Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
The logcar [Wagen für Stammholz] is fairly simple regarding colors. The mixed a new brown, since I am retiring the old brown. The old brown was Liquitex raw umber, and I ran out. I mixed the new dark brown using Studio Lascaux oxide brown light, anthracite (could use a little less), and dabs of carmine red and cerulean blue. The two lighter shades of brown (one slightly reddish and the other slightly yellowish) are for the dirt. The reddish one is oxide brown light and carmine red, and the yellowish one is oxide brown light and yellow ochre. Studio Lascaux does make an oxide brown dark, but I haven’t bought nor tried it. I’ve thought about it. I think I will use my mixed brown. I can edit it some and mix it with the other two browns to make the dirt painted on. […]
Sunday, February 25th, 2007
Well, I forced myself to take a break for a day. I spent the time cleaning my neglected apartment and organizing my tools and supplies. I even cleaned off my desk!
As I’ve been working on making cars, I’ve been collecting up bits and pieces - test paint colors, extra parts, etc - and I’ve been putting them in zip-lok sandwich baggies. I sorted out these baggies yesterday, and grouped them by car type. The result is do-it-yourself kits. This is the logcar kit since the next car I am going to make is another logcar. This will be my third logcar. And this car will be assigned the number “Kkp 7352″. […]
Monday, February 26th, 2007
I really enjoy mixing paint colors. It’s fun to see what turns into what. I mixed up a nice brown and some variations of pale yellow, light browns, and rusty reds - they all turned out nicely - and used the same colors for mixing as I had used on the boxcar. Studio Lascaux colors cerulean blue, carmine red, anthracite, and titanium white, with the addition of oxide brown light and Naples yellow. […]
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
I’ve continued with my paint mixing. I tried the cobalt blue and it was too green (not sure why the blues are turning so green….). And then I tried the ultramarine deep. I mixed the light gray and the dark gray - they look nice. Then I tried mixing the gray-blue color - it was too purple-ish, so I added Naples yellow, and it looks nice. In the photo it looks very ice-blue - and too bright… The ultramarine deep is the blue I originally was going to use in the cement silo car, but didn’t use…so I’m thinking this may be the blue. […]
Thursday, March 1st, 2007
So I begin again. Cutting, gluing, fitting little pieces of basswood. The last time I made a logcar was prior to my purchasing these nifty books that have the cars drawn to scale. These books are fantastic and very informative. I see my best guess as to how this car is made were a little off, so I am adjusting my design from last time to be more accurate. Essentially, the car was right, just a few items need adjusting.
And there will be numerous details added that were simply omitted in the previous version. This version will have a better paint job in terms of color and application of paint, it will have brakes and wheel journals, and it will have a car number - Kkp 7352.
…is progressing nicely. It is belly-up in the photo. And it is ready for “dirt” to be painted on.
As you can see, the underside structure is flat and not sloped at the ends like the boxcar under-side structure. The logcar [Wagen für Stammholz] is supposed to be this way according to my book and upon closer examination of logcar photos. I had previously not given it much thought and had assumed it would be the same as the boxcar undersides. […]
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
Today was a difficult day artistically. It was totally gorgeous outside around noon and I had to go outside and walk in the warmth and sunshine. Then after that, I had the distraction of doing four loads of laundry, calling Mom, etc. So, I didn’t really sit down and start doing any actual work today until about 7.30p. I think part of that is because sometimes it is hard to sit down and work knowing that your next task is difficult. […]
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
The couplers are Kadee #714 couplers. When I first started making model train cars, I had no idea what to use for couplers. Some general reading around the web suggested using Kadee couplers and that folks liked the #714 couplers for converting their Bemo plastic models. Apparently folks don’t like the couplers that Bemo uses on their plastic model cars. So, I bought a bunch of these couplers for my train cars. It didn’t make much logical sense, but I’ve always been happy with them. […]
Wheel parts, that is. I am continuing to make the trucks (sic) out of basswood and using a styrene (plastic) tube to hold the axle in place while letting it rotate. I’ve not made significant changes to this design, though I have steadily improved the neatness of the craftmanship. It is not the ultimate solution, but it is a solution that I like. It is also a sturdy solution, and it is easy to be exact regarding how high the couplers end up being - which is critical for the train cars to link together.
The photos shows the logcar belly-up with the wheels and the euro-cents positioned, but not glued. You can see from the drawing that it is on top of, that there are supposed to be some things stuck to the underside of the car. I am thinking about modeling those items, but I don’t think adding them will work with having the euro-cents stuck to the bottom of the car. The euro-cents add weight, which the cars needs, but can be omitted — and the NMRA judges don’t like the coins. So, I’m in a quandary regarding the coins.
I decided to omit the coins and have glued the wheels on. I think this is the right decision for this car in general. There is no place to hide coins on this car, whereas most cars do/will have places to hide coins. By omitting the coins, I set the wheels closer together, which is more correct for the vehicle. I plan to attempt the stuff on the underside - I think this will be a good decision - hopefully resulting in the car scoring better with the NMRA judges. I will make future logcars that don’t need to meet NMRA judges critics.
This car is off to a good start.
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
I tried to add some idea of stuff for the underside based on what little info the drawings provides. I’ve never found any photos that show this stuff….so here is my attempt. In general, it adds detail to the car, but it isn’t very convincing.
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
I’m still not convinced about the underside stuff. I have no idea what it should look like. I really just want it to add to the general appearance of the car - so I don’t feel strongly that it needs to be super-detailed. Overall, the items that I added don’t really add much to the cars profile. I could add some more details, but if the original items are too small, then more details don’t really fix the problem. […]
I’m letting the underside stuff gel in my brain for a bit. Meanwhile, I’m working on the brakes [Bremsen]. They are made in three pieces for each brake, the wooden parts shown above. Each brake gets two of these held together with a skinny strip of bristol board. The wooden parts are cut from basswood. I painted the stick of basswood prior to chopping it up at 45 degree angles. It doesn’t really do much good to paint them in advance, but it does make the sides look different from the edges. […]
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
The brakes that I made for the boxcar didn’t fit too well. This time I am playing around with the length of the skinny strip that connects the two wood pieces of the brakes to make the brakes fit correctly around the wheel. The photo shows my third attempt at this. Each attempt has been an improvement, and this attempt fits pretty good.
This skinny piece is made from bristol board. I tried painting it first, but the glue doesn’t stick as well to the paint as it does to the plain bristol board. So, the next attempts have been unpainted. I’ve been using the carpenter’s wood glue, but I think I will use the contact cement for a slightly stronger bond. The surface area is very small, and I’d prefer to not be spending my life fixing brakes that fell off. […]
I finally got the brakes made and glued onto the logcar [Wagen für Stammholz]. Adding the brakes to this car was harder than the boxcar because the undercarriage is narrower, so there is less space to wriggle them into position. They came out fitting better, though they seem a little high in relation to the wheel. So, the measurements will need a smidge more tweaking on the next car. […]
I’m working on the wheel journals for the logcar [Wagen für Stammholz]. I liked the design that I used for the journals on the last boxcar (Gb 5091) [Güterwagen], but they don’t fit on the logcar because the undercarriage of the logcar is quite a bit narrower.
The boxcar journals had three layers of bristol board layered together, then a thin piece of “2×12″ basswood lumber, then a round bit of styrene plastic. The three layers of bristol board won’t fit in the reduced space, so it has to be one layer of bristol board (which doesn’t really fit, either). […]
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
The journals are progressing slowly. By trying each one on different wheels, I found that they each fit somewhere nicely. In the photo, you can see the journals showing the holes for the pointy end of the wheel axles. The bristol board is still white, and the basswood piece is painted brown. Each journal gets an end piece - the little brown bumps in the background of the photo. Next, I will glue on each plastic piece, then paint the journals entirely brown, then glue each into place. Since it is important that each journal go in its current location, I will do each one in turn.
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
And I am sitting here reflecting on design changes for them for the next train car already! I’m also contemplating tweaks for the brakes for the next car. Somehow, I’ve progressed from struggling to make the brakes and wheel journals at all, to making tiny detail improvements to their designs.
Sometimes I wonder what I’ll accomplish as an artist making these little cars. When I first started, I didn’t think about making them realistic - I started at a design stand-point of ‘they’re cute’. Then I progressed towards realistic - a slow steady journey that continues on. […]
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Drilling holes is always a challenge. I’m using a tiny pin vise (which is a drill for drilling very small holes and you twist it manually) and I have no method to ensure that I hold the drill straight up and down. To add to that, the tool itself doesn’t always seem to hold the drill bit straight. I may have to try and get a better one of these things. The end result, is that after drilling the holes for the vertical pieces in the front railing, you stick the metal pieces in the holes and the pieces aren’t straight up and down. […]
On the previous logcars that I have made, the spikes always end up looking chunky and toy-like. Since I made the last logcar, I have gotten those nifty books with the scale drawings of the cars, and so I am redesigning how I make the spikes to make them look more realistic. This includes slimming them down and adding the curl detail to their tops, and painting on the rust and dirt. […]
I assembled and painted one spike for the logcar [Wagen für Stammholz]. It glued to be stronger than what I had thought it would - I was really concerned that it would be fragile. The curved corner pieces helped stiffen things up by adding gluing surface. And the addition of the bristol board pieces also helped reinforce the corner joints. It did dry a little warped. […]
I got the second spike put together and painted. I painted it using just a paint brush, rather than the two-part process that ends using the paint knife. I forgot the paint knife part, and now that I look at the second spike, I think perhaps that was a good thing. The don’t quite match in the photo, and they don’t quite match in the model.
I also mixed some of the light blue-gray that was so shocking a blue color into some of the light gray to paint the second spike. So, not only do they not match in painting technique, they don’t match in color, either. And the dirt is different, too. For both spikes, I tried to match the dirt in the photo - and oddly - they didn’t get the same amount of dirty.
Saturday, April 7th, 2007
There’s always the question with open freight cars - does it have a load or is it empty? I plan to do some of each option for such cars, but this logcar will have logs. I did want to preserve in photos how it looks without logs.
The car also has been officially assigned a number - Kkp 7352. I made the number plaques just like in the photo that I was working from - I literally scanned them from the photo - and then photoshopped them and printed them to scale. They seem monstrously big. Well, the seemed big in the photo, but they really feel big on the model. *sigh* […]
The logcar turned out nicely. The logs look somewhat hefty and the car looks strong enough to support a load of logs - a big improvement over the previous logcar.
I added some log debris to the deck. I glued it on with the “matte medium” glue. I used the carpenter’s wood glue on the previous logcar and it gave the deck an appearance of being always wet. The matte medium worked nicely. I also only applied the matte medium to the debris rather than the entire deck as before. […]