From time to time other hobby publications have articles that relate to recent forum topics. I thought I'd mention a couple recent ones that might be of interest to forum fans...
Garden Railways, April 2014, page 61 ..."Use 3D printing to enhance your models" by Bob Lenicheck
The article is a nice photo-text primer on the possibilities for model railroaders. This particular discussion has examples in large scale, but of course it's all applicable to other scales...such as O. There is a resource list of companies that can execute parts from your 3D drawings. And, most importantly, there is a discussion on SketchUp, (SketchUp Link), a 3D CAD program that was utilized in the creation of this article's effort.
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N Scale Railroading, May/June 2014, page 38..."The Air Eraser, a Tool to Consider", by Brian Morgan
The article shows how to remove lettering from a finished car without disturbing the basic car color. It uses the Paasche AEC Air Eraser, a product that has been around for many years. Whereas the author tried more common techniques of slow-acting solvents, extra fine sandpaper, et al, it wasn't until he used this tool with baking soda as the grit medium that he achieved a superb, controllable way of removing lettering with minimal disturbance of the basic car color. The color photo and text article shows the results of his effort on N scale cars, demonstrating that the removable process can be very finely controlled.
Being a long-time user/advocate of Paasche's products (my H-series single action airbrush is about 30 years old with nary a single performance issue....that wasn't traceable to my own stupidity!
), I've ordered an AEC for my own use. The boss (LHS) reminded me, also, that the AEC is useful for putting some 'tooth' on metal (e.g., brass) models for improved primer/paint adhesion when using the appropriate grit medium. Sounds like a potentially very useful tool!
So, FWIW, always....
KD
