What I did while my broken ankle was healing...

Hi George • Excellent structures, my favorites are the Camera & Train Shop. 

George,

 

Great work, and great photography too.

Those look excellent.

 

Really nice. This technique is so underrated today. Thanks for sharing.

 

Fred

Hi George • You said, that you are printing these structures on 120 lb. card stock. What brand of printer & model are you using? I have work with these structures and found that my home printer did not give me a quality print. I e-mailed the structure to a photo lab and had them printed on flat photo paper. Using their photo quality process, not ink jet. They came out OK. Are you using a home ink jet printer, if so what brand & model.

    Other members who use a Home Ink Jet, what brand & model are you using? 

Thanks Gary........

Beautiful work and precisely executed.  The lighting especially nice.

Great job the buildings look terrific!!!!!

Hi Gary,

I use an Epson XP-820 inkjet printer. It's one of the few printers that will handle 120 lb. cardstock. It's a direct feed from the rear of the printer, one sheet at a time, but it works and has great quality. The paper comes from Michaels. I used to use Red River paper but it's very expensive after shipping and the product from Michaels is easily just as good. I order it on line.

 

George (G3)

George, those are beautiful buildings; beautifully shot.  You have serious skills.

 

How about a "how to" thread.  Plenty of excellent threads using kitbashing of plastic kits; custom made structures from Plastruct and other vendors; but, I don't recall a cardstock "how to."

George.......

 

Buildings all look very nice. Interior of the dry goods building is really neat, as were the others, but that was my favorite.

The toe bone connected to the foot bone, the foot bone connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone connected to the leg bone, the leg bone connected to the hip bone, etc.  Anyone remember that old song?

nice work "G3" - you seem to do doing well with the ankle - wish you well

 

rdeal

Well despite being "Misery"-able Good work! "I'm your number #1 fan"

Annie bought you the right paper I see.  Excellent lighting, and window views

 Caan see now there no deBates about paper being oogie or anything.

 

 

 

Hope your smiling 

That sure is a wonderful way to speed up the healing process. Beautiful new structures for your layout.

Fantastic.  More details on how you made the interiors and lighting would be useful.  I have been a bit worried about using lighting, even LEDs, in cardstock buildings, due to the heat. 

Beautiful buildings. Great craftsmanship.

Very cool!

 

Peter

Great way to pass the time while you heal! And the buildings turned out great!

 

--Greg

Hey Bob, I haven't thought about that song for quite awhile. When I was teaching music in elementary school, I had a bunch of 2nd graders dress like skeletons and reflective paint on the bones under black light sing and dance that song. Little kids love to sing it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

 

Hey Pingman, I'd love to add some "how to" tips to this thread, but it will probably be a few days. I'm having a piano overhauled and that's taking up my time early this week. But, I'll be back.

 

Hey Lee, I use the rolled LEDs and get them off eBay. I use the warm-white for normal lighting and the cool-white to simulate fluorescent lights. Also, Evans Designs sells individual LED chips that work on stairs, porch lights, etc. I'm strictly 12 VDC with a few dimmers if I need them. I also get my power supplies from Evans or MicroMark. I have one on the layout and a small one for model building. I usually cut a channel in the foam board the size of a 3 light strip, then glue it in the channel (1/16" deep). The wires I attach with a soldering iron, not very hot, just enough to melt the solder. I use solder paste lightly on everything, including tinning the wires. One touch and it's soldered. With paste, the solder flows from the iron directly to the connection. Slick as silk. In ceilings I usually glue the lights to a piece of bass wood and run it the length of the ceiling. In all my models, the roofs are removable (friction fit) so I can work inside if need be for replacing lights or fixing an interior. I'll include some photos later this week.

 

Hey Adriatic, Very Clever. I loved the "Misery" -able.

 

Hey All, thanks so much for the compliments. It was a work of love and I still intend to make more. I think my next project will be a Quansot Hut. Clever Models has a cool looking one. I use 120 lb stock simply because it's thicker and gives more of a 3D dimension to the model. I've tried everything from a piece of photo paper to cardboard. Nothing works better than heavy cardstock. Easier to glue too. It just uses lots of Xacto blades. Good think Walmart sells them. Right now I'm installed the 2nd level on my layout. Like I said, more photos coming.

 

Thanks again,

George (G3)

 

 

 

Hey George,

 

Wow, what great buildings.  My favorite is the camera shop,

but really tough call they are all excellent.

 

Inspiring !

 

Thanks

 

Tom

G3, whenever you can post on the "HOW TO" will be great.  Thanks for the reply.

some of the nicest that I have seen!!!

 

- walt

Amazing work!

thank you for sharing

Andre.

Great work, you've inspired me to try my hand with cardstock building. Thanks.

 

Jay

Nice work George…...

 My last three printers inks dried up before I used them up. The cost of new inks nearly exceeded the cost of a new printer. I kept one to scan with, but I doubt I could even run it on my computer today. I haven't looked at one twice in about 10 years.

 But, I have caught myself pricing them again. Twice now, while just walking through stores .

Your fault, George! Your fault.   

How about a "how to" thread.  Plenty of excellent threads using kitbashing of plastic kits; custom made structures from Plastruct and other vendors; but, I don't recall a cardstock "how to."

PLUS 1

 

I would love to see some photo's of the construction / build process.

 

Thanks for sharing.  These look wonderful!

Ron

 

 

George you really brought those pictures to life!! the interior details are exceptional. thanks for sharing 

Truly amazing effect from card stock George - Thanks!

 

You are fortunate that you've had this time to recuperate and focus on a worthwhile project. I fell at home weed eating a couple of years ago and sustained a bad fracture. 3 days later we had a prospect to see our house that was for sale so I was hopping around on my 'good' leg trying to help the wife vacuum, and straighten up. We got an offer and was also contacted by the 'other RR rag' to do a feature on our layout that wasn't quite complete. For the next several weeks I scrambled around the basement on crutches in a cast with trees, ground cover and texturing material to do a quick scenery job on the layout and start taking photos of it for publication.  I was on and under the layout with lights and camera and moving locomotives, cars, and the like setting up shots.  

As soon as I had set and taken several hundred photos of much of our collection on the layout I had to begin the heart-wrenching job of dismantling it. Whew - what an ordeal.

Despite all the frenzied activity, I prayed for and 'spoke healing' to my ankle for several weeks prior to seeing the young surgeon for a check-up. I wanted out of that cast! He assured me that "A man my age" could look forward to several more weeks/months in the cast. To his surprise, my fractures healing was much further along than he expected (especially for a man my age) and he cut me out of the cast and put me in a boot. I thanked the Lord Jesus all the way home!

Ron045-I'm planning a thread on building the models. It's going to take longer than I thought to do something worthwhile. I'd like to include most facets of the project including glues, tapes, tools, interiors and lighting.

 

c.sam-Wonderful story...our lives get so complicated sometimes and then "bam", a life changing accident comes our way. I have to say, if I haven't already, that my wife was my salvation. She just made life go on even though I was unable to do about 90% of my normal things. One thing that was good was: I could still eat. HAHA

 

George (G3)

George, it's almost hard to tell in you pictures what's in relief and what's just a flat drawing. It's all very convincing and is leading me to not get so hung up on 3-dimensional brick work which is either hard to make, expensive or both. The blue-white LEDs do simulate fluorescents very well and are less expensive than the miniature fluorescents. And those do take a full power supply just to light one building, plus it needs a starting circuit.

 

I'm finding that LEDs produce such little heat as to be inconsequential to any kind of material we build with. A very nice source of DC power supplies I'm finding is all of the obsolete electronic chargers that every one of us has lying around the house. The best are old laptop power supplies. They're often 12 VDC and have prodigious amperages relative to those needed by LEDs.

 

To avoid overloading these power supplies you need to be conscious of how series and parallel circuits work vis a vis current loading. Series circuits have a constant amperage and have the source voltage dropped in proportion to the resistance in each component on the string. So 4 LEDs in series still only consume 20 milliamps, but you can't put more than 4, 3-volt LEDs in series or you won't have enough voltage dropping over each to fully illuminate them.

 

However, in a parallel circuit, the voltage remains constant and the current becomes the sum of the parallel legs. With LEDs only using 20 milliamps, you have have quite a few in parallel even with a modestly sized DC battery charger. I try not to use those producing less than 1 amp. Clip off the connector on the end, and put some form of good termination means, making sure to keep the positive and negative leads identified. They all have a white stripe on the positive lead. I use crimp on ferrules on the ends, but you could use spade terminals, or just tin the ends.

 

Thanks to the people who invented the LED. You gotta love them! And now the OLED TVs are getting big. That's another huge step change in our ability to see images. We're probably no more than 5 to 10 years away from when entire walls in our dwellings will be capable of producing high-resolution images with no heat.

 

Trainman200: Thanks for your comments, especially the one I quoted. I envision entire walls, not just to see TV or photos, but to redesign the interior of our homes: color schemes, wall designs, and on and on and on. 3D Furniture? Unfortunately I'll never see it, but my children and grandchild might. It's fun to think about, isn't it?

 

George (G3)