Assembling old craftsman kits---

There is nothing quite as satisfying as assembling those old kits and taking the time to do it well.  Sure, they can vary based on the weather and I need to reattach car sides to a Walther's Broadway Limited car that I built about 10 years ago, but it's still fun to have something that was created with your own hands.  I have about a dozen kits yet to build.  The only thing I always seem to lack is time.

Built a lot of old wood HO kits, using Android ,..they would separate.  Still build wood O scale kits, like Walther's, but using carpenter's glue.  This Western Railcraft boxcar has a lot of small excruciating details. Have to build it and others, and bash a lot and structures to get what is wanted.

I still enjoy scratch building and assembling kits but feel that I am a member of a dying breed. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, NY model kits and building kits were very common. It forced us kids to use our head and they helped develop manual dexterity. The new generation of young people doesn't seem to care about kits but are they really gone????  Just this week I purchased a cart for my new welder and the package came with about 100 bolts, nuts washers and about 40 assorted panels and drawer sides that needed to be assembled. Maybe kits are still around in a way.

Scribed wood used for car sides is notorious for contracting or expanding. It's mainly due to the humidity when the kit was assembled and how low or high it becomes over time. This is because when wood shrinks or expands, it does so by its sides, not by its length. That remains fixed. That sort of expansion is what makes wooded hulls for boats floatable.

In scratch-building the Reading milk reefer seen below, in its late, red company service scheme in 1968, Northeastern scribed wood was used. in four years, they split. So I took it apart and replaced the siding.  However this time I glued a 1/32" strip wood panel horizontally on the back of the replacement, vertical scribed siding pieces. This made the sides into a kind of plywood. It sealed the backside of the thin, scribed siding. That horizontal liner also got two coats of sprayed Dull Coat to seal its exposed side before being attached to the car body. Paint, lettering, weathering and seal  coats protect the outside. That scribed wood siding is locked in place, unaffected by changes in humidity, short of throwing it into a pond or a fire.  

I now do this with any car having scribed wood siding, such as cabooses and Labelle passenger cars. For cabooses, cars, I run 3/32" or 1/8" wide x 1/32" scribed wood horizontally for inside sheathing. It helps in detailing the interior. Passenger cars are bit trickier, as they usually had vertical wains-coat on their interiors. Here, one could apply a sheet of velum over the back of the scribed wood siding, then add a layer of vertical scribed material (wood, Strathmore board or styrene) for he interior wains coat or paneling. In all, it's  important that BOTH SIDES of any wood car siding be covered and sealed from the air.

Another issue I came across in model building, was some cars (usually reefers) occasionally formed a slight side bulge or had a side work loose at one end.  This was because the "box" shape forming the model was air tight. Changes in barometric pressure (which can swing wildly where I am in tornado alley), was the culprit. Drilling a 1/16" hole through a car  bottom  at some obscure point, kept varying barometric pressure equalized on and in it. No more deformity or loosened sides.

In model making or kit building, all materials have their strengths and  weaknesses - even almighty brass has limits, as does resin, epoxy, styrene, Strathmore, wood, cardstock, paper, tin-plated steel sheet, cast and sheet aluminum, etc., which I have used.

What makes any model look good is how the materials for it are used and finished, with respect for their strengths and limits.

S. Islander

Nice cars.

I was about to say the same thing.  There exists scribed plywood for 40 and 50 foot cars.  I doubt it has been produced recently, but I won't build a scribed car without it.

sometimes I just glue a couple 2x4s together, machine it into shape, and attach Athearn or other stuff to it.  Heavier, but my max is 14 cars, so what the heck?

whenever I build a wooden kit, I let it acclimate in the shop for a week. I then seal all the wood siding pieces and floor with lacquer (all sides) before assembly. Never had any shrinkage, buckling or warping through all manner of climate changes.

bob2 posted:

There exists scribed plywood for 40 and 50 foot cars.  I doubt it has been produced recently, but I won't build a scribed car without it.?

I am currently building a side door caboose using that scribed plywood. It's terrible hard on the scalpels I use for opening up the windows, but unlike in the past, the top layer of the scribed siding is more stable and better bound to the middle layer of wood.

I use regular scribed siding in several sizes and with care it's very stable. Just slapping it on a solid floor and roof stock is how you get what you deserve.