A House for San Berdoo ... but first, The Garage

[P5se Camelback]

Thank you for the comments, Jens! You are observant and I appreciate that quality in a modeler!

... I noticed you glue everything together on your cutting mat, protecting it with a sheet of something looking like baking paper? I use a thick glass plate instead. It is hard, perfectly flat and does not need any protection.

In these photos, I am using common kitchen waxed paper to keep things from sticking to things that they shouldn't. I also have a 15" square piece of ground plate glass that I often build on because it is very flat. When I need a "perfectly" flat surface, I use a 15" x 24" DoAll machined granite surface plate, machined to a flatness tolerance of +/- 0.00005" ... it is "dead-flat"!!! When precision measurements are required, I use a height gauge on the surface plate.

I often use the waxed paper to solvent weld on (with Toluol or lacquer thinner) as it prevents unwanted sticking of parts to the build surface, eliminates the worry of ruining the surface underneath should there be an overly exuberant application of the solvent, and it is cheap and disposable. (Its use is a hold-over from my early teen years of building balsa model airplanes directly over the sheet plans.) I generally cut and fit parts on the glass or the surface plate ... the matt is generally for cutting and unfussy, non-critical assembly ... and to save the top of my breakfast table from getting carved up and destroyed from getting solvents and paint on it. :mrgreen:

For filing styrene I use selfmade files, that work much better. Basically sanding paper glued on wooden sticks. I lay down the sanding paper with the backside up, spread the glue and press on a number of wooden sticks, mostly coffee stirrers. When the glue is dry, I cut the the files from the sanding paper. It takes less than a minute to make a handful of them. As a result I get files in various shapes (normal, broad, odd shaped) with various grits.. and they are cheap enough to throw them away when clogged or dull.

For material removal, I have a vast assortment of metal and plastic files, which I have augmented with home-made sanding sticks of a variety of sizes, shapes and grits, assembled much as you have described. I also make the occasional trip to the local Beauty Supply House where I purchase an assortment of sizes, shapes and grit coarsenesses of "emory boards" that would make a salon nail technician jealous. (I often reshape these to perform specific tasks.)

The smaller jewelers files visible in the photos are what I generally use for "getting down to perfect," especially when a very close-tolerance fit is desired. I also use a set of small riffler files for getting in those difficult to reach locations that need reshaping or reducing in thickness.

I rely heavily on a small collection of personally fabricated, task specific, handmade tools, fabricated from a variety of materials early in my career as an Industrial Designer, for working in styrene, including my trusty 1"x 1-1/4" x 2", chamferred-edge Plexiglas block, machined on a vertical mill to insure "dead-nuts" 90-degree surfaces. Other tools, mostly cutting and shaping tools, were produced from worn hack saw blade steel using a disk grinder and then sharpened on an oiled stone and finally stropped on leather ... very, very sharp ... need a shave?

I do appreciate the interest and the insightful suggestions, Jens! It is exactly this type of observation, involvement and information-sharing that make up the "the meat of the Big Blue Forum-Style sandwich that we all enjoy so much and keeps us coming back here!" Thanks for volunteering! It is greatly appreciated!