I've never really gone for a styrene structure bigger than a shack, mainly because I immensely dislike cutting out all the doors and windows.
Maybe I'm just a wuss but that short and heavy cutting action and pressure really bothers my hands and elbows.
Plus plank by plank looks so cool.
But after seeing all the nifty structures Nils built out of styrene, I thought I'd give it another go.
But first I wandered over to the local Michaels (craft store) to see if they had anything that could help out.
Like a square leather punch.
No square leather punch, but they did have THIS:
In the scrapbooking section, I found a punch with a small rectangular head (they also had hearts and stars if you want).
Not only was it on sale for $3.50 (reg. $4.99), but the long side of the rectangle is about perfect for some smaller Grandt Line windows!
Here I'm using it on some clapboard styrene for the tipple windows (which are really sections of plastic industrial handrails):
I found it's easier to punch with the bottom of the rectangle "inside" the window hole, as if you press too hard there is a little denting of the styrene from the base under the rectangle punch head.
It's also pretty square, and once you punch one "chad" it's easy to use the head to align for an extended punch.
You just punch the four corners and then you can use the knife to connect the dots:
And not have to worry about slipping and scoring past the window cut.
Tah dah!
Cut those windows accurately and in about 1/2 the time with knife alone.
So that's how I made the "Eggel River Mining Co." tipple today:
The carts bringing in the black diamonds are Randgust's V&T ore cars that I accidentally vacuumed up about a year or so ago.
There'll be a couple other smaller buildings behind it (office, storage) and a lot of trees and bushes, but I want to wait until the water cures completely so I don't get a lot of foam falling into tacking water.
So it's a little bare there.
Also installed the IWW hall, a partial shack and some trees (all left over from Mt. Coffin):
I made my own decals for both tipple and Wobbly Hall, but I didn't like how they turned out.
Also need to paint some white background on sections of the Wobbly Hall before putting on any more decals.
So that's probably it for today.
I've been up since 3 and I still need to pack up the car with my own modules to take to the show set up tomorrow.
Then I'll put more trees and bushes on the Wye Knot module.
And I gotta build those endplates!
And clean all the track!
And make sure trains can run!
Then haul it to the show Sat. morning for the mad setup madness.
Thanks for looking.
