Papercraft Models & Textures

[MichiK]

IORI_koubou has released a nice, little freeby - a simple 1/80 scale model of a Meiji era 3rd-class-coach:

 

 

You need some kind of account for access, though - pixiv, twitter, FB, ... nothing otherworldly.

 

I've built mine, already, scaled down to 36,36%, i.e., Z scale, of course.

 

 

[Aztecknight]

For the fist time I tried a Sankei model, im dissapointed because in the picture the roof looks real with the canals.

When I started putting together the roof has NO Texture and its flat.

I don't recommend the Sankei models

[cteno4]

Sorry to hear that. I’ve not been really disappointed by the more flat texture roofs. They usually have etched lines to give some detail and not really noticeable at a couple of feet. Folks do upgrade the roofs with greenmax styrene tile if they want full texture. Great thing about sankei is the greatly widen the numbers of styles of buildings and also give a bit different look than the Tomytec, Kato and greenmax buildings. This helps as Japanese neighborhoods are quite varied in building appearance. I love the variety,

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

I'm not a fan of the flat roofs either, but the rest of the kits are pretty much the best paper craft kits you can get. There are of course ways to replace / upgrade the roofs as Jeff said, but most of the time, the replacements are quite out of scale. I'm still planning on experimenting with some 3D printing sooner or later for added details for my H0 project, and I'm thinking of giving 3D printed N-scale roofs a go as well. Probably need a resin printer to get the really fine detail though, extrusion printers would be quite rough.

 

[cteno4]

I’ve often wondered if sankei will ever get into doing grade up 3D print Detail kits for their structures with tile roofs, gutters, down spouts, gas tanks, etc. I be a lot of folks would love a little set of details like this for them.

 

you are right about n scale plastic tile roofs usually being more like ho scale. One of the Tomytec house sets I have came missing the little tile roof bit for a small eve on the house. I decided to have the eve under repair and a small truck with little crane on the bed taking up some boxes of tiles. I chopped up some half round channel styrene I had that was about the right size to match the roof and it was about half the size of a figure, so more like ho in scale. So the palate of tile will be on the truck and not near a figure and the figures on the roof just working on the sub roof board repair.

 

jeff

[maihama eki]

I've put dimensional tile roofs on Sankei kits several times using commercially available plastic roof tile sheets.  They are a bit of extra work - particularly if the roof is a complex layout or has a curved profile.  The result is worth the effort to me.

 

I just measured the n-scale Nanyo Busan and Kobaru materials that I have and both have shingles that are ~ 25 cm wide x 35 cm long at 1:150 scale. The Greenmax material has shingles that are ~ 30 x 30 cm. These seem properly to-scale to me.  The more problematic area is the thickness of the material.  The Greenmax material is about 1.5 mm thick which makes it very hard to cut and looks out of scale especially layered on top of the cardstock base material.  The Nanyo Busan and Kobaru materials are much thinner.

 

I think these laser cut card stock kits from Sankei and Amagi produce some of the best final structures available.  The details are much sharper and finer than a lot of the plastic kits and pre-built structures.

 

   

[Martijn Meerts]

Yeah, the thickness of the plastic roofs is usually the biggest issue, that's why I think using a resin printer would work better for roofs. Resin printers are a lot more detailed and smoother, and don't need much, if any work once cured. So with a decent resin printer you can probably make some really thin roofs. You'll likely need to do them in parts, since printing a piece large enough for an entire roof might make it too fragile.

 

I really do like the Sankei kits though, much more than I thought I would when I bought the first one to test with. I also have some Flor Verde kits, also great quality, but not pre-coloured at all. Flor Verde has some kits based on really small stations, so they're great for a small branch line.

[AhmadKane]

Most of the first links are down. Anyone have a new set of links or cardstock buildings?

[cteno4]

Google is your friend, every month or two I do a search on like papercraft japan and such. You also can try translating a search and putting the Japanese into the google search to bring up some others. Perhaps someone here could suggest some kanji phrases to search with for Japanese papercraft buildings.

 

like I said these kinds of links tend to go poof fast so I never bother to save them as just a waste of time playing whack a mole.

 

here is a good ongoing site. He keeps adding new models and removing old ones so best to check back every month to see if anything is new.

 

http://paper-n.sakura.ne.jp/open.html

 

wayback has a couple of captures with some different ones

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20190723002007/http://paper-n.sakura.ne.jp/open.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20190622023035/http://paper-n.sakura.ne.jp/open.html
 

you can also try old dead links in wayback to see if they have a snapshot and linked files are there.

 

http://web.archive.org
 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

ps if wayback saves your butt shootem a couple of bucks it’s a not for profit thing,

[MichiK]

The other week, I've found a 1/250 scale paper model of the first Shinbashi railway station. It's a nice kit, if a bit simple,  and for a model railway you probably wouldn't use it directly, but take the measurements for a scratch build. Actually, Mr Toshimasa Mitsutake has designed a number of free papermodels for Canon and others. Those will give you an expression of what to expect.

 

Registration at the e-shop is a bit adventurous (obviously, the designers of the software never imagined that someone from outside of Japan would ever try to register...) but manageable with the help of computer translation. Payment via PayPal is supported.

 

Another 'issue' is that the model rather represents the re-erected building as it exists now. In particular, the two annexes to the left and to the the right of the transversal platform  (to the extreme right in this photo - what are these, anyway? Maybe toilets?), and the roof over the stairs on the street side are missing for the original configuration. However, neither should hold any particular difficulties for an average modeler.

 

Also, there's no platform canopy, but that is/was available from IORI koubou (at least in 1/150 scale, that is).

[AhmadKane]

anyone have a cardstock/papercraft crane? low ones to load wood or steel beams

[cteno4]

Sorry I’ve not seen papercraft cranes, not the sort of medium for them really.

 

jeff

[MichiK]

3 hours ago, AhmadKane said:

anyone have a cardstock/papercraft crane? low ones to load wood or steel beams

I'm not sure what exactly you are looking for. A picture would be helpful, plus the desired scale, and whether it should be a freeby or a commercial model.

 

3 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Sorry I’ve not seen papercraft cranes, not the sort of medium for them really.

Oh, I dare to slightly disagree...

Boxes are pretty much the simplest thing you can make of paper, so anything made of box girders is well targeted by paper (e.g., the big container bridges).

Lattice structures are a different thing. In theory, they are easy, too. After all, you only have to do 'a few' straight cuts along a ruler... In real life, however, it's going to be many, many, MANY cuts, extremely boring, easily ruined... and befor assembly the parts are nothing but wibbly-wobbly. So, lattice structures are rather somthing for the connoisseur! 😉

[AhmadKane]

On 5/24/2020 at 6:16 AM, MichiK said:

I'm not sure what exactly you are looking for. A picture would be helpful, plus the desired scale, and whether it should be a freeby or a commercial model.

 

Oh, I dare to slightly disagree...

Boxes are pretty much the simplest thing you can make of paper, so anything made of box girders is well targeted by paper (e.g., the big container bridges).

Lattice structures are a different thing. In theory, they are easy, too. After all, you only have to do 'a few' straight cuts along a ruler... In real life, however, it's going to be many, many, MANY cuts, extremely boring, easily ruined... and befor assembly the parts are nothing but wibbly-wobbly. So, lattice structures are rather somthing for the connoisseur! 😉

 

http://www.fulghum.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/170-log-cranev2.jpg

 

 

I think something like this, but in a smaller scale for treefalling. This might be the modern equivalent of what I'm looking for, but I do believe this is rather too large to get. 

 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/74/67/d27467e3e78f2d87f090fa406242d513.jpg

 

Something like this lumber mill layout, the crane on the left I think. I could get a shack built but the crane structure is still a wonder.

[MichiK]

The boom derrick (#1) can be made from toothpicks and thread (at least a small one in 1/150) - no need for a papermodel there.

 

The other one is a typical steam crane (or later on powered by electricity instead of steam). I have

- Vayashis' ソ80 railway cranes (rather at the bottom of the page), 1/120 scale and very simple, or

- the small dredger 'Fairway' (post #15 has the files), 1/250 scale and not simple,

which could be used for it.

 

There's also a 1/100 scale model of a Swedish harbour crane (Nr.35), but that one doesn't have the right looks, I think...

[cteno4]

6 hours ago, MichiK said:

Lattice structures are a different thing. In theory, they are easy, too. After all, you only have to do 'a few' straight cuts along a ruler... In real life, however, it's going to be many, many, MANY cuts, extremely boring, easily ruined... and befor assembly the parts are nothing but wibbly-wobbly. So, lattice structures are rather somthing for the connoisseur!

yes this was what I was I was referring to on a small crane, sorry it was late and I did not express my thoughts well.

 

yes these kinds of cranes could be constructed from toothpicks, strip wood, styrene strips and shapes (they make H and I beams) and bits of small metal rod. Staples can be useful. look around the house as you will find many small odd bits of plastic and metal that can be repurposed for this sort of modeling. Main ibeam could be made from cardstock. You could scale it down some easily to it in place.

 

jeff

[MichiK]

The Nakashibetsu Town Folk Museum has published a few buildings on facebook during the last weeks:

 

- Tohoro and Kamimusa stations of the Shibetsu line (there's also a photrealistic version of a quite derelict Tohoro)

- Office, exihbition hall, farm house, and barn of the former Hokkaido Agricultural Experiment Station

- depot, freight shed, and a train of the local narrow gauge railway

- 'Musa station station' (?, 武佐駅逓所), and the museum building

(Scale is 1/150, except for the train, which is 1/40)

 

There's also a blog entry with loads of old photos of the narrow gauge rail.

[cteno4]

Some simple 2 story shops and multi story modern buildings from brother (hey they get you to use up that ink!) Simple designs but fast and easy builds for doing quick mock-ups and to fill in until better models made for a spot.

 

https://online.brother.co.jp/ot/dl/purifure/mokei/train/train-03/

 

jeff