Railroad Redux » Micro-Mark

SS Ltd. Dorothy’s House: Part 1, Cardstock Walls

Dom — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:00:03 +0000

As a Christmas present my wife gave a the Scale Structures Limited model, Dorothy’s House. This is a cardstock and cast metal craftsman model of a brick house with all of the fancy “gingerbread” decorations.

Upon first opening the box it was slightly intimidating to see the sheer amount of parts, which were separated into different bags.

I read the instructions completely and then dove into the kit. The first step was to indentify the walls and floors and cut them from the rest of the cardstock parts. I then used 3M contact cement to glue the “wallpaper” onto the inside of the walls:

In the picture you can see the large amount of parts in their respective bags. Also you can see how I turned the pieces right side up so that I could trim the wallpaper to fit the panels.

Once I had put the wallpaper on all of the walls I was able to start construction. I used the the magnetic jig from Micro-Mark to assist in building the walls. By using waxpaper in the jig I was able to easily remove the model once the glue had dried. Per the suggestions in the manual I did not glue the back wall (the large one) in place as I want to be able to remove it to add furniture and people at a later date.

For glueing the walls to the floor panels and each other I used Elmer’s Wood Glue. The 3M blue painters tape was very helpful in holding the various wall panels together while drying.

In the next post I will show how I completed the remaining wall panels and installed the floors.

ConCor Bakery: part 1

Dom — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:17:14 +0000

I recently started working on a plastic model, the Bakery from ConCor. It is a rather simple kit, representing a brick building with large windows. I chose this building since it looks similar to many of the old commercial buildings around Oakland, CA.

I was rather surprised upon opening the box and finding a model molded in a shiny dark blue, and the detail parts in a bright green. I almost gave up right there, until I looked a little closer and noticed the fine detail molded into the walls of the kit. I quickly cleaned the parts and assembled them in the magnetic jig, as shown in the last post. Here is a picture of the assembled walls in the jig:

After using a solvent type glue to assemble the major parts of the model I primed the building inside and out, using a gray primer. My first attempt at painting the brick was to drybrush the brick color directly over the primer, with rather poor results (still kinda blue).

After this rather poor result I went to the internet for ideas to paint the bricks. I visited the NMRA website for ideas, which I will discuss in the next post.

Product Review: Micro-Mark magnetic gluing jig

Dom — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:46:12 +0000

Another tool that I recently acquired was the magnetic gluing jig from Micro-Mark. This is a very simple tool in that it is just a metal plate with edges bent up at 90 degrees, and some magnets for holding pieces. Using magnets this way allows infinite variation in how they are placed to hold pieces next to each other.

I used this jig in the construction of a recent plastic model. Since I was using a solvent type glue, this jig allowed me to assemble the parts and hold them in place before applying the glue.

For helping in creating square corners this tool was excellent.

Overall: 9.5
Instructions: 10
Value for price: 10
Overall quality: 9

Using the Weighting tool

Dom — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:11:04 +0000

Once you have completed building the tool it is now time to use it. To properly use the tool you put the car onto the track (the re-railer makes it much easier). Hook the coupler into the Kadee tool and look at the markings at the opposite end of the car. Look at the mark closest to the end of the car to find your weight, it will be the number marked plus 1 ounce.

For example, this uncompleted InterMountain car reaches the line marked 3 1/2, so I will need to make sure that the car weighs in at 4 1/2 ounces.

I measure my cars on a jewler’s scale, but any scale capable of measuring in ounces can be used.

Here is a picture showing the weights (available from Micro-Mark) installed into the car, as you can see I needed to add 2 ounces.