HINTS AND TIPS - THE FOLLOW ON
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When Decaling and Custom Painting Rolling Stock…
By Elmer McKay
For good decals on a repainted locomotive or freight car, use a gloss coat of paint, apply the decals, then gloss coat again with clear. After the decal steps are finished, the locomotive can be lightly weathered as desired.
The final clear coat can be whatever you want to use for the over all look you are wanting to achieve, either completely flat or semi-gloss.
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Emulating Chalky Paint for signs
By Daryl Huffman
If you can get flat correction paper that was used by putting it between your typewriter keys and the paper to "white out" a mistake, This material is great to lay on the side of a building and print your sign letters so that when you pull the paper away ,you have a chalky looking letter on the building. This is much like a solid sheet of dry transfer paper.
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Weathered White Paint
By Harold Huber
I use correction tape in a roller available at a Newsagents or Stationery shop. It is about the width of clapboard siding and easy to apply.
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Simulating Corrugated Iron with Styrene
By Gerry Siegel
I have just finished a scratch build task for a friend I regularly do work for. I tried a new weathering technique that has been mentioned on several buildings groups. It uses a product called "Pan Pastel" which is regular pastel chalk ground up and mixed with a binder. The results were excellent. My friend thought that there was a bit too "heavy" a hand used and I was able to lighten it easily.
I got my from the art supply house "Dick Blick". They have a huge array of colors and a jar will last for a life time … well it will for mine because as I write this, I am 81!
Just a line to wish everyone who reads this a Merry Xmas. My apologies about not catching up with the column sooner but Younger daughter was married on Saturday and I had other things on my mind strangely enough! It is Summer here in Australia although you would not think so based on today so with the Ashes in progress and we are doing OK,,, well it might be a few more days!
Cheers everyone
Trevor
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Isopropyl or Rubbing Alcohol Strength for weathering Scribed Wood
By Al Carter
I have pretty much switched over to using leather dye (NOT liquid shoe polish) and alcohol, as I think it mixes better and gives better results. I have several bottles on my bench of different strengths and colors.
Isopropol alcohol commonly comes in 70% strength (the other 30% is water), and 91% strength. However, it is also available in 99% strengths - usually available at a pharmacy, and you might have to ask the pharmacist to order it in for you (not much more expensive than the common stuff).
Why 99%? With less (or practically no) water in the solution, there is less warping of your scribed wood pieces (and stain both sides to help alleviate this problem).
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Aisle Widths in Designing Pt 1
By Mark Reynolds
A lot depends on the number and girth of your operators. If it is a dead end aisle, you can get away with a narrower space. If it is an aisle in which people will be working and others need to regularly pass by, then you will need more breathing room.
I have been to layouts with two foot aisles and layouts with five foot aisles. You work with what you have. Sometimes you have to cheat a bit on the aisle width to gain the optimum benchwork width. Simply put, if you are planning on having more than yourself run the layout, be as generous as you can with the aisles without compromising too much on the track plan.
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Aisle Widths in Designing Pt 2
By Tim Scott
Any possibility of needing wheelchair access. 30" will accommodate most wheelchairs, but should be limited to very short distances at choke points. To turn most wheelchairs 36" is OK, but wider is definitely better. Scooters and motor chairs would need more room.
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Making Asphalt
By Raymond Fry
I make Asphalt out of White PVA Glue thickened with N scale ballast until it is the consistency of, strangely enough, asphalt.
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Making Concrete Road
By Trevor Gibbs
You can simulate older concrete roads easily using foam core board, then scribing the expansion gaps into the surface and painting a weathered surface on it. If you use 3mm thick material for the road surface, you could use 5mm thick material as the footpath/ sidewalk, again suitably scribed.
You can get this material for free from a picture framer for the cost of asking nicely, you can do miles of road for next to nothing but the cost of the paint.
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LED's for period Lighting
By Trevor Gibbs
To simulate older lighting particularly from the 1920's – 1940's era, I would recommend you use LED's only. Using a yellow LED rather than a white and for 12 volt use a 1000 ohm (1 K resistor), particularly for an older era layout which is what I use.
LED's will run a lot cooler than globes and you will not need as large a power source for many more globes. You can vary the output down to about 680 ohms which will make it brighter, 1200 will make it dimmer to take care of a few different intensities of light outputs.
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LED's in strip rolls
By Mike Bauers
You can buy 300-led light rolls for about $17 on eBay. The strips snip into prewired sections of units of three leds running on 12 volts. You can run as many lengths of multiples of three at 12-volts as you wish.
These make for great model ceiling lighting…….. Buildings or RR passenger car.
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Weathering using chalk
By Larry Smith
A method that I have not used in a long time is scrubbing a pre-stained wall with white blackboard chalk and then when you hit it with dullcoat. The chalk disappears in some areas giving you the look of a building needing painting.
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Faded Signs
By Al Carter
I run Air Mail paper - or similar, like tracing paper, or onion skin paper through my HP inkjet printer with no problems and get very thin signs that I can glue directly (white glue) onto the sides of buildings.
If you are afraid of the ink running on an HP printer, a quick overspray with a flat clear coat (Dullcoat, but an artists' fixative works just as good and is much cheaper) will seal the sign. There is no need to use regular paper and sand the back!!! And because the paper is so thin, the sign already has a head start on looking faded and worn.
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You have a siding alongside an aisle and you put…
By Charles Beckman
If you have a track with a narrow space to tha aisleway, use the length of the siding for the loading racks used to fill tank cars with specialty petroleum products, a few small pump houses and the plumbing used to connect the racks to the refinery.
Where's the refinery? Virtual, in the aisleway and you are standing in it!
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Scenery Order
By Rob Spangler
I prefer to do the ballast LAST. There are too many tasks involved in scenery that can mess up ballasted track for me to like doing it in any other order. If I somehow end up working out of order (like needing to get something done for photo purposes) I always end up having to protect the ballast and track so other scenery work doesn't cause a problem. Then again, I always view ballast as part of the scenery and not part of the track.
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Carving Plaster Moulds
By Charles Beckman
I make my masters by carving a slab of Plaster of Paris (or Casting Plaster). I then make an RTV mold of that master. I then use the RTV mold to make addition copies of the walls by pouring Plaster of Paris into the molds.
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Awnings
By John Willis
I have always just made my own awnings on my O scale layout. I am always on the watch for suitable patterns on websites. Save the image and print out on a good quality paper and cut to size. Some awnings were just flat roll outs while others had sides and front aprons.
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A Removing Paint from Newer Body Shells for repainting
By Jeffrey Wimberley
Brake fluid has been a “staple†when repainting locomotives. I stopped using brake fluid after one of my friends had a couple of very expensive loco shells from newer runs from the major manufacturers crumble after being soaked in it for a while.
Since then all I have used on plastic loco and car bodies is 91% isoprophyl alcohol. It works very well for me. There's usually a little paint left in details like vents and such but a quick scrub with a toothbrush quickly takes care of that.
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Making Strong Fence posts in N scale By Ken Church
I started out with the idea of making a cattle dock out of wood veneers but with such thin pieces there was no strength to the rails so I did the posts and rails with old credit cards; very strong and they have different thicknesses!
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Hiding Unintended Glue Marks
By Dan Garcia
Depending on what kind of glue you've used, you may be short on luck. If it is Cyano Acrylic (Super Glue) or plastic cement, you may have to weather the area to try and hide it. I have never found anything that will remove the residue without damaging the paint below.
If it is Goo or white glue, I have had good success removing excess using toothpicks. The only catch is to not go over one area too much, as it can polish the paint (if it painted with an eggshell or matte finish).
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