Concrete Blocks (and other small industries)

[cteno4]

You are so right that the edge is where they eye will focus in tight and also the more of a story the scene says the closer they will look at the details. It’s a problem with using story scenes vs backdrop scenes. With the backdrop scenes you can get away with playing with the mind’s eye a lot as the mind fills in the details once you’ve tripped those triggers in the mind and they eye is not drawn in as much. But with stories we get curious and want to “see” more! I love playing with the mind’s eye but I also love telling stories (its what we do in exhibits all the time) and these can be in conflict some with each other!

 

i do love how a stray detail at distance can make the eye curious to look close and when they get in close enough to see the detail to figure out what it is, that’s a great treat for the mind and one of those nails that helps the mind keep a more vivid overall memory of what it was looking at! 

 

A number of years back I was making some various birds to see what would work and what would not. Big cranes were easy as large and bright colors and you could do a lot of detail they were so big. I figured pigeons would only need to be little blobs of rough shape to tell the mind’s eye pigeons! But they came out like blobs and it was more like what are those blobs. Then found a guy on shapeways that had jsut a tad more shape to dad and even a little point for a beak and flattened tail. After looking at the pictures I crafted one by hand that was decent but took me like 20 minutes and very tedious, so I got some of the resin printed pigeons and they were way better and had just enough detail at tiny size that they said pigeons! I ended up buying the few hundred in the smallest order! 

 

jeff

[inobu]

I'm just stating some of the aspects that people miss. If you set up one section with high detail and not the other you start to shoot yourself in the foot.

It is a juggling and magic act all in one.

 

It takes a lot of trial and error to dial in a device(Devices are the "wait, is that"). Especially if its small and detailed.

If you have your own tools or machines its not as bad. Its still time, material and supplies but

if you have to buy them then trial and error it can be costly. When you order it you want to be right on.

 

Fool the eye..........

 

 

Juggle

 

Get a few of these

 

It would be critical that the blocks are the same size as the wall then the viewer will see and thousand of these cinder blocks.

 

 

 

[maihama eki]

On 5/16/2020 at 9:06 AM, Cat said:

Maihama eki, I'll be ordering from Shapeways pretty shortly and would be willing to give these a test run if you're not doing them soon yourself.  Worst case scenario, piles of broken cinder blocks are authentic details too...

 

I ordered a couple sets of these today.  I will let you know how they go.

Edited May 18, 2020 by maihama eki

[Cat]

I had seen the USA Plastics cinder blocks on EBay that Inobu had linked and presumed they would be a tiny bit too small at 1:160 US N gauge.  I went looking for other options since it would have been expensive building up pallet loads with singles.

Being curious now if they fudged the size or not, I sent them a query last night.

"The dimensions for N Scale cinder block are 1.3h, 1.3w, 2.5d Millimeters."

At 1:160, 2.5mm scales perfectly for standard US block size of 400mm.  At 1:150, they are 375mm.

Being extremely near-sighted, I have a pretty sharp eye for small sizes at close range, but I don't think the difference between a 2.5mm US block at 1:160 and a 2.6mm Japanese block at 1:150 will jump out at me if they're not side by side!  I'll order some of those just to have the different style of two-hole singles, and hopefully maihama eki's three-hole ones will work out too.

I'll reply to USA Plastics and see if they might do up pallet-load pieces too for variety.

[Martijn Meerts]

I've modelled some axle bearings for my WaFu22000 kit as well as some fishplates for the forest railway line for an initial test print. I'll add the cinder blocks in various sizes to the test as well. This is the first time I'm trying to print something other then the example that came with the printer, so no idea if it works. Since the parts are so small, I had to make really small supports, so it remains to be seen of it all works out.

 

I might give printing it a go tonight, just need to prepare an area for the cleaning up afterwards 😄

 

[marknewton]

Since we're discussing concrete blocks, anyone thought about having a wall featuring "hana blocks"?

 

https://sunchi.jp/sunchilist/okinawa/63177

 

They're very common in Okinawa, but I've seen them throughout the rest of Japan as well.

 

https://search.rakuten.co.jp/search/mall/ブロック塀/100005/
 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Martijn Meerts]

I think for a full wall of those type of blocks, getting them laser cut might be the best option. Would definitely be an eye catcher on a layout though.

 

[marknewton]

I think so too Martijn. Somewhere in the stash drawer I've got some laser cut fences with hana blocks. They look great.

 

All the best,

 

Mark

[Cat]

Here's a supplier with the USA Plastic cinder blocks, plus pallet loads, and the traffic cones could be useful too:
https://www.allscaleminiatures.com/miniature-gallery?category=N

 

Sign up for the newsletter and a $10 coupon:
https://www.allscaleminiatures.com/about

 

Ooh, a wall of hana blocks would be sweet!

Edited May 19, 2020 by Cat

[inobu]

1 hour ago, Cat said:

Here's a supplier with the USA Plastic cinder blocks, plus pallet loads, and the traffic cones could be useful too:
https://www.allscaleminiatures.com/miniature-gallery?category=N

 

Sign up for the newsletter and a $10 coupon:
https://www.allscaleminiatures.com/about

 

Ooh, a wall of hana blocks would be sweet!

Remember visual sizing........There's always a natural reference. Keeping in line with it will keep you straight.

The traffic cones can throw your roads or vehicles off.

 

Illusion act:

You can buy a 5 pack of pallets. Cut a bunch of squares blocks and put a tarp over it. The eye tells the mind

that there are pallets under the tarp. You bought 5 pallets and made the scene look like 50.

 

You can do half a Hana wall. Leave a few Hana blocks on a pallet and its a wall under construction.

 

Right visual sizing make the viewer skip over the details making it less work for you. Look at Luke Towen

work and his visual sizing is always balanced.

 

Inobu

 

[cteno4]

1 hour ago, Cat said:

Here's a supplier with the USA Plastic cinder blocks, plus pallet loads, and the traffic cones could be useful too:
https://www.allscaleminiatures.com/miniature-gallery?category=N

 

Ooh, a wall of hana blocks would be sweet!

 

they do some excellent printing! About 10 years ago I made a batch of resin printed road cones as there were not great alternatives at the time. I had bumped into a chap in New Zealand of all places that had a small company that was doing very early high re 3D printing commercially. He was actually working with a number of model train manufacturers to do prototypes of shells. He found the isp file for the ones usually used in japan. They came out great! I’ll have to dig some out I had a bit of roadway we used in front of the station on the original club layout where we had some. Got lots of laughs when folks looked close.

 

I'm going to try a palette set from ngineer as I can see these being used in a few ways (along with a few other things that have been on the list from them). Thanks cat you got me thinking back into detailed little story scenes again, I can get lost in the more perceived scenery and playing with the mind’s eye, but that gets a bit ruined when you get really close and start telling more of a story. Each has their place but doing the highly detailed story scene can be quite fun and a real treat for the viewer! They also photograph well which perceived scenery does not do as well in.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Cat]

Speaking of fun stories to tell with traffic cones, here's a great one that will fit in just about anywhere, scroll down about 3 photos on this page:
https://shoottokyo.com/blog/important-updates

[inobu]

Jeff,

 

I'm glad you are saying these things. When I tell people a good layout has a flow they look at me like I'm crazy. In all actuality

you are making a 3D storyboard. You want to tell a story but not a novel in one scene. Either the scene or you will get burnt out

over time and the story never get done.

 

Inobu  

[inobu]

7 hours ago, Cat said:

Speaking of fun stories to tell with traffic cones, here's a great one that will fit in just about anywhere, scroll down about 3 photos on this page:
https://shoottokyo.com/blog/important-updates

 

The Japanese thinking is much like computer logic. The revelation came to me in a data transmission class.

We were going over ACK (acknowledgment) an NAK (negative acknowledgment). In the middle

of class I'm reflecting back to my mom. When her and our neighbor (Japanese lady) would be

talking. After each sentence you would hear "uhn". That's data acknowledgement.

Machine language is right to left.

 

Inobu

[maihama eki]

Kobaru made the best construction cones ... sadly they are no more.  The cones were injection molded.  I wonder what became of their molds.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10382742

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10311318

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10535051

 

 

[inobu]

29 minutes ago, maihama eki said:

Kobaru made the best construction cones ... sadly they are no more.  The cones were injection molded.  I wonder what became of their molds.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10382742

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10311318

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10535051

 

 

Yeah, there's more plastic in the sprue than the product.

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Gave the cinder blocks a quick test. My first attempt failed miserably due to my own failed. My 2nd attempt was better, although I decided to print them directly on the guild plate instead of using supports. Taking them off the build plate damaged some of them, and others appear to have disappeared into a black hole. These things would definitely need custom made supports built using a 3D tool rather than a slicing tool.

 

Anyway, I managed to salvage some of them to at least have a general idea of how it looks. Bit blurry picture, but it's hard to take a good picture with a mobile phone camera 🙂 

 

 

I do believe if they're up close to the edge of a layout, where people can really inspect them, it would be very obvious if they didn't have the holes. On the other hand, I would probably make the holes a little smaller to make the overall cinder block a bit stronger. Interestingly, the colour of this resin comes close to the colour of the actual block, so you probably wouldn't even need to paint them. They're slightly translucent now because the walls are so thin, but that would be fixed by making the holes smaller.

 

This would definitely only make sense right at the front of a layout though, where people can get real close to the detail. As in, 25cm close.

 

 

[inobu]

Martijn,

 

Try printing on kapton tape.

 

Inobu

[Martijn Meerts]

I think that's just for filament printers, not resin printers. You definitely want the cured resin to stick well to the build plate, since it prints upside down, and with each new layer, the model needs to pull the newly cured resin off the FEP film.

 

I printed directly on the build plate just to see what the detail would be like, since I wanted to test-print some axle bearings (which came out rather well actually), but didn't have the time to create custom supports. I have Thursday and Friday off though, so I'll be doing some more tests with some supports as well as changing the size of the holes.

 

The good thing is, I'm starting to get the hang of the Blender interface, and apparently I've not completely lost all my 3D modelling skills and knowledge 😄

 

[cteno4]

Inobu,

 

I agree overall flow is important, but at times you can do a novel. It’s more of making sure it’s a good novel that someone will enjoy, as if it’s good the audience has the patience to enjoy. It’s a nice surprise for them to get more than they were expecting and it’s not exhausting, just the opposite it piques the interest to look for more! We are curious creatures. Flow is fine but having spots to stop and see the cinder blocks is equally as good and necessary. Not everyone likes to do detailed stuff but it can be used to great effect if you want to and go very very deep and long.
 

The modern culture is that patience, focus, and attention span are gone. Scripts now have to just keep moving on quickly and not stop on anything very long. That’s hogwash as we have not evolved at all in the last decade or two. We have the same abilities we had a hundred years ago, just not the proper content to utilize and enjoy longer things.
 

This pressure has been on the rise in the exhibit world for a couple of decades while most museums are seeing a decrease in involvement. The sad thing they think they are no longer hip so they have rushed to the use of cell phones, selfies, and social media and slashed their content to the point of not saying much other than wham! Bam! Zonk! in their exhibits. They  have forgotten what it was they they were trying to present and with no substance there is little interest to visit.

 

jeff

[marknewton]

I knew I had some laser cut walls that feature hana blocks stashed away somewhere. I'll be using them on the house nearest to the level crossing on the cameo layout. I really like the look of these. Something I find interesting with Japanese concrete block walls is that the blocks aren't staggered like those I see here in Australia. 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

 

[maihama eki]

The concrete blocks came back from Shapeways last Saturday.  They turned-out quite well.

 

Here is the printed set, cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner.

 

10 pieces separated and painted - on top of a Y10 coin for size reference.  They are definitely small.

 

[cteno4]

They came out great!

 

jeff

[Cat]

Sweet beans!

We're still waiting for our Shapeways order to ship; had to wait a bit for the next fiscal hobby month to roll around before we placed the order for assorted goodies.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Cat

[Martijn Meerts]

Nice!

 

How easy was it to clean them up after cutting them from the sprue? In my tests, I've been trying to avoid adding supports on the long sides since they're so small they're difficult to hold on to.