Structures using CAD, Paper, Foam Core, Strip Wood and

Styrene

.. and anything else that is 'found‘

You can download this presentation at the following link:

http://www.etraxx.com/ppt/Palmetto2015clinic.ppt

Clinic

• Using CAD, paper, foam core, strip wood, Polystyrene - or anything that comes to hand to create custom structures easily that can match/approach craftsman buildings. The foam core provides the support for the structure, the paper/card stock the graphic portion with the strip wood and Polystyrene windows and doors to finish it out.

Quick Overview

• When I was asked to give a clinic I was asked for a subject. I answered after much prodding ... “Structures using CAD, Paper, Foam Core, Strip Wood and Styrene”. I could have as well said something about “Multi-Media Modeling” I suppose.

• Since everyone here is familiar with using strip wood and Polystyrene I'm going to take a little time for a quick overview of paper/cardstock.

What is Cardstock?

• Card stock – is a generic name referring to a range of fairly thick and heavy paper weights. The main features distinguishing card stock are weight, fiber, color, finish and size. Also called cover stock or pasteboard that is thicker and more durable then normal paper used for writing or printing.

Paper Weight

• Paper Weight – Paper is described in several ways: point sizes that measure the thickness of a single sheet of paper in thousands of an inch; and by “basis weight,” a measurement in pounds of the weight of 500 sheets of 25 by 38 in.

Thickness

• Thickness – Most U.S. cardstock comes in a weight measurement, assigning a lb. number to the cardstock.

• Most cardstock is in the range of 50 to 110 pounds. In contrast, standard copy paper is 20 pounds.

• This is just to give a general guide. For modeling purposes it is more important to simply measure the thickness directly and make note of it.

• Generally – Paper such as you will have for your laser printer is around .003 in. thick and is in the 20lb-32lb range.

• Paper stock of 110lb or more is commonly referred to as cardstock. The 110lb cardstock I have is 0.009” thick.

• This can be somewhat complicated since depending on what the intended use for the paper, the density, flexibility etc. changes.

• For modelers it really becomes quite simple .. you purchase a quantity of different weights of paper/cardstock and use what’s appropriate for the project in hand. The question of whether what you are holding is paper or cardstock is for me irrelevant. For modeling it ‘depends’.

Examples

• Georgia-Pacific Copy paper. 20 lb – bought at Walmart. It is about .0035 in thick

• Daler Rowney Tracing paper, 40lb – bought Walmart. It is about .001 in thick

• Wausau Exact Vellum Bristol, 67lb – bought Office Depot. It is about .008 in thick

• Cason Bristol, 100lb – bought Michaels. It is about .014 in thick.

• Georgia-Pacific 110lb Cardstock bought at Walmart. It is .009 in thick.

• Note right off that the Tracing paper at 40lb is .001 in thick while the Copy paper at 20lb is .0035 in thick. This is an example of how density effects thickness as the tracing paper is a much denser paper. I think everything considered - for modeling purposes, the denser the better.

• What is important is the thickness – which you see varies so you have to measure it directly.

• Think about it. You can have paper A that is half as dense as paper B so that paper A is twice as thick as paper A but they have the same basic weight.

What’s the point?• The point is that as a modeler you have to decide

what is important. Texture is often important to make a surface ‘real’ as the eye often expects texture – even if logically that texture would be too small in your scale

• . A plate paper will take a higher resolution then vellum. There isn’t a ‘right’ paper for any project .. you have to simply try printing on different papers and see which one works best. A brick pattern printed on photo paper might work less well then the same brick pattern printed to a vellum surface since we ‘expect’ texture.

Cements/Glues

• I use the Aleene’s white glue for a lot of my work as it is readily available and works great. The quick setup just makes the project go much faster.

• A quality gel-type CA like Zap-a-Gap is good for attaching non-paper parts like rigging thread.

• 3M 77 – love the stuff but it has to be used correctly• Rocket Card Glue – I have started to use this. Interesting

– it appears to be white glue but acts much like a CA.

CAA Applicator

When using Super Glue, also known as Cyano-Acrylate or CA for short, it helps to be able to precisely apply the stuff. The thin CA is particularly hard to apply with any precision from the bottle. I use ZAP Thin CA for most of my Super Glue projects. In order to have that precision, you might want to consider an applicator tool. Simply take a needle, in my case I used a tapestry needle, insert and cement it into a short length of a wooden dowel. The either cut-off or grind-off a portion of the eye so all you are left with is a "Y" -

Printer – Cannon MG2520

My current printer is a

Cannon MG2520.

You can purchase

one at Walmart for

$34.88

The ink is where

they “gotcha” comes into play. I can live that since my “real” printer is a Laser. You also get a scanner with the printer. Most of the people here are old enough to remember purchasing a scanner separately.

Printer – Cannon MG2520 .. cont

The point here is that the printer is cheap and the ink isn’t bad as long as you have a laser printer for everyday printing. The scanner is a plus – actually why I purchased the printer. The biggest thing for me – for printing cardstock is that feeds from a Rear Tray. This allows the cardstock to move smoothly from about a 30° angle to horizontal and prints great.

The con is that like most printers it won’t print all the way to the edge of the paper, instead leaving a border. I have run into a problem where the pdf runs all the way to the border of the paper so you have to either cut off bits or let the printer fit the graphic to the page. That can be a problem when working with a scale structure

Printer – Cannon MX459 I purchased this printer to try to print all the way to the edge of the paper. What I failed to notice was that the printer feeds from the front .. And the printed page feeds to the front which means the paper turns 180°. Note I said paper .. Cardstock – at least the #110 I was using won’t. I haven't tried lighter cardstock .. It seems logical that at some point it WILL feed .. But that would simply means I was printing to heavy paper. Don’t get me wrong. It is an excellent printer .. Just not what I really wanted.

The point being .. If you are wanting to print on cardstock, the $34 Cannon works just fine with the caveat that it leaves a border.

Printer – Epson WD-7610

I couldn’t help myself when Office Depot put this on sale.

The Epson WD-7610 prints up to 13” x 19” (selling point) and feeds from either a paper tray or a rear feed (selling point) I bought a pad of art paper (really almost cardstock) that lets me use the full capacity of the printer.

I donn’t worry about borders and such now and can print files up to a European A3 paper. The scanner is high resolution, the printer is wireless and all in all I am happy with it as a tertiary printer.

Coloring Edges

• Touching up the thin white line that appears when you cut or score paper is a crucial step. There are a lot of ways to approach it but I use light gray, (cool and warm) marker.

• In most cases duller colors on the edges is better than darker.

• My suggestion is use grays or dull neutrals on these edges. unless the part is ink black never use black on the edges, it always looks unnatural and just doesn’t work.

• Caution on markers, they bleed notoriously.• Do a lot of testing first on scrap paper similar to the part

you are working on.

Laminating cardstock

• I have had excellent results using 3M 77 spray glue. A problem can arise trying to align parts that have been cut out – works best to laminate first and then cut to the lines.

• Stick glues – they appear to work well at first but I have had them loose grip after a while

• White glues – in my experience they contain too much water and dry too fast for this use with paper

Preservation• A clear matte finish works to keep the ink from Ink Jet printing

from smearing if water gets on it. UV protection is also important and this helps alleviate that to some extent.

• Spraying the cardstock (both sides) before you begin building but after printing. The matte finish takes glue well.

• The cheap fixatives will become yellow over time – be careful.• Try UV-lacquer. It exists in matte and gloss. It´s a 100%

transparent layer (spray), which protects photographs, airbrush, watercolors, objects of window display, screen printing, art printing and – in our case – models. It dries immediately. Do not apply too thick, better more often, but only one time – in general – is enough. It protects against bleaching from sunlight.

• I use “Clear Aerosol Lacquer” by Minwax. It’s a Clear Satin and I’ve had excellent results using it.

Foamboard

I usually pick up my stock at my local Walmart. The Elmer's brand is 30 in x 20 in and 0.2 in thick.

Since I am speaking to modelers I am not going to tell you how to cut it – I'll just say that buying single-edge razor blades in quantity is a “good thing”

Why Foamboard?

Simply .. it is quick and easy and provides a strong and sturdy base/frame for paper models.

When talk about using paper/cardstock for structures one of the negatives is the tendency of paper to warp. This fixes that problem.

Juke’s Boat Rental

Juke’s Boat Rental

I like using Clever Models

paper models or their

texture sheets as a basis

for my structures.

They always have some “freebies” for download to get you hooked. A while back, one of these freebies was Juke’s Boat Rental. I will use this to demonstrate how I use foamboard.

So. I brought Juke’s as a .jpg into Sketchup

Import a graphic an image

I imported the image onto the desktop as if I had laid it on a table.

I switched the Camera from Perspective to Parallel Projection and then selected view from Top.

This way there is no perspective error .. I am looking at the walls of the structure so I can trace the outline.

Select the line tool by taping the letter “L”. I draw around the wall shapes. Since I am viewing the walls from directly above my work surface in Sketchup I click the bottom left corner and draw a line to the right making sure it is RED. This means I am on the X axis. From that same point I started the horizontal line from, I draw a vertical line this time ensuring it is GREEN – meaning I am on the Y axis. I continue doing this as I trace around the wall shapes. Hovering over the center of the horizontal line on the left wall shape gives me the center (blue dot) and I can draw a vertical line to locate the roof peak. Lines from the corners finish it off.

My Elmers® Foamboard is .2” thick I used the tape measure tool (keyboard “T”) to draw a guideline in from the sides .2”

Use the Line Tool to follow the guidelines, then draw three horizontal lines (for a smaller wall) to create where the slots and tabs will be.

Use the Eraser Tool (keyboard “E”) and delete every line that doesn’t make up a tab or slot. With this done I can simply duplicate the two walls since the opposite walls are mirror images.

Here, I colored the Foamboard paper sides a beige. I have actually bought some this color. It makes no difference in the model but looks nice for the slide .. so why not?

I also pulled the board out to the .2” thickness. Oh .. And duplicated the two walls.

Here’s what we are working toward. Four walls with interlocking tabs and slots.

This makes for a very strong support structure and holds together very well even before gluing.

.. And with the walls locked together.

At this point – assuming minor care was taken with the cutting out of tabs and slots, the structure holds together nicely.

I will use a square at this point to make sure the walls form 90° angles and glue everything up with Aleen’s white glue.

Of course .. What glue YOU use is your choice.

A ¼” x ¼” Poplar dowel from Lowes works fine for a ridgepole.

For a larger structure additional support might be necessary but for this little thing this will be fine.

If you simply glue the printed sides to the Foamboard this step isn’t necessary.

I like to layer my siding for a 3D effect so I use a pencil and draw some horizontal lines to act as guides for applying the clapboard.

Just make them parallel to the bottom of the structure – don’t worry about where the are placed .. They are just guides

Siding? Not in the download ..The model has a blank back and left side walls – with a large sliding door on the front and a window on the right side.

The printed windows I can do without and the same with doors. I could have simply duplicated the blank/solid clapboard rear and left walls but instead I used them to create my own personal siding sheet.

This isn’t that hard with a little cut-n-paste and a half-decent graphics program – “I swear by my Paint Shop Pro X7” ….

Trim = stripwood

The Clever Models kits come with all of the stripwood to be printed with everything else. Me .. I prefer to simply use stripwood and either match the siding or a contrasting color weathered in a similar fashion. That is standard structure modeling in your preferred scale. The important thing is that clapboard fits between the trim .. So the trim goes on first.

One thing to keep in mind is that we will be layering the cardstock so that the bottom kicks out as it would it would in real life .. This requires some attention be paid to the thickness of the stripwood used.

Trim-ing

For Jukes I used stripwood to trim the corners, along the front/rear roof angles and edging the large door opening.

Note: I made the opening about 3/16” wider all around so I could glue in some square’ish stock as a frame. I say “about” as it was something ‘about’ that size I had in my scrap box. This gives a framed depth to the opening .. And covers up the foam edges.

Layering

By layering cardstock you

enter an entire new realm.

Here’s how I layer

clapboard. I cut two

boards high and

overlap them halfway.

The very bottom having

small blocking to kick the bottom board out.

Layering

In this example with

.015” thick cardstock

it ‘kicks out’ about

.020”. This extends out

past the face of

the Tichy window I

was using. The

problem being that the windows are designed to fit flush against a wall and on-top of the siding.

Blocking

Since we are

creating 3D siding

we may need to

move our window

out. Depending on

what cardstock is

used and how much it

is ‘kicked out’ the

blocking needed will vary. The siding should not extend past the face of the trim board.

This shows the O scale version of Jukes with layered Clapboard siding.

In this case the Tichy windows were deep enough and the clapboard didn’t kick out enough to require any blocking.

The corner trim though could have been slightly thicker to better cover the ends of the clapboard.

There are several things to see in this photo. The clapboard had been layered on the left wall but the window opening hasn’t been cut out yet.

The front wall has had clapboard layered up abut ¾ the way to the left of the door and about 4 boards on the right side. Everything above that on the front is just the printed paper I glued down as a guide .. Before I realized that just drawing lines on the Foamboard would work just as well. (I used black Foamboard so that may have been a problem - come to think of it!)

Inside walls is just the printed siding as it came from the printer.

Note how the opening was cut in the right wall. I simply took a X-Acto knife and cut it out. This is easily done through the paper and Foamboard. I ended up changing my mind and boarding that window up and cutting one into the left side. This is easy .. Again .. This is paper and Foamboard.

A closer look

.. And some roofing The roof is simply a couple pieces of cardstock to form a sub- roof. I downloaded a texture sheet from Clever Models – tongue and groove a different (lighter colored) siding and used that for the inner lamination .. That for anyone who peers inside.

The red tarpaper roof is another texture sheet from Clever Models (I find it hard to beat $1.99 for a texture sheet you can use as much as you want. That’s just me so opinions can vary.

Some white wreathing powder .. Dr O’Brien’s helps blend it all together

A closer look and I see where I need to glue the paper down better. Heck .. The structure is at least a year old so it has had time for warts to appear. One of the things I like about a DSLR. You can also see a bit of the tongue and groove roofing and the metal hanger for the door made from bits of Evergreen styrene and resin decals from Micro-Mark.

The reason the tar paper lifted was at the time I was experimenting with using Elmer’s stick glue .. and it doesn’t hold as well as I had hoped. Oh well.

Fini

Links

• Clever Models : Cardstock models in multiple scales and texture sheets - http://www.clevermodels.net/

• My Website : I basically blog about everything I do - http://www.etraxx.com

• My 3D prints : I have various 3d models I have designed with links to purchase them on my Shapeways store - http://micromimesis.com/