Bank Walls

Progress is being made, a bit slower than I hoped but that is too be expected as this really is my first attempt at scratch building anything. It also has been a long time since I have built any models, so the last week was filled with mainly gathering supplies and tools. With that done I began.

I started with my .040” styrene, which I would be using for all the major walls and roofs. Its fairly strong and thick so it would provide extra support once braced properly. The best method to use to cut it was to score and snap the styrene. I started by snapping out all the four walls, the two different roofs (one for the lid one for the interior of the box), and a floor.

I then moved on to cutting out window and door openings. This proved to be harder than I thought and would provide me my first lesson in scratch building. With thick styrene, it is very hard to do interior cuts. You obviously can not score and snap, (or so I thought) so my first attempt was to draw in the windows and slice them out with an xacto knife and small drill. I even experimented with scoring an “x” from corner to corner of the windows to be able to snap them out that way. What I learned is that this method, while could be usable, created a very ragged window hole and turned out to be too big. While I could have used it still, I decided to try again.

The next attempt was to score and snap the entire walls and then piece it all back together. This allowed me better control over the window shapes. The trick is to find common lines to cut on, therefore reducing the number of pieces to put back together and maintaining as much strength in the wall as possible.

This photo shows different states of progress on each wall. The solid square is the front wall scored and snapped out. I have not yet drawn lines for windows or started any cuts on this section. The top right section is a side wall all cut and glued back together. The green stuff is Squadrons green putty used to fill the cut gaps on each side. The top left section is another side wall all finished construction, glued, puttied, and sanded.

It did take some time to shape each windows after each section was cut into various bits. I used sand paper, a couple of small metal files, and an xacto knife to smooth and straighten the inside of each window and to make sure everything would fit properly. It takes some practice but I think it should go faster next time.A close up of one side wall. The quarter and dime are there to show scale. Remember this is an N scale building and those are N Scale windows. The top windows are fairly large for this scale and thats why I chose them. They are the 40 pane engine house windows I ordered from Tichy.The front wall completed. All detail pieces will be added later so that is why you do not see the columns and things yet.

That reminds me of one of the benefits of using Illustrator to create the diagrams. While doors, windows and styrene all come in inch measurements, they tend to be in the thousands of inches. For example, the .040” Styrene is said 4 thousands of an inch. In any case something like a window or door will have an opening measurement of .37” x .57”. This is pretty hard to use accurately on a standard ruler. The nice thing about Illustrator is that you can simply switch the document at anytime to convert all measurements from inches to millimeters and back again. So my windows will become something like 6.8mm x 12.8mm. Much easier to measure than with inches and you can always get the inch measurement also if you know a part is 1/4”.The back wall completed. This wall has no windows because the loan card holder would be blocking all of this wall from the inside. No sense in adding windows here then and a lot of these type of buildings did very little on walls that were not facing the streets, but I did want to put something there to give it some interest. Since my building only had one door entry in the front, I thought a small back door would be appropriate for money delivery or whatever.All the walls and the floor laid out. Now to start with interior bracing and get this thing looking like a building.Here I have completed most of the interior bracing on each section. More might be added into the center of each section to provide more support but I need to wait to install the window glass first, and that only after I have painted the interior. A nice dark color (black in most cases) is suggested to keep the light inside from making your building glow. The shiny mess you see on the bottom right section is light reflecting off the glue. It dries transparent if a bit shiny.

One thing I did discover is that this building, with its many huge windows, would show a lot more interior than I had at first anticipated. Although my initial goals were to use opaque window glass so I could avoid interior detail, I am beginning to rethink that now and might attempt some in this building. The floor piece will stay separate until the very last minute so I should have plenty of opportunity to play around with some interior. I will have to do something about the inside of the walls though. Just spraying it all black will look funny, so I am toying with the idea of lining them with magazine clippings or printed paper to look like mahogany or something. I will most likely use this method to lay down a checkerboard or some other detailed flooring, but all this will be addressed later.

In the next post, we should be able to see some progress in getting the building standing up. Stay tuned!

The Bank Diagram

It took some research to find out that Adobe Illustrator was one of the easier programs to use when diagramming a scratch build. There are others out there that are available such as CAD and the like, but I had Illustrator and knew how to use it. I'm sure there are free versions of programs like Illustrator if you are interested in designing your own buildings.

The nice thing about Illustrator, and programs like it is that with one click you can have the program draw a box (or any shape you like) with dimensions you provide to it and it is easy to change the size of these objects. Although there are a wealth of tools in the program, for my purposes, I used only about 2-3 of them, making it very easy to use and understand.
Here is the prototype I would use to get started. The first thing I needed to do was search the Internet and hobby shops for suitable windows and doors for my bank. Once I had those, then it would be easy to start the diagram as I would have some base sizes I needed to start with. My foray to the local hobby shop (LHS), did find a good selection of windows and doors, which I purchased with the intent of using on other buildings.

Two major companies exist to my knowledge that provide a decent selection of parts.

Tichy Train Group: http://www.tichytraingroup.com/
Grandt Line Products: http://www.grandtline.com/index.html

Both are model train companies and are probably the most used when it comes to scratch building parts like windows and doors, although they do offer many other things. Both also not only give a nice description of each item, but also a small picture and sizes, which was key. When using something like a window there will usually be two measurements, one for actual item size and one for the opening needed size.

For my purposes, I searched both sites' N scale selections and ended up deciding to use the Tichy masonry windows, 2523 – 40 pane engine house windows and 2502 – 6/6 double hung masonry windows. This decision was based on the fact that my bank needed large mutlipane windows that would span most of the available space above the doors as in the Broadway prototype. The 40 pane windows were the longest windows available and thus were the ones I needed. For the smaller windows at door height, my decision was based on the 40 pane windows. I needed something that would look cohesive together. Both these would need to be ordered directly from Tichy as my LHS did not have these in stock. At $3 US a pack, it would be a very good deal.

Fortunately, I had bought some doors on my previous excursion that would work.
Here is my diagram of the front of the Bank of Arkham. I started as close to the prototype as possible, but soon realized that using six columns and five windows on the front made the building a bit bigger than I wanted. Remember that the front of the building would need to be at least 2.5 inches long to accommodate the loan cards standing on long side inside the building, so the front had to be at least that length, but at the same time, I needed to conserve as much space as possible. Reducing the number of windows and columns on the front allowed me to shorten it up to about 2.75 inches long.

After that it was simple to place images of the windows I would use at the correct size and start adding columns and doors. Most of the detail has been added to this diagram, which typically would be unnecessary at this stage, but I am a glutton when it comes to planning.

The columns are iconic so I will be adding the caps, identified as those round shapes at the tops, probably by printing them on nice paper and gluing them on. I added an extended door portico and some steps to give it some architectural detail.

The bank is a box and will open just above the title on the top where the extended overhang protrudes. Everything above that point will be a separate piece which will be hinged in the back. The powerful magnets will go, one over the other in each section, most likely in the middle of the front and be hidden inside each box area, one behind the title and one in the above area of the lid. I also added a rounded top to the lid and although none of my prototypes have this, I felt it added to the architectural shape of the building, would allow me to use less roof detail parts, which could be broken easily from handling, and would provide a bit more strength to the lid.
Here is one side. Since both sides are identical, there would be no need to diagram both. The back of the building would have very little detail and would, in this model, mostly be a concrete wall. I will add a small back door off to one side but there will be no windows or columns on the back. The side area is 2.25” long. Not all the detail and parts are added to this diagram as it wasn't needed here and most of the calculations were preformed on the front. The front overhang would actually be supported by the front columns (not shown) and I did not add the rounded roof from this angle.

Again, the top protruding trim defines the lid opening and since the hinge would be in the back, I did not want the trim to extend out the back. Doing so, would have made it so the lid could only open to 90 degrees maximum. Designed without the trim allows the lid to open to 180 degrees, although I may add inside fabric bracing to stop it from opening more than 115 degrees or so.

Since we are talking about the lid and hinge, I should probably describe how that will be made. After much research, ideas, and discussion with some helpful people, I decided that the hinge would simply be a swatch of fabric glued to the inside of the back wall and to the under side of the lid. Fabric would allow it a bit of play to avoid breakage and the tensile strength would be better than anything else I could use. Adding any kind of hinge other than this on the back would run the risk of being weak at the glue points. A simple twist in the wrong direction when opening it would put pressure on these glue points and most likely result in breaking it off. With fabric I would have a larger glue area and a stronger hinge as the result.
This is a diagram of the bank looking down from the top and shows some insides. This was actually one of the most difficult diagrams to do and it is shown here only in it's most basic form. The actual diagram has a few other layers which show the lid and the section just above where the columns stop. It all fairly intricate and confusing, so I did not include that, but basically I wanted to give the reader an idea of how the interior would look and be designed.

Section A is the vault, a small box 1.5” wide by 1” high by .75” deep to hold two D10 dice.

Section B is another slim box 2.5” wide (plus a bit) by 3/16” high by 1 5/8” deep (again, plus a bit) which will house the loan cards. It is a bit over sized so the cards will have a little bit of extra room and not be damaged or difficult to remove. Also the eight loans cards stack to about 1/8”, but I added a bit more room for future expansion cards if needed and may increase this to 1/4”.

Section C is the bank interior which will be lit from a hole in the bottom and LED lights strung up through to the inside.

Section D is also interior and will be lit from section C. The dividing wall (if I even use one that extends the full length) will have the sections from the outside wall to the section A wall cut out to allow light to reach section D.

The rest of the details here are things like the columns on each side, the portico over the doors, the stairs, and even some of the structural supports (the small squares and rectangles on the inside walls). Some of this, especially the structural portions might be changed during construction, but I needed to understand how much room I had and how I was going to place everything inside.

A final note on the columns. I will be purchasing half round tubes and rods for these online, as my LHS didnt have them. Two great sites that I know of exist for styrene and plastic building materials.
Evergreen Scale Models: http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/
Plastruct: http://www.plastruct.com/

Now to wait for my orders and finally get building.