To start this out:

Craft Acrylic Paint - Can be found at any craft shop ie: Micheals, Hobby Lobby etc. Main paints are Ceramcoat and Craft Smart, they come in 2oz bottles. You can use full strength or even dilute it, and of course can be mixed. Bottles usually run around $1 which makes it a lot more cheaper than model paints. There hundreds of colors and you can mix any to get what color you want.

Spray Coatings - Krylon makes a plastic safe acrylic spray in Gloss <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.krylon.com/products/acrylic_crystal_clear/">http://www.krylon.com/products/acrylic_crystal_clear/</a><!-- m -->

Hobby Lobby also has Gloss and a Matte finish as well, under their Tree House Studio name brand, These cans go for the same price as the testors model master 1oz. Acryl about $5.50/ea

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Cardboard - cereal boxes, frozen pizza boxes, 12-pack cartons. Some very convincing structures can be made from this material!

80 cable idt (hard drive)cables- the grey ones make great corregated iron shed/roof/fences (they arent wavey - rather fig 8 patterns) but still look great as corregated iron-esp when the ends arent visible

I knew about the acrylic paint and the carton cardboard, but the IDE cables are something I have lots of and I would never have thought of them for that reason.
I have found the Dollar General spray cans for a buck fifty work with plastic too. I use the gray primer, flat black, and red oxide primer. I like it because I don't have to clean the airbrush, and you can use Krylon clear over the primers for a glossy finish. here are 2 cars, one done with gray primer, and the other with red oxide, and Krylon clear coatings.
Charlie

Old computer mouse cables - cut and pull the individual wires out to use on decoder hook-ups.

boppa Wrote:80 cable idt (hard drive)cables- the grey ones make great corregated iron shed/roof/fences (they arent wavey - rather fig 8 patterns) but still look great as corregated iron-esp when the ends arent visible

Do you have a picture of a finished example?

How can I be expected to steal these ideas fair and square without visual aids???
:needpics:

Weeds from your garden. Trim some fine structure roots, clean and dry . Now they're dead trees. Also pieces of bark and fine twigs. Better than cheap. FREE....



Matt

TrainNut Wrote:

boppa Wrote:80 cable idt (hard drive)cables- the grey ones make great corregated iron shed/roof/fences (they arent wavey - rather fig 8 patterns) but still look great as corregated iron-esp when the ends arent visible

Do you have a picture of a finished example?

The roof of this coal shed was made by pressing heavy tinfoil between two lengths of scsi drive cable to "corrugate" it.

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I Dullcoted it, then used dollar store paints (see first post ) to weather it. It is Nscale, so the corrugations are a bit oversized, but it does avoid the problem of seeing the ends of the cable. You may also be able to avoid this by cutting the edge back at a sharp angle.

Andrew

Wow! That looks awesome

Since I'm a little slower than the average bear, would you mind posting a couple of pics of the cable used and maybe a short tutorial? I think that roof is BAD TO THE BONE!

Warehouse pallet boards are 1X3X40" and make great legs and L girders for benchwork. they can be found for the asking at pool supply, machine shops, paint stores etc...

scubadude Wrote:Wow! That looks awesome

Since I'm a little slower than the average bear, would you mind posting a couple of pics of the cable used and maybe a short tutorial? I think that roof is BAD TO THE BONE!

Richard,

Thanks for the kind words! The process is really as simple as I described it, but I will try to get you a picture of the cable and "corrugation" method.

Andrew

I would like to see this topic kept on the front burner until everyone has had a chance to view it. These ideas are terrific
Charlie

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shows the older style 40 wire hdd cables and the 80 wire version (you want to use the 80 wire version, is much closer to scale). They are still available at any electronics or computer store (I would expect to pay around 5-10 bucks for a 18" long one fitted with 3 connectors) the connectors arent much use but you can make quite a bit out of a single cable (They actually buy 100m rolls at work and we have meters of the stuff thats been damaged that I scavenge and put to one side for when my own layout gets back underway again)

Its not perfect but so close and so cheap to buy

(BTW I love the idea of using heavy aluminium foil pressed between 2 pieces of ide cable- brilliant!!- and that poor old shed.... Next strong gale will knock it flat........(so no sneezing near the layout!!!!)

I have to agree with Krylon Fusion.
Its three or four dollars a can, and the yellow, and white seem to cover better than any other "Shake the can" white or yellow.
And they do handle deecals rather well also.

These two Southwick and Winsted locos were coated with Krylon Fusion yellow.
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These two boxcars were done in Fusion white.
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