Houses

[Anonymous]

The answer to this may be fairly obvious, but i am trying to scratchbuild all the houses and factories on my n scale layout out of balsa wood, styrene, etc etc. The main problem i have is with the windows. Do you recomend making them out of styrene and other materials or buying them pre built. I would like to build them myself but i think that they might not look good due to how small the houses are. Also if you know any windows that are made good and look nice could u tell me what company makes them.
thanks,
Woody

[SpaceMouse]

Find out ahead of time the size of N scale windows for sale. Probably buying a couple would be a good idea. Now build a couple windows to match the size of ones you bought. If you don't like the way they look, you can use the bought ones.

[Anonymous]

thats a good idea. I never thought of that

[orsonroy]

Grandt Line and Tichy both have extensive selections of N scale windows, doors, freight doors and trimwork. Of the two, GL has a better selection and Tichy has better prices. Both have superior products.

I've scratchbuilt dozens of N scale buildings. I'd strongly suggest ONLY using styrene for fabrication. Wood's a pain to work with, takes forever to dry, is hard to cut, and has grain that's completely out of scale for anything smaller than G scale. I can crank out six shotgun houses while watching a baseball game on TV. If I had to build 'em out of wood, I wouldn't.

[CNJ831]

I happen to take just the opposite view from Ray. While I've modeled structures extensively in both styrene and wood, I much perfer working with wood. However, I'm talking bass wood, not balsa. Balsa lacks density, plus its grain and surface irregularities are far too obvious to represent real wood in HO or N scale. It also does not cut nearly as cleanly as bass wood. Further, if bass wood is painted properly, there is no indication of grain, unless you distress the wood on purpose beforehand. Although a certain few modelers may argue elsewise, nothing stains up or weathers more like wood than wood!

Regarding windows (and doors), in N scale they need to be far too delicate to be crafted by most modelers and a lot of heart ache will be saved by purchasing them from one of the detail suppliers mentioned by Ray. There is a wide selection of sizes and shapes to pick from. Also, check out your local woodcraft store and look for a corner cutter/punch. These L-shaped cutting tools come is several sizes and are meant to square-up corners in wood-working. But it turns out they can also be used to cut perfectly square (with two cuts) scale window openings in scale siding as well in seconds - a real timesaver.

CNJ831

[jrbarney]

Woody,
If your LHS can't or won't stock the corner punches, Micro-Mark has them as their items 82394 - 3/16" and 81652 - 5/16":
http://www.micromark.com

Bob
NMRA Life 0543