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  #21  
Old 07-12-2010, 10:19 AM
bigbenn bigbenn is offline
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Hi,
I expect to build a card model from a card kit or from plans 100% accurately, thus I don't need any fillers or sanding to construct a model.
I use PVA glue, the stuff sold at hardware shops which resembles a thick white milk and is used by woodworkers to glue furniture and wood products together.
You only need to coat both surfaces with the same amount of wet gle, that you would find on the back of a postage stamp. It does not matter if one surface is dry, when joining layers together.
On long or large sections of card which are laminated together, I use household bricks laid one after the other, over the laminations to be joined together, laid out on a flat lino or wood floor and left overnight to dry. Alternatively, for smaller parts which need to be laminated, use household clothes pegs, either plastic or wood, around the outside of the card structure until dry.
Bending card is a doddle, because card has no grain. Just dampen the card to be bent to shape and pin it in place on the internal formers, until dry. Once dry, the card will hold its shape. Then remove, glue up internally and put back in place and hold with household pins through the card into the internal formers.
It is advisable to use a pair of pliers to pull the pins out, as they tend to be very difficult to remove otherwise - so save your fingers.
Richard BigBenn
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  #22  
Old 07-12-2010, 10:26 AM
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lancer525 lancer525 is offline
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I've not once had the first bit of success with any kind of sanding anything paper. Chipboard, which is what I use for formers, is even worse. You end up with this fuzzy little nebulously-shaped edge that is worthless. I have no clue whatsoever how to alter the shape of a former, other than to take a brand new blade and shave it down to the right contour. Which is why I try to exert such effort in cutting the things as precisely as possible in the first place.

I would love to see a well-photographed or video tutorial on how to sand formers, because I have no clue what the right technique could be, and am very interested in learning. Anything that improves the skill of a builder is gold...
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  #23  
Old 07-12-2010, 06:54 PM
bigbenn bigbenn is offline
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Hi,
Shudder!! Sanding paper!! Shudder. Same goes with filler... Shudder !! Shudder !! Accuracy, accuracy accuracy if it's not accurate, don't use it - I never need to sand anything, in fact I have made it my technique that if I can't cut out a part right in the first place, then I will throw it away and keep trying until I get it right and this goes for bending card to shape and complex assembly as well.
It is easy to bend card without creasing it, just dampen the piece you want to bend under the tap with cold water and bend it to shape around a former, or a bottle or a broom stick or whatever household shape is best served to get the beginnings of the final shape, then put the bent card aside to dry, before glueing it to the model assembly. If you are bending the card into shape on the model, pin the sheet to the model with pins - dressmaking pins, taking the pins out once the card is dry.
I don't understand the problem you are having with formers.
If you are working from plans, then the plans provide the formers, or what I call the cross sections of a ship, plane or whatever. Take a loaf of bread, cut it into slices across the loaf. Each cross section of the loaf, represents one slice of bread as with the cross sections of a ship - right?
You can do the setup work from the plans, determining the thickness of the card for the intended model and drawing in the slots for the structure building technique, on the plans sheets prior to photocopy enlarging, or at any time before or after the enlargement process.
I use 4mm Strawboard which I buy from picture framers and art supplies, for artists. The Strawboard comes in various thicknesses and cuts very easily with my hobby knife. A sheet size is about 4 feet x 5 feet, enough for several model at the scale I like to build at. In terms of cost, 4mm Strawboard can be $15 sheet, but in terms of convenience and ease of cutting, it is a very worthwhile investment in time and muscle power saved.
Of course, I build a 5 foot long model with 4mm strawboard for the skeleton of the model, onto which the hull and superstructure parts are later glued. For a model a foot long or smaller, I would of course buy a much thinner sheet of Strawboard and the cost would be reflected down, too.
For the external skin, I use cheapest white card, I also buy from the Art supply shop. I bought 6 sheets yesterday for 89c each. I glue 2mm thicker card inside the hull or superstructure parts, after I have glued the external hull sheeting in place. This strengthens the card internally, while still remaining at the scale outside dimensions and I remove the internal flat laying sheets from the kit, which you build in to provide stength to the structure, redesigning the kit and the internal parts, by removing what I determine to be waste from the internal structure of the keel and cross sections, so that I have full access to the whole hull as building progresses, for this purpose and also to put in r/c later, should I wish to do so.
I take a photocopy of the plans which I have enlarged and I have several copies of each final building sheet, for errors or building stuff ups, which are sometimes many, at the final building scale and glue the cross section lines photocopy sheet to the Strawboard with PVA Woodworking Glue, enough wet glue as you would find on the back of a postage stamp to both surfaces to be glued together. To lay the glue wetted sheet of photocopy paper onto the PVA glued Strawboard sheet, I start at one end and slowly lay it down, using a cloth to lightly smooth the photocopy down onto the Strawboard sheet, gently removing creases and air bubbles to the edges of the sheet, until the sheet is laid down firmly onto the Strawboard sheet. Be careful, because the photocopy sheet can easily tear. As the photocopy sheet is laid onto the wetted PVA Strawboard, it will stretch by about 10%, however, when left to dry, the photocopy will re-tighten itself and finally dry firmly attached to the Strawboard (or any other card suface) over its length and breadth.
I leave glued sheets aside to dry thoroughly overnight. Then when I cut out parts, with my hobby knife, I know I won't tear or damage the patterns, because they are still wet.
If you need to enlarge plans to a specific scale, I do that by glueing the parts of a plan onto A4 sheets, then go to my local black & white photocopier and enlarge the A4 page to A3. To get a further enlargement, just cut out the parts from the A3 sheet and re-glue them to another A4 sheet and repeat the process again x however many times it takes to get the final size of the model.
If you are building a model from scratch, without any plans, then you've got me, because then whatever you are building has no basis for a kit or model in the first place so far as I am concerned, because I like my models to be based on some sort of building design fact - like plans.
Thus, your problem of cutting formers out and sanding them to shape, makes no sense to me if you are building your model directly from photocopied plans which you have glued to Strawboard or card sheets, because you are relying on the accuracy of the plans to cut out and assemble the model, which is the only sensible building process that occurs to me??? Obviously, you must be careful in cutting out the parts, by cutting carefully along the lines to retain the parts shape from your building plans, but that is only a process which you learn through practice.
When a knife blade becomes blunt, I throw it away and put a new blade in. The sharper the blade, the more accurate the cut.
Richard BigBenn
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  #24  
Old 07-12-2010, 07:57 PM
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rickstef rickstef is offline
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Richard,

Ever consider that your plans might have some error in it?
The enlargements are technically errors too, scale has been changed,

also, are you sure that you cut with out error?

everything a human will have some error creep in, yes you can try to minimize the error, but error will remain.
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  #25  
Old 07-13-2010, 06:14 AM
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tazman3 tazman3 is offline
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Richard, I think that in this case the error lies with the designer, not the builder. If I do a house plan and make all the walls offset 2 inches by mistake the builder is not going to build it that way...he will immediately see the mistake and do it PROPERLY the way it is supposed to be built. But that does take experience. So, if you don't have experience as a builder, you are doomed to make the same mistakes your designer makes.
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  #26  
Old 07-13-2010, 08:12 AM
bigbenn bigbenn is offline
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Hi,
I have to agree with you. A kit and hull I photocopy enlarged proved to be out by 10mm, so that I had to reconstruct the whole kit again with the kit enlarged by an extra 10% to fit on the hull which I had constructed to begin with. All of my other working sheets were inaccurate and I had to rubbish bin them.
I have been building card kits from plans and more recently from card kits for over
25 years. I automatically make the assumption the card kit I am working with is accurate, until such times as the construction proves otherwise. I have used the same process of enlargement with all of my other models, without any problems, thus, when a kit is inaccurate and not necessarily obvious to me, I make the assumption the kit is at fault and not my building technique, which is self proven as being accurate, from 25 years of building models to get the process right and to turn out a museum quality kit, in 3 dimension, not the 2 dimension you get with printed kits, over hundreds of hours labour....would you not agree, by way of example, as an exchange in your matter of opinion - how long have you been building card kits for?
I photocopy enlarge most of my kits to a size that I am comfortable building at. This means that if there are any minute errors in the original small kit, by the time I have photocopy enlarged it, those errors have become much bigger, but are not obvious to me until I have built the hull and tried the deck for size and fit. Of course, if someone were to build the kit at the designers smaller size, the errors would be overlooked and probably would have no bearing on the final model.
I have found that model kits produced in countries of the ex Soviet Block and West Germany are always perfect and can be enlarged without any discrepancies. Unfortunately that has not always been the case of paper or card kits produced elsewhere and I put that down to kit making in the "West" being a new art form, whereas modellers in the old "Soviet Block" days, had plenty of time to get it right - and they did. For them, it was Maly Modelarz card kits or plastic kits generally, and who would argue over the cheapness of card kits to produce a large model, against plastic kits which cost a lot more and were of a smaller scale, in the Iron Curtain days.
Richard (BigBenn)
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  #27  
Old 07-15-2010, 09:23 AM
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tazman3 tazman3 is offline
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Unfortunately Richard, "cheap" kits are all I can afford...that and the free ones. Wish I had your skillz...guess when I build them for 25 years like you I will, huh?
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  #28  
Old 07-15-2010, 12:59 PM
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ccoyle ccoyle is offline
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I will second a couple of the suggestions made previously. I, too, use a rotary tool (Dremel) with a sanding disk, which works a treat. If necessary, I will also wick fast-cure CA glue into the part to be sanded -- stiffens the edge to prevent fraying or bending.

Cheers!
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  #29  
Old 07-15-2010, 04:11 PM
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rbeach84 rbeach84 is offline
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Recap

To be clear, BigBenn is also speaking of 'material removal', but his method involves a blade, not abrasives. If his removal is inaccurate or insufficient, he essentially will simply take another 'try' and make a new part, making suitable adjustment (in those cases of error with the former.) I suspect Richard does a good QA check of his templates' accuracy before beginning to work, in any case. This would be a good tip for anyone!

As I come from a plastic modeling background, sanding a part to improve it's fit is a natural paradigm for my modeling as perfection is a rare attribute of any injection molded kit. However, sanding paper material is more difficult to do with acceptable results (meaning 'smooth') and requires a different technique, not to mention the impact on the pre-printed portions of the parts.

Back to the science:
Paper, being made of wood fibers, will often display that fibrous property when cut. Since the cutting action of the sanding tool is based on the resistance of the material (think 'stiffness') to the moving grit, loose micro-fibers will tend to just 'bend' instead of being cleanly removed (makes me think of a TV shaving commercial illustrating beard hairs...) Hence, the fuzziness. This is where CA glue (super glue) can help - it hardens the fibers and improves the cutting action of the sanding media by encasing the loose fibers in a rigid matrix. This is why I will often use CA when a smooth sanded edge is needed.

Laminated cardstock (LC) sands better for the same reasons - smaller, highly compressed fibers reinforced with glue are naturally stiffer. I suspect LC also cuts better and dulls the blade less due to the lower amount of silicates (fillers) when compared to cereal box, paperpad or other forms of 'brown, cardboard stock. In effect, LC is a high quality, high fiber content paperboard when compared to other kinds of brown cardboard.

Richard has found a form of "LC" ready-made in matboard (such as used with picture framing.) Matboard is specifically made to give sharp, clean cuts using a blade. And since it comes in a wide range of stock thickness, sizes and colors, I can see it being very useful for former fabrication. Great tip!:D

Sometimes, however, a 'fuzzy' edge can be an good thing. Increased surface area may improve the strength of a glued joint, as long as the fibers aren't so large to interfer mechanically with the joint. For example, I have found that my pre-sanded wing trailing edges (to thin them for a better appearance) also glue better. Since the adhesives we use rely on mechanical bonding (by filling in the micro-gaps with a strong, stiff material), surface roughness can only improve the joint. So, consider taking off the smooth surface to improve the strength of those joints. In short, sanding has a place in any paper modeler's tool kit if only for this reason.

Cheers!
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  #30  
Old 07-16-2010, 11:06 AM
bigbenn bigbenn is offline
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Hi,
As an add on to the above. If you are building models from plans or you are photocopy enlarging kits in black & white and building them in 3D and painting the parts with acrylic paint (I use Chromacryl which comes in Pots for about $10 pot), as you go along, as I do - then you might need free flat card supplies (not corrugated) and good places to go looking are cardboard box manufacturers, or printers, in your area.
These premises usually produce a wide variety of card based products and quite often they have a lot of offcuts or the printing run has a foul up and they throw away the card used and start again.
Usually, card comes in thick card and thin card and it is best to think in these 2 terms when obtaining card for model projects for the future.
If you go in person to the respective possible suppliers in your area and ask for the off cuts and waste card that they would normally throw away, they will give it to you for free, once you explain what you are going to be using it for.
Each model I build, I build with the intention of having it as a working scale model - thus a flimsy kit is of no practical value to me, because I also live in hot and humid conditions and flimsy kits soon bend out of shape, thus each model I build out of card, has to be far stronger internally, so that what I build remains as I have created it - forever and I use various self taught techniques to do that.
Since my model is for radio control, I have to redesign the internal structures so that I have total access to the inside of the hull, for a model warship and so that I can sheet internally, after the black & white thin card photocopy "skin" has been fitted to the hull. Waterproofing is just varnishing the completed model inside and out and doing checks for hull leakage, as the final task. Varnish comes in matt and gloss, so its easy to decide what sort of finish you want on your model.
At the same time as redesigning the hull, I remove card from the internal waste areas of the keel and cross sections, so that when I build the hull, these formers have the space provided, for later, when and if I want to install electric motors and r/c equipment.
A strongly built, large scale model warship, built in 3 dimension, with all external parts added prior to painting, so the detail stands out once painted, doors have doors, portholes and bridge windows are cut out, Guns turn, I make crew to scale from card & PVA Glue, railings to stop the crew falling off and rigging are a combination of card and tooth floss, etc, all adds to the realism of the completed model and that is what I aim for - it is my opinion that each model I build is 3 times harder than the original kit would have been - especially as I don't follow the kit building directions, preferring to look on each kit as a giant technical problem. I start with the biggest pieces and add the smaller ones until I have used up all of the parts.I have developed a technique which provides razor sharp changes in camouflage colours and so on, bearing in mind I use a paint brush and I can no more draw a straight line with a pencil freehand, than I can with a paint brush and my hands have a tendency now, to wobble a bit!!
I have discovered that the average slim paint brush handle also works rather well as the internal structure of masts which I wrap the paper shape around, or small straight branches from trees and twigs for cross pieces, wrapped as above. "Most" of these tree parts are round and trees grow everywhere and load bearing parts need internal strength.
I am presently building the IJN Yamato at 1/200 scale, which will fit nicely in with my Supermodel Bismarck of WW2, which has to have been the most difficult model I have ever built. The first Bismarck hull I built was not good enough and I threw it away and had another go. My second effort was just fine.
The only person who can teach you to do better is yourself. If you set low standards in model building then you will quickly build models, but there will always be that thought in the back of your mind, that you could have done better. If you set high standards, but don't reach them, then you know you will one day, it just takes practice.
It is easy for me to build to a sub standard level, but I just won't let myself. Thus if some part I have built is not accurate enough or it fails my pre-determined skill level, I will discard it and try again until I get it right. In this way, on the one hand, I am punishing myself and delaying the model build, while on the other, I am refining my skills and increasing my skills proficiency and the satisfaction I get for doing the task right and this then provides me with the motivation to go on.
I do not set a timescale on how long it will take to build a model, rather it is an opportunity to waste a couple of hours profitably, doing something which gives me a buzz. Something, here in Aussie anyway, that most people can't do, because they don't have the time or interest.
I am hopeless with a camera, even though I have a new fangled digital camera. Once I motivate myself, I will take some pix of my completed models and post them in this forum as an example of what anyone can achieve, although no buildings, because they don't have guns and I like things with guns in them - something to do with my ancestors barbaric past in England, I expect.LOL!!
Richard (BigBenn)

Last edited by bigbenn; 07-16-2010 at 11:17 AM.
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