Friday, August 31, 2007, 04:20 PM
I'm sitting in my office (the local coffe house) wailing for a critical animation job to finish rendering. (my real bill paying job) and thought it would be a fine time to ramble a bit.
The GD engin house is complete but for the test build. As a companion I thought it would be nice to offer the brick inclosed water tower that is in almost every photo I've ever seen of the engine house. This has turned into two nice kits which are also mostly complete.I found a set of published plans for the G&D water tower in a very old model railroader (I think). That was a huge incentive to knock out this new model and I completed it in only 3 days. In preporation I had earlier done an internet search for water towers. I found an interesting picture of a completely inclosed hexagonal wood frame watertower. Not what I was looking for but a natural for a paper kit. I had no intentions at the time but saved the photo anyway. I promptly forgot all about it as I have hundreds of interesting pix grabbed online.
I went to work on the G&D project and accidently accessed the hex tower picture. Hmmmmm. Two days later I had a new kit that I really like. Only one more detail to call it done. I made a call to terry at St. Charles model works to see if he had a casting for the watertower spout. As always I was tempted to make it paper and i might still but I thought it would be nice to offer a casting for this detail.
Well' Terry might have somthing and if he does, we will get two new watertower kits out the door pretty quick.
We had an interesting (coincidence) happen. We have a small scale (as in weight)building. sun of a gun if walthers doesent offer the exact same model and it looks just like ours. Wow i see they also have an octagonal gate house just like ours (ours was out first) Do I see a trend here? walthers is begining to distribute our products and I must say i like the people we are dealing with there. i hate to be cinical. Good ideas are just good ideas.
Thom
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Friday, August 24, 2007, 11:01 AM
Sorry it took so long but we finally have a site that reflects our complete line. We recently began an agreement to distribute our kits through Walthers. They can reach corners of the planet that we can only dream of. The upshot of this is that your local hobby shop can now get any kit or texture for the asking. (you can still get things from us directly of course). I'm sure there will be bugs to work out. We'll find then and squash them as we go.
This was all done so we can show you what we are working on faster.
The new signage kits are a great addition and you will notice that we are now putting some things together in 3 packs. That allows us to give you a lot more for just a bit more money. The fences are a great deal at about 30 inches of fence for under $10 bucks. You will notice a slight (less then a dollar) price increase across the board. This is to cover the increase in postage. Some prices are lower as with the multy packs and the textures are staying the same.
We are always trying to make things better. A couple of months ago we doubled the resolution of our printing. Many people won't notice but it means a crisper image overall.
We hope you like seeing all the kits I've been talking about for months. we will keep them coming.
Thom
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 07:19 PM
Charlie is a higly respected modeler. He understands modeling in paper and has a feel for the history. When he asked if we would make a special texture for him, we had to say yes. here some pix he sent of the nearly finished scratch built model.
Thanks Charlie.
Thom
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Friday, June 22, 2007, 03:20 PM
I'm working on the warehouse in HO. It has some very small folds that might frustrate some folks, so heres a hint on small folds. In general try to make you folds as sharp as possible. This requires a good streight edge to use as a break. Not everyone scores their kits from the front or with a blade. This is a personel preferance as each technique has possitive and negitive side effects. For instance a score with a dull blade can be uneven and cause delaminated paper at sharp corners. My brother prefers to score from the back by crushing the fold line with a sharp point brnisher. I've never used that but I have to admit his results are great. Some who use a blade on the front accidently cut all the way through the paper. Not a disaster but deffinatly an inconvienance. In short, how ever you chose to score do it carefully. then use a streight edge to evenly support one side of the folded paper as you fold.
For very small folds it is VERY important that you fold before you cut out the piece. Small folds will tend to go soft unless you leave a quarter of an inch or so of extra paper to add support durring folding. After you have made the fold you can reflatten the part and finish the cut out then refold it. Trying to fold paper les that a quarter of an inch is almost impossible. For this and other reasons I always recomend that details be added to wals before they are cut from a sheet. Always think about leaving enough support paper untill the last steps of construction.
Wile we engineer supports for the inside of buildings it is also a good practice to use scrap paper to reinforce larger flat areas but adding an extra layer of thickness from the back. If you want more relief from a detail feel free to double up its thickness before you cut it out. This can work well for window and door frames.
thats it for today. I'll keep it coming as I think of them.
Thom
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Thursday, June 21, 2007, 10:07 PM - Tips
Promised tip
Thursday, June 21, 2007, 07:07 PM Well, I promised a tip so here it is. While taking a break from some animation work I decided to build an HO kit. I'm not a master builder like my brother but then who is? It's likely that a lot of people who build our kits have different levels of skill. I decided to build a warehouse. It's not perfect, but I'm happy with how its going.
Here's the tip. Don't try to finish in one sitting. It's not possible anyway. I recommend that you complete one major section - then walk away. Its the old "work slowly" tip that’s in the directions at least twice. I'm finding that I need to follow my own advice. The temptation is to keep going. Each assembly is very satisfying, but your focus can get soft if you try to do too much in one sitting, so relax & enjoy the process. Work slooowwwwwllllyyy. Make crisp folds and clean cuts. So far I have only built the two truck bays and I took this opportunity to write the blog to get me to stop. Card modeling in HO is a challenge. Being patient is also a challenge.
I'll post pix as i go.
Thom
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