I bought the DPM night life kit, and started putting it together. The first building went ok, but I was cutting the roof for the second building and noticed that there was a problem. The building wasn't square. The back wall was too wide to go in between the side wall, but not wide enough to go on the outside of the side wall. The other buildings were the same way, although it was very minimal on the biggest building. I'm completely disappointed with this kit. None of the parts are numbered, and the back walls require cutting to make the buildings square. One of the side walls is actually shorter in height than the other. Is this normal for DPM kits? I did all of the recommended sanding and flash removal. I had some HO DPM kits ten or so years ago, and don't remember any of these probelms.
I do not know (or recognize?) this kit, but I know that my DPM kits always have problems with the angles. They are never a perfect square, so making a roof is a little bit a challenge.
I have built a few DPM kits in N and HO - not too many problems, but I have to use a combination of a metal square and blocks of wood that I have squared while assembling. They can be a pain...
For the factory building I made a new roof from thick plastic, this forces the angles to "about square". Two other buildings came out O.K.. I bought some Coffman clamps to build the rest of my DPM kits.
I am building the factory right now. I have put extra beams inside to enforce the structure. Problem is always the roof: try to make a roof before you glue the walls together, or make the roof afterwards..... Hmmm.
I've had squareness problems with a number of DPM kits. I've trimmed them until they are square. It's either that or cut unsquare roofs.
There's nothing like trying to put together a kit with sides that aren't square with same problem for the roof as well. Somehow I've avoided these kits and am glad that I was correct in my original assessment of the product. Stay cool and run steam.....
It's been a long time since I've built a kit without modifying it. But Jeanne built a number of them over the past few years, and found the same problem. Didn't the original owners of DPM acknowledge that they had problems with "mold shrinkage?" I've been in N scale since 1972, so I'm used to these kind of problems.
I've had the same problems with DPM kits and as a result now tend to steer away from them. They do have a kit, the Woods Furniture Company, that largely seemed to avoid this problem (such that no sanding was required) as the walls were actually assembled a little bit differently than in the regular DPM kits. This kit used pieces that you glue together to then attach the walls to. In theory at least it should be easier than the normal kits. In practice though, when I built it, I found that although the joints between the walls looked good, when it came time to put the roof on it was not square. It wasn't even close. The roof was a piece of styrene sheet, and following the instructions, I had to trace the opening for the roof (created by the walls) then cut the styrene. This did work and allowed me to get a roof piece to fit. This particular instruction kind of made me wonder if DPM anticipated that the walls would likely not be square and that they would have to design the roof in such a way as to allow for it.
The DPM kits are nice but they sure don't just fall together. All of the walls, including the front, have to be square at the bottom. They have an angle that allows the part to be removed from the mould, and this has to be sanded square. The side walls also have to be square where they butt joint to the front wall. I use the brick / mortar line along the side wall bottom as a guide. You can judge the front part of the wall the same way if you look at the vertical mortar lines. The edges of the side walls butt joint to the front wall right to the edge. The back wall should fit between the side walls because there is a representation of brickwork on the rear edges of the side walls (on many kits). The rear wall will be lower on most of the storefront type kits, and the roof angles downward from the front to the rear wall. It can take quite a bit of sanding or filing to get the rear wall the same width to make the building square. You can use sand paper on a flat surface or a file and slide the wall over it keeping as even pressure as possible. Hold the wall in the middle, not on one end or the other. These are nice kits and great American prototype. Good for bashing as well. Someone had some good ideas on here about painting them and you might look for that thread, as painting all of those windows is time consuming if you brush them. Have fun , take your time - you'll do OK.
I've not experienced some of the problems described in the previous posts, except for the occasional ends not being true on once in awhile. However most of my DPM kits are older 1st run era kits including a few stored away not yet assembled. I have observed that the kits do sometimes assemble strangely in that the front wall may be either inside or outside the sidewalls while the rear wall may be the opposite. What I watch for is the scribing on the brick at the corners of the front and rear wall sections, usually the clue as to its being on the outside rather than inside the side walls. On a lot of kits the rear wall may be a little lower with less of a parapet projecting above the roof line than the sides or front which is prototype. I always use a square when assembling and if needed true the edges by sanding slightly. As stated previously I have not had much problem with my kits but they are all older kits and I have not bought any recently except for some loading dock modules. However I just pulled one of my kits out of storage and as I had previously stated this one assembles with the sidewall inside the front while the rear wall goes inside the two sidewalls. However both ends of the sidewalls and both ends of the rear wall have a slight bevel when you sight down the edges which need to be trued before assembly. Looking at the assembly instructions they state that the edges are beveled to allow release from the mold and that they need to be trued before assembly. It sounds like the side walls may have been attached to the outside of the front wall when they should have been inside. The rear wall should then fit inside the two sidewalls.
I can't say I've noted the rear wall making the structure out of square (or trapezoid) as I rarely use the rear wall so make one out of .040" plain styrene to suit then recycle the rear walls for future projects. But I have noted it goes together that way if you don't trim/square the front and/or side walls and test fit before gluing. The bottom of the walls I attend to after it's together by sanding on a large sheet of wet and dry in a circular motion on a flat surface.
Some of the kits are definitely meant as John Moore described: the back wall is inside the side walls, while the front wall is "on top." That is a big difference that is hard to miss. But some of the smaller kits are just plain out of square. I have no problem adjusting them. The rear wall is usually lower. The flat roofs for many buildings are not flat at all, but sloped to the rear. This is common in real life--truly flat roofs are a big leak waiting to happen. So flat roofs are generally sloped 0.25" per foot, or more. For drainage, they may also be sloped in a 90 degree orientation to the major slope. That is, you try to channel water to downspouts. So a roof may have a slope in one direction, and be perceptibly "wavy" in the other, all to keep water from pooling.
DPMs are fun kits to be used with the "three foot rule", bash them smash them make them flats or angle them on the back drop. Hit them with a spray bomb throw on some details and dirty them up, like Gary said save that back wall for other bashing projects,unless like pete your going to take pictures behind the buildings then that blank wall dont look so good:teeth:
