Becky,
You might have some trouble making the epoxy stick to aluminum. I suggest you rough up the area that you want to glue using some coarse sandpaper.
I am going to show your creation to my daughter, who, at age 41, is still nuts about Disney World.
When I'm not stripping away rust from the monorail cars, I build models that require a lot of repition. Making trees falls into that category, as do my latest works.
I'll need a t least a dozen of these skyway gondolas and although they're not hard to build, they are tedious!
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Thanks Bruce!
Truthfully I don't really know how long they'll last. Most of the buildings are 65lb cardstock printed on an inkjet. Inkjet toner has almost as little resistance to sunlight as it does to water. Humidity also makes the cardstock wobbly. Unless or until I can use a better printing method the models will have a very brief life expectancy in normal daylight conditions. BUT... with all that in mind I've always tried to make it easy to replace the paper parts of each diorama while keeping the landscaping intact. So, who knows what they'll look like when it comes time to replace the buildings. I've always hoped that someday I'll be able to print directly to styrene or something other than paper.
Get busy inventors! : )
This thread has me trying to come up with a reaction to being flabbergasted by awe. Through the years I have seen many a creative layout and this one wins the Oscar. One thing that occurred to me is this layout deserves to be preserved, not to be morbid..but have you considered leaving it to the National Children's Museum in Indianapolis? It's just too remarkable to be pulled apart and put into cardboard boxes..only to gather dust..
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
Well, I got the idea from all the glue drippings I've scraped off the glass top of my desk over the years. My original plan was to bake the molds and then try pressing raw Sculpey back into them. But I realized that it would be practically impossible to get the figures out of the molds and baking them in the molds might just fuse the two together. Obviously flexible molds would have been better, but I didn't have the supplies or the knowledge to make them. So that's where I made the leap to hot glue. From years of trying to get it off my desk I learned that the glue became fairly flexible after heating. So, if I couldn't make a flexible mold, why not try making flexible figures that I could peel out of the molds? I tried it, and it worked!
Some of them were molded from seated figures, bust most of them I only molded the torsos. I then drew pairs of shorts, skirts, legs, etc. directly onto the glass with the glue gun. Once they cooled I was able to scrape them off the glass with my X-Acto knife. Then I assembled the parts and started painting. Acrylics don't stick too great to hot glue but Testors enamels do. I also found it fairly easy to trim and modify the molded figures just enough to turn their overcoats and fedoras into shorts, polos and baseball caps.
A few of the riders (the ones with their arms in the air) were made without molds. I just doodled them on the glass and built up the body shapes by layering the glue. When a front side was done, I peeled it and added some glue to the back to keep them from looking "flatbacked". The right kind of tapered glob could give a woman long hair. A thin buildup on the front of the head could create a hat brim and a pair of circles atop the head gave the figure mouse ears! It is a Disney layout ya know! : D When I get more Sculpey I'll try some standing figrues. I can use all I can get and this turned out to be a fairly convincing and economical way to populate the park. And yes, it is easy to burn your fingers! ; )
The Monorail started out as 5 Marx M10000 steel cars. The front and back end "nose" pieces were made from aluminum sheet stock. 2 of the skirts are brass but the other 8 are 1cm high strips of the same aluminum stock I used on the "noses". All will have a maximum of 2mm of surface to attach to the car bodies just above where they bend in towards the wheels. The skirts clear the rail tops by about 1mm on a curve. I have Loctite 5 min epoxy.
Looks great as always. How'd you come up the idea to make figures from hot glue? I never would've thought of hot glue for something like that. The most I've ever accomplished with hot glue is to burn my fingers.
What type of surface will the side skirts be attached to? Will there be any stress on them? Right now, I am thinking ordinary five minute epoxy would work. It's easy to work with, and is forgiving.
Yep, the only problem now is holding her back! She runs like thunder with a modern motor under the hood!
I've been working on the monorail the last few days and the "caboose" is primed (Shopping for paint tomorrow) and close to fully assembled. I'll need something better than hot glue to attach the brass (or aluminum) side skirts, so most likely I'll epoxy the skirts on all 5 cars at the same time. But I've never worked with epoxy so...
Today I chemically stripped the "loco" shell and have been hard at work figuring out how to put together the most economical track system. "Most economical" would mean simple square pillars at track junctions only and let the rails hang free between pillars. More or less the same as most commercial elevated trestles, which should be OK since the train is very light. Or, I could cut 1/4" plywood sections to mount under the rails and link larger sections with track clips. It's the last major hurdle to overcome.
Inspirational work, as always. (I love Sculpty). Did you ever solve the weight issue on the 'monorail'? Here's a newly found video of the park from 1956.
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
Incredible!!!
Well let's try this again with the new forum format...
Big Thunder Mountain improvements:
Yeah it works now!
Anyhoo, I added the building and tower and new landscaping up front. Also, believe it or not, the passengers seated in the coaster trains are made from hot glue! I made some molds of commercial figures using Sculpey, dusted them with baby powder and then poured hot glue into them. They're a bit tough to remove, but it worked fairly well. I was even able to add mouse ears!
experiment three:
I shortened the image code to this:
and it still worked. Reminds me of the old days when we had to do this "[ img ]image[ /img ]" to post an image.
..........Wayne..........
What I am doing...
Got your image code from flicker: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7120/7553304458_66e41a86de_b.jpg
Entered in CTT using this code:
(This is the same code PhotoBucket uses.)
Giving this result...
Spectacular scene you built there. Great photography too. :-)
ficker.photo.test.2
ficker.photo.test 1
Wow! Nice work. :-)
Small World:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67831229@N02/7553332202/#
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67831229@N02/7553310288/in/photostream/#
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67831229@N02/7553304458/in/photostream/
Glad to help. The problem is the insert media button. I fixed the links by adding "" before each link and "" after each link.
Photobucket makes posting pictures easier. In the following picture, I explain how I do it.
Thanks! Maybe it's my super slow dial-up modem?
Penny Trains Time for an update. New Tomorrowland: and Small World: Still don't know why I can't get the insert media tab to open.... Becky
Time for an update.
New Tomorrowland:
and Small World:
Still don't know why I can't get the insert media tab to open....
Looks great as always. Hopefully, the links will show properly now.
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8774x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8762x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8737x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8783x.jpg
Penny Trains Here's some more pics. (Not sure why the java isn't working to insert them.) Frontierland Station Gates of Tomorrowland Becky
Here's some more pics. (Not sure why the java isn't working to insert them.)
Frontierland Station
Gates of Tomorrowland
Great as always Becky
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8703x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8712x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8719x.jpg
I researched a lot of different radii on Ebay and various webstores like Trainz and Wholesaletrains but couldn't get the fiscal appropriation. So I'll have to stick with O31 since I have boxes of the stuff. Mom is like a Roy to my Walt and helps keep my feet on the ground and under budget. Thanks for the suggestion though!
I haven't got pictures yet, (and I'm not entirely sure why I couldn't post the latest pic of the Liberty Tree) but the new Frontierland Station is done and much work has been done on new Tomorrowland buildings. I'll get those posted soon.
Looking really good Becky!
You can also use JB Weld to fill in the seams. You can buy that in a much smaller quantity then bondo.
Once you figure the weights you need for the cars, you can get sticky lead weights for alloy rims, just peel and stick. If you go to a tire store and ask, they may just give them to you.
Instead of 031, have you thought of using Marx 034? That would have a lower profile rail then 031.
hscsltb Very nice work!! Love the Liberty Tree.
Very nice work!! Love the Liberty Tree.
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8668x.jpg
cnw1995 Becky - do you mind sharing how you outlined the roof edge in the Pirates of the Caribbean? My youngest is a big Disney fan and he loves looking at these pictures and the prior ones. ("Why can't you do that, dad?" )
Becky - do you mind sharing how you outlined the roof edge in the Pirates of the Caribbean? My youngest is a big Disney fan and he loves looking at these pictures and the prior ones. ("Why can't you do that, dad?" )
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, so I'll give you some info on how I built the whole structure. For starters, the tower was designed by Ray Keim and can be downloaded for free from his website: http://www.haunteddimensions.raykeim.com/index301.html along with all 3 Haunted Mansions and several other really cool kits!
As designed, the "Torre del Cielo" is roughly 1:64 scale. I enlarged it to 125% when I printed it for a better fit against the 1:43 (roughly) figures I'll be using around it. It's not perfectly O scale, but it looks good. In the top of the tower I backed the "clock section" with black paper and installed a light with a replacable bulb. The top of the tower also comes off to facilitate maintenance.
The walls of the building are illustration board with an enlargement of one section of the tower's stucco patern glued on. Then I used parts and pieces of the tower trim to enhance the main building's arches. On the "face wall" adjoining the tower, I drew the curving shapes by hand. Then I photocopied the uncut illustration board wall onto plain paper and used it as a template to draw the red filligree pice on a sheet of red cardstock. The parapet wall on the top was also hand drawn/measured. The tile roof is one I created a few years ago for a Germanic styled train station. I'm not 100% happy with it though, and I'll probably keep looking for a better texture to put over top.
So, by extrapolating parts from the tower kit and adding a roof texture of my own, I was able to come up with something that resembles what I was after. The "sign" came from a simple internet search and I just cut a photo someone had posted to size and backed it with black cardstock. The mast and arms are pieces of wood painted with Testors rust and the crows nest is a miniaturized version of the one from the Wicked Wench kit, which can also be downloaded for free from www.disneyexperience.com.
PS I may also add some brown gutters and downspouts just to give that extra bit of flair.
Becky you know in your local area anyway (and there the lucky ones) I bet you could sell your work to others (train and maybe doll or some that just do buildings) to make your self some nice money I bet. You do real good work.
Thanks again for sharing it looks great
Pirates of the Caribbean finished:
I started work on the Liberty Tree today:
The Liberty Tree is a replica of the original tree in Boston where the Sons of Liberty gathered in 1765 to protest the Stamp Act. The WDW version is a Southern Live Oak over 100 years old and was transplanted from 6 miles away in 1971. It's hung with 13 lanterns to, as you may have guessed, represent the 13 original American colonies.
Making 13 paper lanterns was easy enough, but lighting them was a different story. I could have gone with 13 grain of wheat bulbs in the 14 to 18 volt range, but I decided to go with 120 volt lams instead. The string I bought has 50 bulbs on brown wire and plug into any outlet. I didn't want 50 bulbs on the small tree armature I was planning to use, so about 20 of them light up the surrounding gardens which is also a staple of Disney lanscaping. The round base will have a brick wall and benches and when I get to the craft store for some greenery the extra lights in the tree will give it a bit of extra twinkle.
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