Evans Model Builder

[Miqueo Snyder]

Thebuilding is long, tall and narrow to provide an imposing frontage at the track level. Depth of building is restricted to conform to limitations of space. The main structure is 19" long, 10.5 inches high - without the platform that it will sit on - and 4.5 inches deep. With the staircase to the 2nd story offices and the ticket booth at the opposite end of the building its 22" long. The dispatchers windows/office is on the second floor and overhangs the platform. Except for the chimney pots, small smoke jacks, the stair handrail and the window material its all paper - poster board - backed by 0.10 chip board.

Thanks to Joel Franz for this great O scale Building picture!

Great old west town. Buildings made using the layering method. Cut out windows and doors on one copy and put a second uncut copy behind

see click for pictures of this town all made with Model Builder

Independence Hall: I am attaching some pictures of my attempt to make a model of Independence Hall. It took a lot of time & thought to put this together but your wonderful brick paper & the import feature included in model builder made this possible. I started using matte board reinforced with 1/4 inch balsa wood. I put it together in sections and imported the windows from a web site. I imported the entrance to the building from web pictures of the hall and sized them to fit the building. I can't say enough good things about your model builder. It is fantastic.

See more of this building !

"I attached a photo of my first model (0 scale) using your software. It is 99.9% paper accept for the round sign hanging off the front of the building, which is a key chain. I am very happy with the results, and am already designing my second! "

Thanks Jack

I am attempting to make some Box Culverts in the Part Builder, making the culvert is not so much the problem as where I live, they do not build them with uniform sides. As an example, a 1200mm x 600mm box culvert has a SideWall thickness of 125mm, a TopWall thickness of 190mm and a BottomWall thickness of 150mm. In the part builder, I can only see an option for one wall thickness.

With the stock part you are using, you are correct there is only one Wall Thickness, and that applies to all the walls. You may be able to create a custom part that could have a certain thickness on specific walls.

I'm currently working on a box culvert project. Box culverts cause problems in the model since they don't have structures at their bends. This causes the boxes to not be drawn correctly at bends with overlaps and gaps (see box_culvert_pipes.png). I just draw in the box culvert as dumb polylines for the final plans.

There is also the issue about how to get a structure placed that is directly on top of a box culvert. For instance, I need to place a catch basin structure that drops directly into the box culvert. C3D doesn't allow a structure to attach to a pipe. It's always a pipe to a structure. This causes the structure to automatically drop down to the box culvert's invert as it's a pipe. So far the only option I've come up with is to separate the box culvert into it's own pipe network in order to get profiles and the rest of the storm sewer network in another pipe network. This way the pipes and structures from the storm network don't interact with the box culvert network, but then that kind of defeats the purpose of keeping the storm pipe network together.

There's also the issue of having smaller pipes that connect into a box culvert. Pipes don't connect to each other, so I can't put a 15" RCP that dumps into a 12' x 3' box culvert. I can draw the 15" RCP where it looks like it's dumping into the box culvert, but the pipe's not really connecting. This can cause labels to not work correctly since a box culvert is not a structure.

Large pipes, such as box culverts, need to be treated more like a structure than a pipe. I was thinking of trying to create a structure in pipe builder that's more like a box culvert, but that's a lot of work in order to get it to work correctly as almost every box culvert "junction", such as a drop inlet directly on top or side holes or bends, would be a pain to model.

Going to start with the gunboat Philadelphia which I've had on the shelf for some time. I need a break from 1/64 fully rigged ship so the Granado will wait for this project to be completed. [note: Granado will wait a while longer]

Will start construction next week. I've been at loose ends in the mornings as that has been my shipyard time through the (long) end of the Morgan build. There is a nice case awaiting this rather wide model (nearly 14 inches) that I had bought years ago for a Victory model I bought but did not build. As my house started to fill with MY completed models I decided to give that ship away to a friend who had admired it. I was tired of explaining to people that I had built the New Bedford Whaleboat, Picket Boat #1, and now the Charles W Morgan but NOT that one.

At the same time (now that I'm fully retired) I'm going to practice Byrnes saw, scroll saw, and mill skills to begin the Echo cross section on some ordered boxwood before I break into the wood included in the Admiralty Models package. These are things I've not done so need the practice for this entry into the shallow end of the scratch build pool.

I would love to add one 1/24 (1/2 scale or possibly G scale) figure to this ship to visually establish scale. I love the crewmen I added to the Morgan for that reason. A quick search didn't find much. Any suggestions for sources? I have searched the forums.

sat down to get started with the first pieces - keel, stem, and stern piece - and found the thickset wasn't laser cut all the way thru and cutting the complicated notches with a knife resulted in unsatisfactory accuracy and snapped bits along the grain.

HI Bruce! The Morgan in it's case looks beautiful. My wife and I live in the San Diego area and just a few minutes ago got home from visiting the San Diego County Fair. I went specifically to see the ship displays and current builds from the San Diego Ship Modelers' Guild. Their representative (one of their board members) was actually working on his "Philadelphia Gunboat" behind their glass partition. I had a chance to speak at length with him. The Gunboat really is a nice looking model and I will watch your build as it progresses. I'm just starting to feel the model build bug since our move six months ago now. Geesh, the time really gets away from you fast. Before I jump back in on my Morgan, which I need to finish up already ... I thought I'd get my hands back into modeling shape by knocking out Chuck's 18th century Longboat. I'm about 1/4 the way into it and have to say it's probably more detailed than I thought! Compliments to Chuck on his design. Anyway, take care and have a good 4th. Ron

Well, I got tired waiting for the replacement piece to arrive, so I worked on the keel, stem, and bowpiece I removed from the incompletely lasered sheet and managed to bring them up to useable form. I still need the replacement piece for a number of other parts, some quite small, that were very poorly laser cut. But I won't need them for a while.

Although the keel was dead-flat, and I carefully aligned the bow and stern to the midline, I didn't realize that in adjusting those two spots, the drag on the middle of the keel from the glue kept it from perfectly following the adjustments. When I test fit the bulkheads, which need to meet the upper edge of the floor exactly, it became clear that although perfect at the bow and stern, the keel "bulged" to port by up to 1/16" midships. I contemplated the old alcohol reversal (on the keel, not me) but such an extensive area was involved I decided against.

A lot of extra work because I didn't either draw a line off center to align the keel with or check the port/starboard measurement before the glue set and the assembly was nudge-able. That's assuming few adjustments would have been required. At least now I know the alignment with the floor is perfect throughout.

Oh well, it's all good now. Outer and inner faring of the bulkheads was done off the ship following the engraved line outboard and paralleling that inboard, which made the use of a small hand belt sander fixed in a vise possible and a relatively quick job resulted. I got facile with that tool making the Morgan's 7 whaleboats from lifts.

Tomorrow I'll glue them on using the small machinist right-angles visible in the picture, and sand the edge of the floor to match the vertical curve of the bulkheads. The extra work should make the planking a lot easier!

I'm going to go weathered/grunge look with this build. Chose a grey stain for the inside and stained the cockpit floorboards before installing them. I have made the bailing well grungier as you can see in the second picture. I did put some very thin planks at the bottom of the bailing well to represent the bottom planking that doesn't exist in this model. The exterior will have a different stain.

I got two books on the Philadelphia from Amazon yesterday with a lot of pictures of the raised ship and the reconstruction. A lot of ideas for super-detailing this build which should be fun at this scale. The exterior planks were nailed and the pattern was not the perfectly aligned and symmetric pattern OCD model builders strive for. I'll probably use black mono-filament glued in pre-drilled holes to represent the nail heads.

Instructions state aligning with the tops of the frames, but at the bow that seems off and the profile plans show an angled taper on the very end of the plank to meet the angle on the bow-piece. Also if aligned to the top the spacing is off according to the template for the bow strake widths. So I elevated the top of the first strake at the bow and will sand the taper on them as shown on the profile plans. Now the bottom of the 3 constant width strakes line up perfectly with the hood template at the bow. You can see this at the far right of the pictures below.

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