Notes on transfer tape

I've had a few discussions and email exchanges with Martin and others about transfer tape. I use it a lot these days, but I'm a bit cavalier in my writing about what it is and how I use it. I thought I'd write this note to elaborate a little.

I first learned about 3M's transfer tape in an excellent article by Brooks Stover called Scratchbuild a Small Factory that appeared in the May 2013 issue of Model Railroader. In it he shows a picture of how he made S-scale self-adhesive siding using transfer tape and card stock. That got me thinking, so I went and tracked down a roll of 3M transfer tape. Since then I've used it a lot, although I'm no expert on it. I can't say for certain why it's called transfer tape. The best I can figure out from cursory internet searches is that the name derives from the idea that this tape allows one to transfer decorative finishes to a structural substrate - but don't quote me on that. 

I buy it from Deserres - an art supply chain based in Montreal with a store here in Ottawa - in 1/2" and 3/4" rolls, where each roll has 36 yards of tape. 

The rolls are reverse wound, meaning that unlike regular household sticky tape, the glue is on the 'outside' of the carrier. That plaid wrapper on the roll protects its gluey surface from sticking to everything it touches. And believe me it will, stick that is. The adhesive is quite strong and fast grabbing.

In the photo I'm rolling out some tape on a piece of card. Notice the plaid wrapper above and to the left of my hand. Don't discard it as you'll need to put it back on the roll to preserve it once you've applied tape to something.

That brown paper is the tape's carrier, and underneath it, stuck to the card, is the adhesive. Usually once I've applied a piece of the tape to something, I burnish it to make sure it's evenly stuck down.

When you're ready to stick something to the tape, just peel off the carrier to expose the adhesive. You can see what you're left with is just a thin strip of very sticky adhesive - there's no carrier film at all as is the case with regular double-sided tape.

I've used transfer tape in a number of projects including: trimming the Grizzly Flats depot, holding down track on the EVRR, installing external elements on the Thomson high-rise, creating the roof on Steinberg's, building the facade of the Canadian Press complex, siding the the Rocky Ridge depot, and more recently, holding together the basic structure on the Thrifty's project.

No doubt there are many other uses for this material, and there are certainly better application techniques out there that I haven't heard of, so this post is hardly definitive. But, so far I've found this to be an excellent adhesive that has allowed me to bond dissimilar materials and tricky pieces with precision and little mess. I'm looking forward to learning more about what it can do.

Snapshots from the gap filling trials

I've been doing some testing of ways to solve the 'Portacabin Problem'. That is, how to eliminate, or at least reduce, the gap between the base of a building and the surrounding sidewalk.

I've been using the restored Post Office building for these tests as it's no stranger to being abused :-)

The technique so far is to place the building on a flat surface - I'm using the MDF surface of the layout table - with a piece of wax paper underneath, then carefully dab filler - I've found Deluxe Materials' Prefect Plastic Putty has worked best so far - in the gap between the foundation and the surface. After drying, the wax paper is peeled away, and the hard putty on the side walls is sanded smooth and painted to blend into the foundation wall.

Because the sidewalk is slightly off-flat compared to the layout table's surface, I then took some very fine slivers of modelling clay and worked them into a few remaining gaps. In the lead picture, the right side of the facade has clay worked in, the left doesn't and neither do the front steps. The clay improves the look, but it's tricky to get it into place and look right.

I took this picture before filling the gap with clay, and you can see the gap is still quite noticeable. Although, the unclayed side foundation wall doesn't look too bad with just the putty applied. 

I think further refining of this technique will reduce the worst offending foundations, but clearly having an extended foundation that sits into a hole in the layout is the best. For me though, I want the flexibility of arrangement that a flat sidewalk surface allows.

HO nickel gauge

John and I were chatting about phone apps for determining if an object in a store – like a Hot Wheels car or some other small toy – might have the right size and proportions for use on an HO-scale layout. He pointed out a great low-tech solution: the diameter of a nickel is the same as the ‘average’ height of a typical HO-scale figure. And it only costs a nickel !

[Both photos and idea by John Steele; and some inspired channeling of Leonardo da Vinci :-) ]

Three things I’ve learned

A few weeks ago I took my other blog, retroDynamics, off-line. I can’t really post to two blogs and do justice to both. Since 30Squares is the more active, I’m keeping it going and retiring retroDynamics. So, from time-to-time they’ll be non-model railroad posts appearing here, but I don’t think they’ll be too thematically different to be overly disruptive. Anyway, with the end of the year approaching, I’ve been getting all philosophical, so here’s one of the more philosophical posts that appeared at retroDynamics a couple of years ago.

I’m not an award winning scale modeller. I just enjoy building. So, you’ve got to view these observations in that light. Since I got back into model building I’ve come to appreciate three attitudes that have made building more enjoyable and, oddly enough, my projects more successful.

1. Don’t be too prissy

Sometimes I get completely fixated on making some little detail turn out just right. Sometimes I’m successful and sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m able to figure out when something won’t be perfect, but will be good enough and then go on. I try and recognize when I’m spending lots of time on something I don’t have the skill to pull off, and whose completion won’t make much difference to the end result anyway, and then go on to a more important task that contributes either to the overall plan or a feeling of accomplishment. 

2. There’s no time clock.

James Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games was something of a revelation. For me, model building is an infinite game. You can enter and leave the field of play at anytime. Projects are not governed by schedules, project plans, work-break-down-structures or deadlines (or even the instructions in the box for that matter). If it takes a year to build something you like, that’s ok. If it takes two weeks that’s ok too. Model building, like anything else, can be a finite game, but it’s not usually that way for me. Projects are much more fun when I don’t fret over my rate of progress.

3. Don’t worry about screw-ups.

I used to worry that I’d mess-up some subassembly so bad that I’d be unable to continue with the rest of a project. I’ve finally learned that just about every ‘mistake’ can be corrected, or some alternative can be pursued that can be even more interesting than the original plan, or if all else fails, a replacement kit can be bought.

SweepSticks from Fast Tracks

I bought these SweepSticks from the Fast Tracks booth at the Ottawa Train show a few weeks ago. These ones are for laying out 9-inch radius curves with HO scale flex-track. Basically, one inserts these pieces between the rails to hold the radius while you tack down the track. I'm planning to use them for building Edward St. layout.

Bonding styrene to masonite

Hold a piece of styrene against some masonite. Sweep some Ambroid ProWeld along the joint. Let dry. The resulting bond is surprisingly solid. 

Let’s get one thing straight ;-)

I’m an aficionado of old-school methods for scratchbuilding and kit-bashing HO-scale buildings. I like to work mainly in styrene, wood, and card. I haven’t written much on the basics per se other than showing in passing the techniques and tools I’ve used as I proceed with a particular project. But, since I’ve been working on several freelance buildings lately, I thought I’d mention one set of tools that are near and dear: rulers and scales.

Over the years I’ve collected a number of them. Unfortunately I’ve also broken, bent, slashed, lost, gouged and otherwise rendered useless another equally large number. These are the lucky survivors. That upside-down-Y sectioned aluminum ruler is the newest addition I bought at Staples a few evenings ago when Debra and I were picking up office supplies.

I don’t have many dogmatic rules, but I do try to live by this one: don’t use a plastic or wooden scale or ruler as a straight edge to score or cut lines with a knife. I’ve ruined plenty of rulers that way. As a boy, my mother was glad when I started to use that McDonald’s ruler because now I’d stop damaging her good sewing rulers! A few years later I bought a proper model railroader’s scale at George’s Trains. It cost me a couple of dollars or so – a small fortune to me at the time – and it became my standard measuring tool and cutting edge. I’m glad to still have it, and I work with it on just about all my projects. I’d highly recommend buying one.

I like the physical size of HO-scale items, but it seems to me that 1/87.1 is a weird scale for modeling things.  The ratio 1/87.1 means that 1 foot on a regular household ruler represents 87.1 HO sized feet. HO seems to make a little more sense when I think of it in metric terms: HO-scale means 3.5mm on a household ruler represents 1 real foot. There’s still the problem of mixing metric and imperial measure, so the weirdness is only tamed a little. Wikipedia has a good discussion of the historical story behind HO if you want to go into the whys and wherefores behind HO’s existence. The British OO scale – 1/76.2, or 4mm represents a foot – seems somewhat more sensible to me. The models are a little bigger than HO without taking up too much additional space, and the arithmetic involved with scaling things is a little easier to work with: 1 mm represents 3 inches; 0.5 mm represents 1.5 inches. Also, since OO is very close to 1/72 scale, which is a common model aircraft and military modeling scale, there are lots of cross-over possibilities.

I must admit I kind of took up with HO-scale more by accident than by plan. My first train set was HO, the first E.L. Moore building project I was entranced with was presented in HO, and there was lots of HO-scale stuff readily available. I dabbled a little with N-scale back in the ‘70s but nothing came of it. When I reentered the hobby a few years ago, I didn’t reconsider what would be the best scale to start over with, I just went with HO. As I’ve developed my knowledge and interests since then, and although I quite like the streetcars available in HO, I might have re-started with N instead of HO since there’s a lot going on in N that I quite admire – as well, there seems to be a very positive and forward looking vibe there. I have a few ideas I’d like to try in N-scale and hopefully I’ll be able to give them a go in the years ahead.

Well, the point of this ramble is: if you can only buy yourself one measuring tool, get yourself a metal scale engraved with measurements in whatever scale you’re working in as it’ll make measuring, ruling, scoring, and cutting a lot easier.

Temporary display base for the McGregor Park Library

The McGregor Park Library model has been a little tricky to store safely while I'm preparing its city site because of those lighting wires sticking out of the bottom. A brick solved this little problem quite well.

And speaking of libraries,

Marples saw

These days when I’m buying stuff I try and make a point of finding what I’m looking for from Canadian or US manufacturers first, and if I can’t find anything suitable, then I’ll buy from other sources. So, it was quite an education when I went looking for a small handsaw with a thin, flexible blade that I could use to cut the buildings in Scarborough Square from their Plexiglas base.

{An aside: I stupidly thought when attaching the various buildings to Scarborough Square that I’d never again need to remove them, so I attached them with dots of superglue. Now that I’m building a new layout, I want the buildings, but have no need for the Square. I had read that acetone was a superglue solvent, but I was concerned that it might also eat away at the styrene used for the building bases. I figured if I had a saw with a very thin blade I could just cut the building bases free. It turned out to be true, and the bases survived virtually undamaged.}

The lowest price saws of this type were manufactured in China by major brand names. There was a very beautiful saw I came across at Lee Valley Tools that was made in Japan, but the price was a bit high for me, and I thought I’d damage it since it wasn’t really meant to saw through plastic. The Marples saw shown in the picture seemed to fit the bill: made in the US and reasonably priced at around $13 or $14.

It’s an excellent saw and I highly recommend it. I had no problem cutting the buildings free from the Plexiglas base (its very thin, sharp blade made this relatively easy), it was then used to cut the curved perimeter support pieces on the new layout board (it was quite impressive at this job as the blade had enough flex to not bind during cutting and overall it had that ‘knife going through butter’ feel), and has been used to cut the layout board’s foam upper surface (an admittedly easy task for any saw). It turns out from my unscientific searching for a saw made in North America it was the only one I found that was made here, so I’m glad it turned out to be a good buy.

Storage tins

I found these tins at the Solutions Store. They're about 5 inches in diameter and maybe 3/4 of an inch thick. I think they are meant for jewelry, but I find them useful for storing HO-scale figures. The clear tops make it easy to quickly see what's available when I'm preparing setups for photos.