- Pedro
My daughter is quietly sleeping upstairs. My friends from the train club came by to shake hands, pick up 75 trees from our last meeting and and make fun of me staying at home while they head over to Concrete Keith's to discuss the lack of scenery on his layout. With an ice cold Coca-Cola in hand I head to the basement to build Pedro's house.
I printed off two sets of drawings for the house. One will be cut out and fastened to a thin sheet of balsa wood for a cutting pattern. The others are for viewing. When the building is assembled it will be just big enough to fit in your outstretched hand.
I had a sheet of 3/32 balsa laying around so that became the interior wall for the house.
Using a pair of razor sharp scissors that I keep for just this purpose, I cut out one drawing of each elevation of the building.
Grabbing my handle bottle of Ilene's Tacky Glue I tacked the ends of the pattern on to the balsa wood and put a brand new blade in my hobby knife. Sharp is always mandatory when cutting, so don't go stingy on blades.
I cut out the main square of the building side using a straight edge and the hobby knife.
With great care I cut out the door and the window. 
Once the four walls are cut out I taped them to a piece of cardboard and sprayed both sides with Testor's Dullcoat. I did this because the plaster we are going to use contains water and I wanted to prevent the balsa wood from soaking in the water and warping.
Using a scrap piece HO scale crosstie (a piece of 3/32 wood will do) I made the window sill and the header beam for the door and window. This will also become the thickness indicator for the adobe coating.
I cut four corner supports out of a piece of scrap wood, approximately 1/4" square and two inches long to be the corner mounts and the roof supports. Why am I using scraps? These will be inside and you won't see them. I don't waste anything and take all my wood scraps and put them in a Glad Zipper bag which I keep close by for just such purposes. Dropped crossties are a frequent visitor to the bag.
Using the corner supports I applied Tacky glue and erected the walls using heavy steel squares to keep it aligned properly. Looking good!
Here you can see the corner supports and a relfection of me and my work light in the glass surface that I use for model building.
Again, using the 3/32 balsa wood I cut out a roof insert and glued it into place using Tacky glue.
Grabbing some more loose crossties (any square wood scrap will do) I reinforced the roof in four places to keep it from sagging.
Using Durham's Water Putty (thanks for the ideas Colin Claxon!) I made a thick mixture of two parts putty with a little less than one part water. I took a pallet knife and spread the compound all over the structure. On hind site it is probably better to do each side flat and then assemble the building and touch it up. This was way harder and messier than it should have been. Once the model dries (overnight) I'll sand down the wood parts and see if I can level out the plaster. If I had done the pieces separately the plaster would have laid down flat. Live and learn.
While the adobe was drying I cut my minature cut off saw and put in a stop block set at 1/4". Then I took a 3/16th dowel and scribed it with a Zona saw blade. Once scribed I began cutting these small pieces of dowel. These will be the vigas, six per side.
Using a brown Sharpie pen and watching Georgia Public Television I colored each of the vigas brown. The white side will be glued to the structure.
Ok, everything is wet, so we'll wait until tomorrow to finish it. So far, a simple model, but it is easy to dress these types of building up. They are very easy to produce in mass quantities.
Time:
- Research: gather picture, surf internet, ask questions on On30 group - 1 hour 10 minutes
- Drawing: CAD drawing of four sides and print - 45 minutes
- Prep for construction: gather materials - 10 minutes
- Cut out walls and roof: - 20 minutes
- Assemble walls - 15 minutes
- Adobe coating - 30 minutes
- Vigas - 20 minutes
Total time so far: 3 hours and 30 minutes
Cost so far: $0 as everything was in my shop. Had I gone to the store $7.15 (enough to build about 4 to 5 structures)
Why do I care about this? Frankly I think scratch building is faster and cheaper than a building a kit. I keep a well stocked shop and buy things either on sale, in bulk or from auctions and just pack them in the work shop. Most times I can walk down there and beging construction. In this case I'm interested in the time and cost because these basic house structures could be mass produced in a fraction of the time a kit can be purchased and assembled. Even faster if I make mold/master castings (which probably would happen if we go into full construction on the layout.)
Hey guys...let me know your thoughts! Write them below in the comments section. We want ideas!
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