techniques

DIY Sculptamold

A bit of a quiet week this week, not so much to report. So instead I thought I'd share my recipe for DIY Sculptamold. This is a lumpy, lightweight paper and paster based material that holds its shape well. It is great for building up terrain, or filling in gaps around scenery.

You can buy a commercial product called Sculptamold, which is really quite excellent. Only it is quite hard to get ahold of here, I have only ever seen it on the shelves in a retail store once. So when my supply ran out, I decided to make my own.

Ingredients Toilet paper Paster of paris Glue (optional) Technique Grab some toilet paper and stick it in a mixing container. Add water and it will immediately start to break down into stringy paper pulp. Mix it up a bit. You want a small fistful.

Mt Adams scenery progress

After a long break in updates, you'll be glad to hear Mt Adams is still alive...

Despite not posting much, I've been busy beavering away on my railway. I've also been busy re-painting our bedroom, renovating a back hallway, cleaning the property, fixing some wiring, putting in new lights, tidying up in the ceiling, etc etc. Mrs A describes it as "man nesting mode".

But in between all of that, I've still got plenty done on the railway. All the electrics are in and debugged now. I've added track sensors to detect where the trains are, and wired it all up to my laptop. I can even control trains from my phone, without even turning on my computer.

The track work is also complete and mostly ballasted, and the double crossover is running very nicely. Ironing out the trackwork niggles took quite a while, but definitely aided by having trains running. I've really enjoyed getting out my various little locos and railcars and r...

Wiring and lacing

Mt Adams continues in leaps and bounds...

Last update on Mt Adams, I had been busy with paper mache. Since then the whole lot has had a good coat of browny paint from our top secret strategic stockpile of test pots. The double crossover has been mounted and I've designed some laser-cut servo-based point motor mechanisms that are recessed into the plywood base (so they don't foul the polystyrene scenery base).

The upper station has had its track laid, as has the upper tunnel.

Yesterday I finished placing all the remaining trac...

Experimenting with laser cut bricks

A slight diversion today as I experiment with making laser cut bricks.

Laser cutters are great at cutting things out. Especially square things, and things with sharp edges. I've tried making bricks and other textures on the laser cutter before, however the width of the beam is so incredibly fine that the mortar lines are impossible to paint.

So today I experimented instead with the "raster 3d" setting on my laser cutter, which takes in an image, and everything black is cut at 100%, and white is cut at 0%, and greys are cut at varying power levels.

By loading in a brick pattern like so:

... and choosing the raster 3d setting in Visicut, I managed to cut some nicely textured bricks.

I tried many different techniques to detail them, but this one works the be...

Making tunnels

Tunnel building time here at Mount Adams this weekend...

Took a little bit of a breather this weekend while I pondered the next steps on my mini railway. I decided that tunnels were fairly high up on the list, as once scenery is in, it is too late to think about tunnels. So... I designed a tunnel mouth on Inkscape to laser cut, and thought a bit about the inside of the tunnel. Normally I just leave them plain, but since the tunnels are quite short and visible on this railway, it might be nice to have the insides looking like a proper tunnel.

So I laser cut some templates out of more old cereal boxes and started cutting out polystyrene. After a few false starts, here is my technique:

1) Rip some dimensional polystyene

Using Mr Hotwire 4000 and a guide rail, I "ripped" a sheet of polystyrene foam down to 40x70mm lengths.

...

Making inclines

A small but useful bit of progress on my latest module...

The Mt Adams Railway is, surprisingly enough, a mountain railway. That means there are grades. In the past I have used Woodland Scenics incline sets, which are very good for quickly building up gently inclining railway grades. The problem is, they aren't sold in Masterton. I also have a lot of spare polystyrene, and a hot wire cutter. So why not make my own?

So I clamped my hot wire cutter in my WorkMate portable workbench, and marked out a 1 in 22 grade on a piece of polystyrene with a piece of masking tape. Then I carefully cut along the line on my cutter, making sure it was all nice and square. The masking tape makes it easy to cut straight as it acts like a ruler, stopping the wire from wandering too much.

Then I cut out a zig zag template on my laser cutter: