outcastjack

I still haven't decided what to do with the rear elevation of the house so have been slowly working on the garden, The shed as discussed in the last post is getting there, small raised pond and flowbed sit between the house and the shed, the ensemble is made from laminated card to build up the hight with a skin of bricks around the edges, painted ballast was used to make a mound of compost for the flower bed, the plan is for roses to be in this bed. The walls are in and two of them have been fully painted, they need a lot more work around the gate and will be bedded in to the garden properly when the rest of the garden is done, the main news however the espalier tree which sits btween the shed and gate has been done. It is supposed to represent an apple which helpfully at the time of year this diorama is set (June) has no blossom or discernible fruit! =D It is only my second tree using multistrand wire and choosing an espalier took the effort out of making a convincing shape, not totally convinced by the foliage but I am happy enough with it. and just because I can, a shot through the gate

Oh, yeah, it is a great little book by Malcom Smith "Modelling buildings, methods and materials" ISBN 0950461415

After much more cutting and a surprising amount of faff trying to assemble and insert the windows (the open one in the top left hand corner was amazingly hard) the building looks like this, I have something slightly different planned for the remaining front window which is proving to be a bit more trouble than I thought. I am really looking forwards to trying to do the front it shall be an assortment of Warwickshire sandstone, cobbles and a few harder stone slabs which sit in a line immediately below the edge of the overhanging first floor, two small trees in pots will also sit on the front. (I have never modelled cobbles before so any hints would be very gratefully received. Around the back I have started to think about the garden, The 8 foot wall around the edge has stayed but inside I am moving away from my initial plan and more towards this: Against the back of the house will be a patio about 3' wide made from slabs, along the wall at the top of the picture will be a raised ornamental pond with roses behind up the wall and a shed which has been converted from the old out door toilet. along the wall at the right of the picture will be either more roses or an apple tree grown as shown below. A path will run along side the bottom wall, whilst another may run alongside the pond (this one may just be grass instead though. In the middle will be a large bed of herbs and ornamental plants. a bench will probably sit on the patio at the bottom of this picture. If anyone has any ideas or comments about this (especially if you know about gardening and can tell me which plants would work best in which locations that would be great. My idea for the Apple tree The shed will be converted from this a version of this Privy of Pendon fame ( book Copyright Malcom Smith, if anyone objects please let me know and I will remove it etc.)

I think you may have found the answer to my question of what to do with mini-me I still can't get over how fast you whack these models out and still make them awesome!

I hope you get better soon (after some modelling). I am looking forward to seeing how this progresses, I have never tried a loco kit and am trying to screw up the courage to make something so am enjoying watching this happen.

this is going to sound really dim but how do you stipple it like that? I can never get it looking right.

As some of you may know Allan Downes suggested a Tudor building challange,on this thread. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/85293-how-about-a-little-tudor-competition/ Being in exam season I was keen for the opportunity for extra procrastination... so this is the first of a number of entries which will detail my progress. It is a very simple layout sort of beer mat sized with a 2 up 1 down and a small walled back garden. The house is broadly based on a number of houses in Dunchurch (near Rugby) Principally the "Guy Fawkes House" and a number of charmingly wonky examples just around the corner. The garden is totally unplanned and I shall just play about with bits of cereal packet until I work it out. SO... It started by sketching a few ideas on the back of an envelope which were then transferred to a Cornflake packet, after i bit of hacking about the house started to emerge The shape of upstairs happened by accident and some roughly cut strips of black painted card filled in for timbers. The side wall was 20th century addition, so I painted up some Southeastern Finecast pain-bond embossed plasticard which went well until I coated it in a varnish which it turns out dissolves Humbrol acrylics... I as the house is already nothing like the Guy Fawkes House I decided to dispense with accuracy even further and have leaded windows, After much experimenting I found that scribing the sheet and then giving it a wash of black paint which was promptly rubbed off gave a passable effect. and then even better I found my idea of filling in the gaps between timbers with white painted card strips also worked rather well, which brings us to:

This will be a dump for all of the modelling I do, some of which may pop up on my rolling stock or layout threads, but this will mostly be a place for projects which dont fit into other places. A quick summery about me, my modelling is all in 4mm scale in 009, 00 and P4 encompassing 20-30s GWR and modern day London Underground. My real passion within modelling is for scenery and buildings so most of what appears here will be of that ilk. Here is a quick example of a few pieces to show what to expect, hopefully the standard will improve as I get more into it.

I can't comment on the silver bullet but the Silhouette portrait and I expect therefore its bigger brother is very good, I guess the answer is down to: what size of object will you need? And will you use the extra cutting power of the silver bullet? The bullet gets very good reviews but if you don't intend to cut anything other than styrene on a regular basis it might be hard to justify the £500 price to the the portrait's more modest £140. And that ship looks awesome, how long has it taken so far?

Please keep this thread going both of you, truly inspirational stuff. The how to bits scattered throughout are brilliant, when I have the time I will have to go through this from the start.

The slow progress with the congers is grinding on, I now have a full set (2) and have been increasing the detailing and added cradles for the girder

The Conger girder set has been progressing slowly: Lead weights added and girder cradle made, they swivel slightly to allow the load around corners as per the real thing. (sorry about photo quality) the cradle is made from 20 thou plasticard.

So a basic undriven bogie has been designed and made, the motor bogie will be designed around the same pieces. and these turned up so i can start playing around with powering them =D

I was not aware of that, thankyou! It is a very interesting resource

The first bogie side frame. I couldn't find any good photos, so much of it is guess work and obviously a lot of details are missing, please point out any wild inaccuracies (preferably with photos or drawings I can work from! =D

There is actually a bend, It is more noticeable in the flesh, but I agree it isn't at all visible in the photos, the next itteration might have a slightly more pronounced taper although when I insert the interior stucture, it should keep the bottom bit more vertical making the bend sharper.

Cheers good to know people appreciate being bombarded! I am aiming at a sort of half hearted 'how to' so I will keep at it!

No real progress, but I have dug out some old brushes and tried to reaquaint myself with hand painting: the plan is to have directional lighting (thank goodness for LEDs) and to package the power unit within the bogies. to this end I have purchased a selection of the very tiniest motors I have ever seen In addition to those I have ordered some slightly bigger more expensive ones.

Please excuse the terrible painting, I normally airbrush and my compressor is dead at the moment, but with this being a prototype i decided to get some colour on it to assess the general look. My main conclusions are: The bow end of the front of the train needs to be more pronounced. I will need to make the side from laminates rather than a single thickness to provide recesses for the handles along side the drivers door and next to the rear door. Other than that I am really happy, the sanded corners worked better than expected and the shape of the unit continues to look ok with colour.

With A stock being such a simple shape knocking up a body shell was really quick, Obviously the corners need sanding to produce the slight curve, and I think the curve for the front of the roof will most likely be produced in the same way but a slightly bigger radius, i cant think of any other way of easily producing the compound shape. Also, I would love to shove all of the drivetrain below floor level if possible so I can have a fully modelled interior, anyone know of this being done before? I will try to make something myself if nothing exists, and if all else fails I will just use a spud or blackbeatle Edit: I dont beleive the radius at the top of the cap is any bigger than the sides so ignore what I said above

And it begins...

Wow, that gate in the courtyard is fantastic, I have never noticed it before. are there any close ups?

another hour of work later: I need to design the cradle which the girder sits on and then build its twin...

Thanks, yes that was the plan, they were drawn as .5mm diameter circles and havent cut all the way through but do push material out on the reverse, although when I came to play around with it after painting the cut side actually sits more proud and works quite well with no further work, the other thing i tried was to poke a skewer through the reverse, this does have quite a good effect but took 3-4 minutes a side. Odd? are you looking at work? they are hosted on photobucket.

Hello all, Following Photobucket's cash grab the photos on the first few posts are missing and I haven't yet reinstated them, please skip to page 2 in the mean time! I recently acquired a Silhouette Portrait cutter, and have thrown myself into making my own rolling stock. This thread will detail my projects using this and any kits I make along the way, I will make plans and instructions available for the various models I make, although at the moment RMweb doesn't like the file format my drawings are in so if anyone especially wants the drawings for any of the models PM me an email address and i will send it that way. My long term project is to make a P4 model of Rayners Lane tube station so the bulk of my stuff will be LU or things I can just about justify running through (it once had coal and oil trains going to the powerstation near Uxbridge) I also model GWR in oo so stuff for that will pop up from time to time too, along with an assortment of models that have no relevance but I just fancy making. The first model using the Portrait was an MoD PFA container wagon modified from plans in model rail mag 8 years ago. It was kept very simple but I am pretty chuffed with how it came out: Then I upped the ante with a Conger YVO girder set. this took about 4 hours to draw and includes more or less all of the rivet detail, everything bar the buffers, wheels and a few H sections within the central frame will be made entirely for 10 thou plasticard. Here are the sides assembled.