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Building interiors and furniture - resource list in first post


gavino200

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6 hours ago, cteno4 said:

 

 

i learned the shielding and bounce lighting when I was a kid and it was harder to reduce the voltages for individual grain of wheat incandescent bulbs (fat 5mm leds were like$2 each then — about the cost of a pack of 10 grain of wheat bulbs and I remeber the glee when the radio shack bag jumped from 1 to 5 and kept the same price). If I needed to tune one down i used some foil to cover the bulb some and make more of a desk lamp pointed at the floor from the ceiling and put some bright white cardstock on the floor and walls to bounce the light around. Got rid of the glow effect in small buildings.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

Yes, I'd like to experiment more with indirect and reflected light. I think painting interior walls to softer and varied colors will help also. 

 

I also need to find a reliable LED supplier with a comprehensive collection. I went back through my ebay purchases and these LEDs were actually labeled as warm white. I know the color of the card influences this, but really they're not 'warm' at all. More like the blue end of the spectrum. Can you recommend any good sources?

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I finished the building. I put a little bit of detail in the storefront level. It's supposed to be a real estate agency as per google translate. So I put some pictures of buildings on the back wall. They're giant, but they add something. I also put a desk and two chairs inside. The two figures are from a cheap bag of "100 n scale figures", but the quality is actually not bad. Much better than the "100 sitting n scale figures" I bought a while ago for train interiors. I didn't add any details to the upper floor, except a single figure looking out the window, but the floor is too low and you can only barely see his head in the corner at windowsill level.

 

Even though this interior detail is rudimentary, it was extremely difficult to install into a mostly completed building. I future I'll have to do quite a bit of forward planning and add the interior details as I assemble the building. I'm finding I really like the "simplicity principle" of adding just enough detail so suggest a scene. 

 

I chose this building to practice on, as it was the simplest Senkei building I could find. It's quite plain, but the two empty tan colored walls with no windows are just begging for a miniature advertising billboard 🙂

 

J8y1USh.jpg

 

 

SHBVcTO.jpg

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Nice Gavin! Again amazing how jus a touch of detail makes the mind’s eye fill in a lot. 

 

Other simple internal elements are just little blocks of stryene painted various colors for file cabinets, cabinets, etc. display cabinets can be made out of a little chunk of clears styrene (you can get some square stryene rod and chop off buts) and back with a little bit of paper with some colorful squares or splotches on it. It will say display cabinet.

 

desks can be stryene U construction so no dealing with legs. Or even blocks of styrene if pointed toward the windows and the figure siting behind can just get legs chopped off and glued to the back of the desk and float. Small pictures and such on the wall can be printed stuff or small ones can just be little pieces cut out of interesting larger thing from higher quality printing to just give a random pattern as you won’t be able to really distinguish much under 2’x2’ at scale. Well pizza boxes can work (http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/5438-papercraft-models/?do=findComment&comment=69296).

 

yep I’ve found some of the ebay wired smd leds are the wrong ones. Mostly there is warm white (yellow tinge), bright or pure white (clean white) and cool white (bluish white like old floresceents). I just test the cheap ones I get and make sure hey are what I bought. You can also find a ew different warm whites (led Barron calls them golden and super golden). I actually like the variation in colors some. Putting different colors on the flor can help recolor the light in the room.

 

The most consistent and best quality ive found for wired smd leds is from led baron on ebay. Not horrid prices and excellent quality and selection. 

 

http://stores.ebay.com/ledbaron?_rdc=1

 

cheers

 

Jeff

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marknewton

The interior details and the lighting really make this building a standout. Nicely done!

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

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Agree that some kind of interior is a nice touch if lighting the model, especially as shops and factory lamps are usually on during the day.

The absence of an interior rather screams out so even a sticker or items drawn on card are better than nothing and may be enough. 

 

I felt this after assembling Factory C that shows a well-lit empty factory floor. So with Factory A I put in some card props. I had a little

trouble with the lighting and will definitely add in a pre-set variable resistor in line with the fixed resistors in future where there's any doubt.

Thankfully the roof of Factory C shouldn't be too hard to remove but whether it can be light proof on replacement remains to be seen. I'll put some

black paper L-shapes around the wall edges "in hope!"

 

Here are two views of Factory A - day time and night time in a temporary diorama. Such interior as there is shows a bit. On its permanent site

there'll be a lot more goods and stuff in both loading bays and yard. Sorry that the night photo doesn't show the

lighting to best advantage...just difficult to get a photographic balance. And I hope it's detailed enough. I kept the file size small.

The whole project runs at just on 9 milliAmps, separate circuits for day and night. 

 

Would a thread on "Sankei tips" be any use for newcomers? I've made a few mistakes with these kits from innocence and if it helped others

avoid pitfalls?

 

Fac A compos.jpg

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11 hours ago, gavino200 said:

I finished the building. I put a little bit of detail in the storefront level. It's supposed to be a real estate agency as per google translate. So I put some pictures of buildings on the back wall. They're giant, but they add something. I also put a desk and two chairs inside. The two figures are from a cheap bag of "100 n scale figures", but the quality is actually not bad. Much better than the "100 sitting n scale figures" I bought a while ago for train interiors. I didn't add any details to the upper floor, except a single figure looking out the window, but the floor is too low and you can only barely see his head in the corner at windowsill level.

 

Even though this interior detail is rudimentary, it was extremely difficult to install into a mostly completed building. I future I'll have to do quite a bit of forward planning and add the interior details as I assemble the building. I'm finding I really like the "simplicity principle" of adding just enough detail so suggest a scene. 

 

I chose this building to practice on, as it was the simplest Senkei building I could find. It's quite plain, but the two empty tan colored walls with no windows are just begging for a miniature advertising billboard 🙂

 

J8y1USh.jpg

 

 

SHBVcTO.jpg

 

Very nice model and as a suggestion it seems enough. Agreed it's difficult doing this interior work but it looks great.  

 

.

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10 hours ago, Quinn said:

Agree that some kind of interior is a nice touch if lighting the model, especially as shops and factory lamps are usually on during the day.

The absence of an interior rather screams out so even a sticker or items drawn on card are better than nothing and may be enough. 

 

I felt this after assembling Factory C that shows a well-lit empty factory floor. So with Factory A I put in some card props. I had a little

trouble with the lighting and will definitely add in a pre-set variable resistor in line with the fixed resistors in future where there's any doubt.

Thankfully the roof of Factory C shouldn't be too hard to remove but whether it can be light proof on replacement remains to be seen. I'll put some

black paper L-shapes around the wall edges "in hope!"

 

Here are two views of Factory A - day time and night time in a temporary diorama. Such interior as there is shows a bit. On its permanent site

there'll be a lot more goods and stuff in both loading bays and yard. Sorry that the night photo doesn't show the

lighting to best advantage...just difficult to get a photographic balance. And I hope it's detailed enough. I kept the file size small.

The whole project runs at just on 9 milliAmps, separate circuits for day and night. 

 

Would a thread on "Sankei tips" be any use for newcomers? I've made a few mistakes with these kits from innocence and if it helped others

avoid pitfalls?

 

 

 

Thanks Quinn for sharing your experiences! Your temporary diorama looks great. I like the mix of warm and bright white LEDs. The interior details really trick the eye. I like your "Day and night circuits" idea. I saw you mention it in a different thread, and I've adopted it.

 

Yes, I definitely think a "Sankei Tips" thread would be useful. They're great kits but they're tricky. I'm fairly happy with my first attempt, but I can credit that mainly to Jeff warning me how tricky they can be and urging me to start on a simple one, rather than the Totoro house. I also read through some other threads here looking for potential problems. Even still, I made a few big mistakes, that fortunately I was able to undo. 

Edited by gavino200
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4 hours ago, Quinn said:

Would a thread on "Sankei tips" be any use for newcomers? I've made a few mistakes with these kits from innocence and if it helped others

avoid pitfalls?

 

Quinn, we have a few threads that have a lot of that already, I’ll pull them up and we can start i with links to some of the material already done. I wish the forum software would let us duplicate posts easily as this would help in something like  this. Sad him is content in forums tend to get buried with time as search is no the easiest thing to find it all the time even when you know what you are looking for.

 

i was thinking maybe if anyone is interested writing an article or two on their sankei experiences of he JRM website as well. If anyone is interested let me know.

 

also a few great sankei construction videos on YouTube.

 

jeff

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10 hours ago, Quinn said:

 

Fac A compos.jpg

 

BTW those trees look amazing. Especially the wide-branching twisty one. Are those custom made? 

 

Also, where did you get/how did you make those LED lamps on the side of the factory? They look great.

Edited by gavino200
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I use to make these when I was a kid out of plastic fiber optic and cup sequins for the shade. Blob the end of the fiber optic with heat to make a bulb and scratch it up some with emery board, slid the sequence over it then heat and bend the fiber optic just above the sequin 90 degrees. Then run this thru the hole in the wall to a light source inside. Paint the elbow of the fiber optic above the shade. Did very nicely to put a big exterior light like that over each of my round house stalls on the outside and 3 hanging from the roof above each stall inside. All of them went to a grain of wheat bulb at the back wrapped in foil with a small bit open to add a little more general lighting up. Gave wonderful pools of light

 

https://www.etsystudio.com/listing/470857840/cone-cup-sequins-5mm-silver-metallic

 

smaller pressed metal ones at ngineering as well

 

https://www.ngineering.com/stamped.htm

 

of course now you could mount a 0402 led under the shade! Just a little harder to run the wire back.

 

jeff

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19 hours ago, gavino200 said:

 

BTW those trees look amazing. Especially the wide-branching twisty one. Are those custom made? 

 

Also, where did you get/how did you make those LED lamps on the side of the factory? They look great.

 

Thank you. The wide branching tree is a Tomytec "black pine." I try to make my own trees and bought it for a pattern although there are a few photos on google. Tomytec's tree bases need trimming and painting to fit the ground colour. 

 

The leds are 0604s just poked through the wall, shaded and wired to resistors inside the building. My supply voltage is 6 volts and I used 4700 ohm resistors to keep them

moderately dim. I buy the 0604s "prewired" with 0.1mm enameled copper as this is easiest to tin.  There are several sellers on ebay. This batch came from:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/freeskymodel

 

Hope that helps.

 

Edit: In case you haven't used these prewired SMD leds they need gentle handling specially when bending the wires near the led, don't like being pulled. If a lead breaks away it isn't usually the soldering but the pad itself breaks away from the substrate.

Edited by Quinn
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18 hours ago, cteno4 said:

I use to make these when I was a kid out of plastic fiber optic and cup sequins for the shade. Blob the end of the fiber optic with heat to make a bulb and scratch it up some with emery board, slid the sequence over it then heat and bend the fiber optic just above the sequin 90 degrees. Then run this thru the hole in the wall to a light source inside. Paint the elbow of the fiber optic above the shade. Did very nicely to put a big exterior light like that over each of my round house stalls on the outside and 3 hanging from the roof above each stall inside. All of them went to a grain of wheat bulb at the back wrapped in foil with a small bit open to add a little more general lighting up. Gave wonderful pools of light

 

https://www.etsystudio.com/listing/470857840/cone-cup-sequins-5mm-silver-metallic

 

smaller pressed metal ones at ngineering as well

 

https://www.ngineering.com/stamped.htm

 

of course now you could mount a 0402 led under the shade! Just a little harder to run the wire back.

 

jeff

 

I'm thinking of experimenting with optical fibre for small street lamps, the sort you find in a side-street. There seems nothing commercial that looks scale (unless you or other members know of a secret supply?!).  I have some of those sequins + some very small beads that I hoped to use as globes.  Remains to be seen.

 

In keeping with this topic though, I browsed some of the furniture/interior outlets and ordered a few from Shapeways artists. They may save some time if a detailed interior is demanded, like gavino200's above. Looks very nice. 

 

I have some freight pieces from Preiser and Tomytec but no (room) interior stuff. 

 

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There's a lot of inspiration in this thread and I see my work cut out - doing at least some interiors to buildings has increased the work substantially. Some, I hope, will show on my latest efforts that I'll put photos up shortly. (My son nicked the tripod for a few days!)

 

Here are prototypes for some tubular chairs. Seat proportion needs enlarging a little. I have to make about 20 so I'll make a plastruct jig to bend the wires. These are uneven, done with pliers. They're made from discarded ceramic capacitors and the cabinet from a polyester capacitor. cabinet.thumb.jpg.05239b944f0763d48eea767c0470b9d4.jpg

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I also suggest looking for 1:144 figures. That's a common model airplane scale and within 4% of 1:150. Do a search on "144 scale figures" and you'll find painted and unpainted ones. Most are military, but with proper painting or some minor mods, they could work well for interiors, and at a good price. Preiser even has some for about $10, but depending on the set you can get up to 18 figures.

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Quinn,

 

excellent using the caps! I used heavy scrapbook cardstock for my cushions, closer to the hard or very slim padded ones. It’s actually tough getting easy cutting sheet materials for stuff like this in the 0.5-2mm range. I liked the cardstock as it’s precolored and just a tad of texture to it. Luckily most times you won’t be able to look close enough at these to notice the details that much and just having enough there to say chair can do it for the mind’s eye.

 

i thought a bit on the idea of a folding template, may work with soft wire. I found I could repeat each bend well (I made mine with all the same lengths) by just bending at the same spot on a pair of very long, thin needle nose pliers. Had to always remeber to adjust square on each bend a tiny bit due to the taper but I just bent at the same place on the plier. I was amazed how even it came out on the first shot. I then made a few others and they cmse out all very close.

 

2mm thick fun foam from the craft store works out to about 1’ thick scale so works to make overstuffed chairs and couches.

 

there are some etched brass chairs out there and sankei also has a couple of sets lasercut but they look more like dining room chairs (good for a restaurant). Faller has a set of more cute patio plastic chairs and tables as well, There was a chap on ebay that was selling some interesting looking interior stuff like book cases, chairs, tables and restaurant booths.

 

looking forward to what you produce! I really want to do more of this when I have time. It’s quite fun. There are micromini dollhouse modelers at 1/144 scale (1/12 dollhouse in a 1/12 scale doll house) that do a lot of interior work. Here is a site for a friend of mine, she does amazing work and teaches classes. I need to get her to put pictures up of the wood shop model she did, it was wild. It’s great as she lives near me so we do coffee every few months and spend a few hours swapping tiny bits of all sorts and ideas for making micro stuff.

 

Cheers

 

jeff

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I don't know if any of you building modelers do anything to enhance the window glass. I do a fair amount of super-detailing on aircraft models. One of our techniques for canopies (and also used by car modelers) is to pour a little Pledge Floor Care Multi-Surface (fka Future Floor Wax) in a bowl (Available at Wal-mart. The lemon scented one is fine.). Pour it gently to prevent bubbles. Then hold the plexi windows with a tweezer and dip it into the liquid, covering it completely. You don't need to let it soak. Just dip. Pull out the windows, let them drip for a second or two, and set them aside to dry. Two key points. First, make sure you didn't get any bubbles trapped against the plexi. If you did, re-dip. Second, don't lay the windows flat on the table or cloth. Prop them up a bit to air dry top and bottom. 

 

The Pledge fills in the micro pores and scratches in the plexi. It is just a very dilute clear acrylic "paint." The result makes them look much more like glass than plastic.

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Funny that just came up in this thread over here

 

 

Do you have experience if a coating on clear stryene will prevent CA glue fogging?

 

cheers

 

jeff

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I've never taken the risk. I always used Testor's "Clear Parts Cement and Window Maker" (PN 8876C). I know others have used common white glue. I've never had a problem with anything coming unglued.

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It’s axtually to glue the resin shroud onto the shell more but there are some clear bits in the shroud that could get fogged from CA (if used) from the back void area.

 

jeff

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On 9/7/2018 at 6:38 AM, cteno4 said:

Quinn,

 

there are some etched brass chairs out there and sankei also has a couple of sets lasercut but they look more like dining room chairs (good for a restaurant). Faller has a set of more cute patio plastic chairs and tables as well, There was a chap on ebay that was selling some interesting looking interior stuff like book cases, chairs, tables and restaurant booths.

 

 

 

 

 

I went through the list posted by gavino200 and bought an etched frame from Severnmodels as well as some bits from Shapeways. Worth a go when, as you said, there's time. Shapeways works out a bit expensive partly because they only ship by courier but there are a few items that would take too much time to make by hand. That's been the problem: doing the lighting, light sealing and interiors adds loads of time to running up Sankei kits. It's going to be the same with the next project - that Japanese-like street scene. 

 

Thank you for your encouragement.

Cheers,

M

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On 9/7/2018 at 3:03 AM, Hayashi said:

I also suggest looking for 1:144 figures. That's a common model airplane scale and within 4% of 1:150. Do a search on "144 scale figures" and you'll find painted and unpainted ones. Most are military, but with proper painting or some minor mods, they could work well for interiors, and at a good price. Preiser even has some for about $10, but depending on the set you can get up to 18 figures.

 

Interesting that you mentioned that and thanks. I have two projects lined up - a Japanese old town street scene (which I hope will be Japanese-looking and mood enough) and beyond, a small military outpost - scratch-built by the look of it and non-railway - so they could be useful. 

 

Cheers

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Also 12mm wargaming figures, but usually not in the best poses for what you might need. I’ve also started to see some 1\144 figures on shapeways, but their search kinda sucks (partially because so many folks keywording differently). Try “1/144 and figurines”

 

cheers

 

jeff

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I just discovered a site called Shapeways. They sell 3D printed items. There is a HUGE selection of n-scale interior pieces (pianos, office furniture, bathrooms, house furniture, kitchens, restaurant pieces, etc.). Prices are reasonable. The webpage for interiors is: www.shapeways.com/marketplace/miniatures/interior-models/?tag=n-scale.

 

They also have exterior details such as substation transformers and tech shack. I haven't dug into everything yet, but there is a lot of stuff.

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