Wall

[Frederic Testard]

Last year the picky Terrapin guys compared actual stained wood with my "paper" wood under a magnifying glass and found them all but indistinguishable.

Russ, as a mathematician prone to love logical things, may I point that if these things are really undistinguishable, why not use the easy to work wood, at least for people who master wood and the work of it?

[finescalerr]

The last two posts are pretty interesting:

Thom writes: "I am still amazed at the outright hostility sometimes expressed toward cardstock. The statement of why do you bother working with card when you could have used wood is telling."

Frederic writes: "If these things are really undistinguishable, why not use the easy to work wood, at least for people who master wood and the work of it?"

And Russ writes: I'm not suggesting anyone use cardstock instead of wood (or plastic or metal) unless he or she is as strange as I am. Therefore nothing I have written is illogical.

Actually, for me, it is easier to print digital artwork on cardstock and build a model from that than it is to use wood, stains, weathering powders, hairspray, adhesive tape, chipping tools, and washes. As for assembly, I find paper, wood, and styrene to be about equal in ease. So it is logical for me to try to push the printed card method as far as possible for my own modeling.

In that context the question of "why use paper to represent wood" in some ways seems like, "Why do people run the marathon when they could travel the same distance faster on a racing bicycle?"

Nevertheless I wish more people were interested because it's tough pioneering something like inkjet printed cardstock in a vacuum. Developing artwork has taken "forever" but I have enjoyed the challenge. And, as I have said before, I think the texture of paper looks more like that of wood in 1:48 scale and smaller. Some may disagree or consider the texture inconsequential. But that variety and difference of perception is what is so great about this forum and about modeling in general. And the tough questions and thoughtful answers have made this an absolutely fascinating thread ... at least to me.

Your comments and questions are still teaching me things.

Russ

[Hector Bell]

Russ, a real quickie away from the esoterica...have you seen the Scalescenes site?  We in England like our cardboard and building papers, always have done.  So your problems with "popularising" the techniques reads rather strangely to me as I came up with little besides card. I love it!
Scalescenes have come up with a big range of brick, stone, concrete and I think, wood prints done from digitised photographs of the real thing which you can select and download for a pittance to be printed on your home printer.  I did just that when I got a half decent Canon printer and was very pleasantly surprised with the results and was moved to knock up a wee diorama using it to test the effect.  On RMWeb there is a whole sub forum covering the use and improvement of Scalescene's stuff.

Just a suggestion you might find useful.

Martin

[Frederic Testard]

Russ, this is an interesting observation, and the last part of your post could be applied to many human activities, and in particular to the development of mathematical research, with sometimes very unexpected consequences, such as for instance the secret coding of cards on the internet as an application of purely speculative arithmetics developed centuries ago.
From a litterary point of view, you'll notice that while I expressed my taste for logical things, I didn't imply that your behaviour was illogical, even if it could be read as an implicit consequence of my sentence. And strangeness is something that does often go hand in hand with logic, oddly.
About the marathon, one could argue that we all run the marathon with this kind of hobby, and the question could become : "Why do some people running the marathon do it with shoes full of gravel when it is already so hard the 'normal' way?" But I don't want this sentence to suggest a criticism against your research (as a matter of fact, I found your planks quite neat and downloaded them to see if I would be able to do something with your artwork).
I'd say that a European like me may have the belief that cardboard + paper + sandpaper + a few more things can be the best tool for modelling the concrete or stone walls we have everywhere here, while western wood is best modelled in wood, especially when one has got used to do it. Which requires time, and several "rethinking processes", that have for instance lead me to distress less and less the planks I use for my walls, and no more - or almost not - those which I use on visible interiors, or to measure the rust I apply below nail hints or nuts in homeopathic units, which is indeed an effort when almost everybody around you tends to overdo these effects, based upon the consideration of other models, and never that of reality - or very extreme examples of reality that we almost never observe.
One of these days, I'll tell you something about my theory of simple and multiple coincidence...

[finescalerr]

Frederic, I was terrible at math, physics, chemistry and every related field except 2-D geometry. Yet I am annoyingly logical (something I must overcome when I play jazz) and wish we could sit down and discuss some of the things you have mentioned ... just for the fun of doing it. I like the way your mind works.

As for running the marathon with gravel in my shoes, I've never thought of working with cardstock in that way. I don't do it because it is hard. I don't even think of it as difficult. I do it because I like it and I like to push the limits of using technology (i.e., inkjet printing and Photoshop) to advance what I can do with card. For me it isn't cardstock that is difficult; it's my ability to come up with better ways of using it. In a sense it's what Dave (DaKra) does with lasers but he's better at what he does than I am with with I do.

Martin, I plan to check out those websites. Even though I enjoy creating my own artwork, I want to learn something from people who can do it better than I.

Russ

[finescalerr]

I just checked out Scalescenes and RMWeb but found them disappointing. Some Scalescenes' artwork is okay (usable but not excellent); some falls below the caliber we aspire to on this forum. Every model I saw on RMWeb was of the "background" variety, lacking texture, fine detail, and a proper finish. That is the big problem I have encountered with cardstock structure modeling. And manufacturers seem to cater to guys looking for an easy way out.

Martin, I suspect you could take their materials and produce something extraordinary. Unfortunately none of the hobbyists who posted were able to do that.

Russ

[Hector Bell]

Ah, oh dear.  Looks like a bum steer.  Sorry.  I can't get on RMWeb because I had a ding-dong with the chief honcho a while back (see an earlier entry in my blog)  I just thought someone might have the hang of it.
I think for exactly that background use, they aren't bad and one chap did a beautiful set of urban workers' cottages in the Scalescenes papers, but he was a bit better with them than the rest and finished them nicely.  I was so impressed that I made him a tin bath for his outhouse wall.  Mad devil that I am.
Brick papers are good for the majority of 1/76 scale modellers because they are seen from a distance only and are usually better than the poor efforts most people put into using moulded brick plastic sheet (the rounded brick and splurge weathering syndrome).  Taken as a whole effect for an exhibition layout viewed from a few feet of safety fence, they are very effective.  Though it isn't for me, I can appreciate it when it's done with consistency.
But I imagine you saw what a generally parlous state model making is in, in Britain.  I have only seen one really uplifting work in donkey's years and that was Gravett's Ditchling Green in 1/43 rd scale.  I should mention a certain partiality in so far as he used some vehicles for which I'd revamped some very old brass masters<G>

Another good reason to only bother with this forum

So, sir, the search continues, eh?

Martin

.

[finescalerr]

Here is what may be the upper limit of the inkjet-art-on-card approach. The photo shows the artwork you guys liked best on a wall section about 2x3 inches. 1:48 Scale again. First the overall view....

Russ

[finescalerr]

... And then a closeup.

Russ

[Frederic Testard]

I like it, Russ. This gravel must not be such a pain after all.

[Ray Dunakin]

Looks great to me!

[Malachi Constant]

Russ --

Those look perfectly usable and the close-up is surprisingly good ... time to knock together a building or something, eh?

Cheers,
Dallas

[marc_reusser]

... time to knock together a building or something, eh?

...not so fast.

Both in the normal shot and the close-up, it is apparent that the bottom edges of the clapboard are 'rounded over'....this lack of sharpness/crispness on siding is not there in the real world...unless you are using aluminum siding, or some cheap stuff from within the last 30 years.  It has that "California round-over" look that tract home carpenters and painters are so fond of.  [There is a type of bungalow siding that existed on early homes, that had an intentional rounded over profile ...Ihave  run across it on 1900-1920s  small homes....however, this siding tended to present a surface of 2-1/2" 'to weather'....it was actually a 5-3/8 +/- overall piece that was milled to look like/represent two 2-1/2" boards/pieces.]

I know this rounding-over probably occured because you were trying to burnish down the raised edge that resulted from cutting.....one way to avoid this is to burnish multiple parallel strips at once (or place the peive between two scraps), so that the burnishing tool is fully supported, and can not roll/anlge over the strip to one side or the other and cause that excessively soft edge.


Lastly...for now...your butt joint where the siding meets the trim is way to big and would be completely unacceptable if it were so in real life. You also want to make sure that your trim stands at minimum 1/4 to 1/2" proud of the highest point of the siding. Some times we use 1-1/2" thick, perfect edge s4s redwood pieces for this, as it ends up giving that clearance...other times we'll use thicker material, to give a better reveal (say 3/4 to 1")....or so that we can cut a rabbet into the edge of the trim board to slide the siding under (if too thin a piece remains, or in ceratin conditions, the rabbet can be troublesome later on when material begins to move, or the boards begin to cup...ther is a small chance of the rabbet splitting out...though luckily we have not had that on any of our projects yet)



Marc

[marc_reusser]

Ah...one more thing on the close-up....at the top board seam, you are showing the left board as one that has slid down....but your overall board joint is still tight and vertical. When a board slides down, the vertical edge of the angled/slid board is always 90-degrees to the bottom edge.....same as the vertical edge on the board that has remained in place......therefor your joint at this point should/would have a visible v-shaped gap.


M

[finescalerr]

Marc, you need to get back on your medication.

I was worried about the paint and weathering; you're already nitpicking my carpentry! How about the lack of nail heads? How about the fact that there is no apparent difference between the level of the paint and the level of the wood where the paint has worn off? And I'll thank you to avoid commenting on my butt joint. Really, now!

If it's truly a problem, any rounded lower edges of the clapboard are unavoidable, even if you burnish before assembly because, inevitably with paper, that lower edge can get a little rough from handling and needs to be smoothed down after the wall is complete. The only way to avoid that would be to stiffen each pre-cut board prior to assembly and I don't know what to spray on it to impart that quality.

By the way, I used carpet tape to secure the boards to the sub-wall. That stuff is unforgiving. If you're off by 1/128 when you position a board, you're out of luck. With glue you can push the board into place but not with tape. (You thought I didn't notice that? Think again!)

Russ