I like'em, especially the ones made from the spray can plastic covers. Very innovative! I wouldn't have thought of using a heated iron in this type work.
Jarrell
Looks pretty convincing to me for a first serious try. I wanted to give some personnality to my DPM kits looking too much similar. You gave me the idea.
Scolloped edge scissor are useful to make diamond tiled tin roof in such manner as "à la canadienne". I didn't know there was other patterns than the traditionnal zigzag. That open a lot of possibilities. I think we always underrate how paper is one of the most realistic material to work with at such small scales.
Matt
Proudly modelling the Quebec Railway Light & Power Co since 1997.
http://www.hedley-junction.blogspot.com
http://www.harlem-station.blogspot.com
Nice work! Some interesting ideas on getting things in place. I have an old building from my past that I want to scratchbuild. May use styrene instead of wood as it has rods supporting the overhang from above, and your work looks like a good idea.
You mentioned trying to hand cut a scolloped edge. My wife bought a set of scissors for one of the grandchildren that had a number of different pairs of scissors each with a different pattern. I'm sure scolloped was one of them and there may have been a couple of different sizes. If she was around I'd ask her where she got them. They weren't too expensive, if I remember correctly. May have been one of those mail catalogs.
Have fun,
I have been putting off working on the facades of my DPM buildings because I thought I would mess things up with my ten thumbs approach. I also put off starting these because I thought I wanted to use thinner styrene than I had on hand. But I found a reason to use the thicker one.
These are my first attempts. I had thought I might try to put in realistic sags etc., but all the photo examples I Googled and saw downtown for real were nice and tight.
This one is just 5/8 " strip of 1mm styrene sitting on some plastic L brackets cut from old sprues. My covers are ordinary paper which, when printed looks somewhat fuzzy and faded already.
The thick styrene allowed me to bend some florist wire underneath this flat rain cover and then hold a solder point on it until is set down into the plastic. I drilled shallow holes into the building face and touched the iron to these as well to "set" them. I worked better than I hoped. Later I painted this flat rain cover green.
On the hotel I used the center hubs cut out of a matte spray paint can lid and glued them in place.
Then I added some actual fabric, painted over with acrylic to reduce the out of scale weave, and a paper circle with the hotel name on each.
On this one I just drilled holes for the florists wire supports and touched them with the soldering iron to set them firmly.
Then I set the strip of thick styrene on top, glued the top edge with Proweld, and then trimmed the supports slightly shorter then the edge of the styrene and touched them with the heated tip until the strip settled down firmly onto the supports.
Lastly I glued on another paper printed awning cover. You can see I am merely trimming the edge with pinking shears. I tried hand cutting scalloped edges and they were a mess.
So those are my quick and dirty methods. Although I cannot see any sagging ones in my real town, I suppose I could just hold the styrene over the hot iron for a bit to put in a curve before gluing my paper down. I got awning fabric patterns on the internet and then altered them with Photoshop which is handy to print them out exactly the size I want.