Replicating the look of the edge left by a cutting torch

[billmart]

Gordon, Russ, Mark, and Lawton - Thanks for the comments and info.

Nicely done.  Has the effect of something built out of necessity, on site, and in a hurry.  BTW, what are the mine props made of?  I'm always looking for bark textures like you have for 1/48 scale logs and am getting tired of the yard cuttings I get each year as I trim the garden.

The logs are cut from my crape myrtle bushes.   Crape myrtles are wonderful flowering bushes that grow well in the southern US.  They are robust, pest-free, and have a long flowering season.  The biggest bother with them is the need to prune them back every winter.  This can be a rather big job, but the cuttings provide me with lots of "logs."

Bill Martinsen

[Lawton Maner]

Thanks.  And if you live in Florida, when you trim them, the cuttings can make logs for 3/4" live steam logging models.

I have a yard full of them here in Virginia and have been training (not the RR kind) into trees for years.  I'll have to give them another look this winter.

[Ray Dunakin]

Nice mine car, that turned out very well!

[billmart]

My wife and I recently drove from Oklahoma to Bellevue, Washington, for the annual National Narrow Gauge Convention.  We took our own sweet time getting there, purposely, so we could stop whenever we wanted to or when we found something of interest.  One of our stops was in Kellogg, Idaho.  This one was for gasoline and a bite to eat.  As we were driving around to see what cafes were available, we chanced upon a couple of ore cars in a park.  Of course we stopped so I could take several photos and a few measurements.  Then we decided to take a look at a mine at one end of town.  The mine tour was less than expected, but the mining equipment on display outside the mine was quite interesting.

While strolling through the pieces displayed outside, I happened upon the very car that inspired me to build a model of a car for carrying support timbers into the mine.  I was very surprised, and pleased, to find it on display.  My model had been based solely on one photo I found on the internet.  That photo shows one of the vertical pipes to be shorter than the other three.  I had assumed this was the result of someone removing part of the pipe.  To my surprise, when I saw the "other" side of the car, I discovered it looked shorter than the others simply because the welds that held it up had failed and allowed it to drop until the bottom of the pipe hit the ground.

No, I will not be revising my model.

Bill Martinsen

[marc_reusser]

Bill,

Your model of the car is lovely. like the overal weathering and detailing. really captures the look and feel.

Thanks also for posting the prototype photo. Interesting detail of what happened with the post.

Late to the party, I know, ...sorry....but FWIW and forgeneral info; I have replicated the look of torch cut steel (in this case heavy plate), by using a fine toothed micro saw blade (the round type that fits into a Dremel, or sim, type tool; then carrefully running it perpendicular to the plate surface, just barely touching as I move along the length of the edge. The "cut" edge can then be slightly "softened" and cleaned of any fuzz, by passing a brush with liquid cement along the "cut" face. (what litttle fuzz there is should melt, looking like molten metal slubs left over from the cutting).

[billmart]

Thanks for the kind words, Marc.  They mean a lot to me.

This little project was a lot of fun and I learned a lot while completing it.

I have one of those Dremel saw blades you described.  I'll give it a try next time I'm looking for a torch cut edge.

Bill Martinsen