All,
Does anyone have any experiences - good or bad - with cardstock kits? Would you recommend them or not recommend them? I have noticed some of these for sale on eBay recently, but I don't know much about them. They are inexpensively priced, which makes them enticing, but it also makes me wonder about the quality. I cannot ascertain their quality from the photos I’ve seen on eBay, and I have not seen any photos of them on an actual layout.
Please share any comments or photos if you can.
Thanks,
Joe
Joe, I must start by saying that I have not assembled one of these, but have made my own. That said, I have seen some incredible examples put on other people's layouts. From what I have read and seen, you can get some fantastic looking kits and then some not so fantastic. I think in the pages of "Railroad Model Craftsman", I read some article on some of the great samples that are out there. Also, I think CTT did a article some time ago. I would start off with a inexpensive kit to get your feet wet with assembling one of these. Then, move up to more expensive, yet better detailed kits. One of the companies has a free sample you can download and print if you have a printer capable of handling heavy gauge paper. Or, you can print off the best quality paper sample, use spray adhesive to mount the paper on card stock and then you can complete the kit.
Good Luck, Dennis
TCA#09-63805
I bought a couple off Clever Models http://clevermodels.squarespace.com/ they are nice, very reasonable price wise. Nice guys too. Sorry, no pictures
Jim
I posted most of this in September on another thread: really REALLY old school model railroad layout building, and since I'm lazy and didn't feel like typing it all again I just went and copied it here:
A few notes for anyone who's never built a paper model. There's a plethora of paper models out there on just about every subject you could think of and a lot you wouldn't! A lot of them are free to download but some aren't, like the excellent models at scalescenes dot com. They have bridges, roads, abutments and platforms along side their stations, factories and houses. (Well worth looking at even if you're not buying. And no I don't get a commission! :) ) Last week (September) I downloaded and enlarged from HO to G a photorealistic model of Abraham Lincoln's Springfield Ill house from build your own main street dot com. Generally all you need is Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is free, and a printer to get started.
Although it's no longer maintained, Peter J. Visser's "Iceberg Links" is THE best list of free paper model kits on the web. This is a list of links, you have to take the time to sort through the individual sites to see what each has available today. The second list I would recomend is at spacestation 42 dot com. However the ss42 list is much shorter than the iceberg list especially when it comes to architecture. Check out the crafts pages at Canon too, the Japanese version of the site has a paper GG1 and 2 Japanese steam locomotives along side famous buildings. If you want a great station, there's the Disneylad Main Street Station at the disney experience. You could change the signs from "Disneyland" to whatever you want by simply making your own. However I left it as-is and I use this 3 foot plus model with my Standard Gauge layout.
OK, back to building.
Printing: Laser printers are best. But if you're like me you have to make do with an inkjet. Just know that the inkjet toner isn't colorfast and any tiny little molecule of moisture will start the colors running. I like to use 65 pound cardstock for my models. I've tried using 110 pound card but it just made my printer wear out faster. You would think that 67 pound would be stronger than the 65 but I've found the opposite to be true. The 67 pound is COVER stock, not CARD stock so it's flimsy and sucks up Elmer's glue like a sponge. You can print delicate parts like rooftop ironwork railings on clear overhead projector sheets to save yourself from cutting all those little details by hand. Vellum is a good translucent material for windows but be sure the ink has dried completely before handling or letting the next page come down on top of it in your paper tray. Cardstock is available in a multitude of colors in the scrapbooking and cardmaking sections of your local craft store and/or at office supply stores. Bright white is obviously best for most jobs, but having black on hand to block light penetration comes in handy as a backing material for lighted structures.
Building: Card stock is a weak construction material so the bigger you go the more support it's going to need. The first way to do that is to have strong glue tabs that follow the entire length of a joint. But if that's not enough, you may need some balsa or basswood supports inside the structure. Corrugated cardboard, foamcore board and heavy cardboard like the backs of paper tablets or cereal boxes are great too. Anything that's lightweight and sturdy will work. You can even print the parts on regular 20 pound copy paper and glue them directly to balsa backing.
Cutting: I have 3 or 4 types of scissors and a box of #11 blades always at the ready. Cutting card will dull blades quickly so I buy my #11's in bulk. Cut interior parts and openings (windows, doors, spaces between details) with the #11 blade on a self-healing cutting mat. A sharp blade on a cutting mat will flow through the cardstock like butter, but the tip may get stuck in the mat. Use caution. Use scissors to cut out the rest. Sharp manicure scissors with curved blades come in very handy and are the best way to cut rounded parts. You can often find scissors in sets in either the nailcare section of a pharmacy or in the papercrafting or sewing sections of craft stores.
Scoring and Folding: Scoring glue tabs is essential. Use either a dull blade or a sharp one but be sure to have a light touch. You're just barely scraping the surface so the cardstock will fold better in straight lines. Using a steel ruler is best, but if you have a practiced hand you can do it without. The fold itself will straighten any defects in your cutting line. There are 2 types of folds, Mountain and Valley. A mountain fold means your bending the card down and away from you if you're looking at the printed side of the part. A valley fold is just the opposite, bending the paper up towards you and the printed side. I generally score my valley folds on the front side then flip the part over to fold it down. If you bend slowly, the scoring line will show itself from the back and you can get the fold done easier. Use barbeque skewers or dowel rods to make columns, cylinders and cones. Roll cones from the tip of the cone on a pointed rod like a skewer. Roll columns around dowels and either take the dowel out, or cut it to length and glue the card right to it. Cardstock doesn't like to roll so you may want to print details like small columns on regular 20 pound copy paper and glue that directly to a dowel.
Gluing: I like to use a sharpened bamboo barbeque skewer to do most of my gluing. I've found that the length of the skewer gives me more control than a toothpick, and I can sharpen them with an emory board very easily. (Sharpening is how you get rid of the glue build up.) I apply the glue as a thin film down the area to be joined. If I'm doing it right, it's drying almost faster than I can get the parts together. Glue longer tabs 2 or 3 inches at a time and fold the parts back to keep the edges straight. For larger applications I use a brush. I took 2 amber pharmacy type pill bottles with child-resistant caps and made a set of gluing tools. In one bottle I keep a moderate amount of Elmer's Glu-all. (The school glue is too watery) It dries clear and fast. In another bottle I bored a hole in the lid the size of my brush handle and I keep it filled with water. That and a paper towel to dry the brush off keeps you from running back and forth from the sink. When laminating large surfaces together, I like to use 3M brand non-wrinkling glue sticks. It's a clear glue that goes on easy and won't cause the cardstock to warp like white glue will. (White glue sticks included) It's very handy when you want to apply sheets of black cardstock inside your structures so interior illumination won't leak through. Laminate those parts as you go but you'll need to be sure the glue tabs in the corners line up with the original part, not the backing sheet.
Finishing: It's all in the details. Cutting and assembling things like sanding tubes, steam lines and grab irons can be a pain in the butt. But the more detail you add, the better the model will look just like anything made from plastic, wood or metal. If your kit is of high quality and has things like individual folds for each stair or plank of siding, paper models can be very convincing. Just remember that if you're inkjet printing standard weathering techniques won't work. The weathering has to be in the printing, not added later.
Designing: There are as many 3d modeling programs out there as there are paint and photo-shopping progs. I use metasequoia. It's free and easy to learn but not easy to build models in perfect scale. You have to eyeball everything and texturing isn't easy. The second essential program is Pepakura. Pepakura unfolds the 3d renderings and flattens them into paper model parts. Pepakura also allows you to determine the height of a model in millimeters, decide where you want the glue tabs to be, lets you re-align the parts and add notations and numbers where you want them. Without Pepakura, designing a paper model is nearly impossible. For texturing I use Adobe Photoshop. You can download textures for free from various sites and find everything from wood siding to rust spotted concrete. A texture is just a photo and while you may be successful in making them work with a 3d rendering program like metasequoia, I like to go back-in after the Pepakura stage and finish the parts by cut and paste with photoshop.
So, that's paper model building in a nutshell. Over the years I've designed models of castles and rides from Disney theme parks, a small village of european style buildings for use with Marklin HO and in larger forms with O and G, a Thai train station and a temple from photos I found on the net and a whole bunch of other stuff including a WDW monorail with track. I've also built models from hundreds of designers including an amost complete inventory of the world's rockets including old Soviet R-7's and secret stuff like M.O.L. and the Russian N-1 moon rocket. My collection also includes famous world landmarks, Japanese pagodas and even toxic waste drums that I use in a Three Mile Island commemorative car. I've built commercial kits too like the ones from Dover. However I've found that some pre-printed kits are on glossy cardstock that the glue can have a hard time adhering to, so extra care and construction time is advisable.
You can find a paper model of just about anything out there, all you have to do is search!
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Forgot to mention...
When you fold cardstock along a score line, the white inside will show through. Having a collection of artist's color pencils on hand is a good idea. I use Prismacolor or DeWent pencils since you can usually buy them individually at art supply and craft stores, but they also come in sets of various sizes.
Thanks for the replies Dennis, Jim, and Becky. Your responses have given me confidence about Cardstock models. I am hoping to find some row homes that do not take up a huge amount of space. I will visit the websites you all referenced to see what I can find.
Becky - I am going to cut and paste your tutorial to a Word document and save it. It was an amazing lesson.
Regards,
Thanks!
Something else I thought of since yesterday. Many papermodel designers create their kits based on ease of construction rather than scale dimensions. Depending on the format of the files, altering the size can either be as easy as cutting and pasting jpegs or as difficult as printing "current view only" in Adobe Acrobat Reader till you get the size you want. The Disneyland station I mentioned is closer to small G scale than it is to O gauge. Similarly the Haunted Mansion models at Ray Keim's haunted dimensions site look better with S gauge. So you have to take a lot of them with a grain of salt.
Also, check out the construction tips my friend Bob has over at his site: the disney experience dot com since he works strictly with 20 pound paper. His models are phenomenal!
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