with a heat gun. This makes the shrink very thin and keeps the light pointing forward only.
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Matching Speeds on Locos running on DC only Pt 1
By Dave Starr
As I run in DC mode, usually I limit multiple unit running to reasonably similar locomotives, say an A-A pair of Athearn F units, three Athearn GP38s, an A-B-B-A set of Proto2k Alco FA units, a pair of IHC Moguls. On DC, similar locomotives all run about the same speed. If I have trouble I put the faster units in front.
If reasonably similar locomotives show a wide variation in speed, I trouble shoot to find out why the slow unit runs slow.
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Matching Speeds on Locos running on DC only Pt 2
By Bernie Spry
The easiest for me is to run one brand together and when I was in N Scale, all my engines were Atlas brand with the same speed motor. I had no issues with different speed.
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Feeding Wire Through a Foam Base
By Larry Roberts
My first layout when I lived in an apartment was comprised of two layers of two inch thick foam laminated together. For feeding wires through the foam, I used a piece of 1/8" brass tubing. I bevelled the edge of one end so it was "sharp". I could easily twist it by hand down through the foam and out the bottom.
With the tubing through the foam, I fed the wire down through the tubing and out the bottom. I then pulled the tubing out of the hole leaving the wire in place.
I found just making a hole in the foam without a guide, the wire would invariably get caught halfway through and ball up. This solved that quickly and easily.
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Representing Glass Block Windows
By Several Modellers
Make a grid using a printer and print it onto clear sheet on one side and spray a sheet of clear styrene with Dullcote or the equivalent. (- Gerry Evans)
Printing the mortar lines on a frosted sheet of transparency stock. The mortar lines are not always finished as recessed between the glass blocks. You will have definite mortar lines on a translucent material.
Many inkjet, photo printers, and laser printers can print on transparency stock. The material is made for both inkjets and laser printers with different surfaces coatings of the sheet. Print in the color of the mortar you wish to depict.(- Mike Bauers)
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Straightening Exacto Chisel Blades
By Ron Wood
Don't throw out that chisel tip Xacto blade, if it seems to be getting dull. Many of us use it for removing surface plastic details, among other tasks, so it is an important and regularly-used tool on the hobby workbench.
I use a piece of 1000 grit wet/dry paper (auto stores, Walmart) on a smooth surface and treat it the same way as if I was sharpening the knife blade on a wood block plane- run the angled blade side (blade only, not the whole thing) at a slight angle (15-30 degrees) backwards several times (>5<15), so that it is nice and shiny. Then, turn it over to the flat side and make just a few passes (5 or <) (backwards, again), to remove any knurl that formed on that side from the first sharpening action.
You can do this many times with the same blade, and get hours more use from one blade. Yes, I know it sounds like I am being cheap – and you are right - purposefully!
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