Making N scale Furniture

Ok guys, is there any non tedious way to make things like chairs and tables?

I've made a kitchen, and some couches, and even a couple of desks, cast them in resin, and made multiple copies. They came out fair, and since they're so small, they're reusable thousands of times just by painting them differently.

Chairs and tables have me baffled. I can make the chair part out of styrene angle, but I haven't figure out a good way to make table and chair legs. I have the GMM brass etch, but I'm looking for things like office chairs, not outdoor furniture.

I've found a good source for N scale(1:144) furniture, but its like buying gold, and a lot of the things don't look a lot better than what I can do. Also, I seriously doubt I could get a decent cast of things like chair legs out of resin.

Any ideas? I take on horribly tedious tasks, but this one seems to be more miserable than most.

 

Scenic Express has some items available.

Scenic Express-OUTDOOR CAFE ACCESSORIES

 

I like to mass produce my own interior details as well, but I haven't come up with an easy way to make tables or chairs. The Preiser set is pretty good. Vollmer used to have some outdoor furniture as well that included some square chairs with legs. I also bought an etched brass fret of 132 chairs in 1:150 scale from Neal's, but it doesn't say who made these. They are the best looking ones I've found!

 

Hey Ryan, how much furniture are you talking about? I mean, are you doing one or two office interiors or do you have a couple of high-rises with big windows to furnish?

 

Here's the 1:150 etched chair and the fret. The fold lines are etched half way through for ease of assembly:



For comparison, here is the etched 1:150 chair, the Preiser chair with a Preiser figure,
and the Vollmer chair:

 

How about going one step further, like John Widmar, and build a model railroad layout in N scale, the layout being 1/160th the size of a real layout? I never asked John, but is that layout an HO layout? How about a picture for us all?

 

I've got a variety of buildings to do, mostly DPM buildings. I started with the one with the most and biggest windows, and I'm on the last floor of this building.

I haven't had any problems with actual furniture other than the tables and chairs so far. I have made some office chairs, and they came out fair. I resin casted my couches and all my kitchen cabinets and furniture. The interiors are somewhat modular in design, as each floor is made indiviually, painted and furnished, then they just slip into the building. They're not glued in place, the floors stack like Legos, and the floor below holds the floor above in.

OTOH, the lighting in my garage isn't that great, and most of the buildings are at least 1 foot away from the viewer, so this helps also.

Although I'm probably not the best modeler when my saving grace happens to be distance and poor lighting

 

Let's not make this any more miserable than we have to

 

Mine is an N scale model of Lat Lattimore's barn in Fort Worth in 1975 when it housed an HO layout. I cheated and built an N scale model of a Lionel layout.



I am pretty satisfied with the Gold Medal Models etched metal chairs for indoor chairs. I think the Preiser plastic ones are "outdoor furniture".

To make a common 4-legged indoor dinner table, I use HO brass LADDER STOCK (not so easy to find any more), cut off a segment and bend down to make legs plus a square open section between pairs of legs. Add a piece of styrene for table top.

 

Somewhere I actually saw a WORKING model of I think an HO scale layout in a n scale layout. I'm not kidding.

 

Very nice!! :thumbs_up:

 

Furniture - try 'tedious'

Sometimes tedious and miserable pay off! I don't know much about photo-etching, but I made some pretty credible chairs, table, roll-top desk and checkerboard to detail a caboose interior back in 1970. I was waiting for my hitch to end, so I had time for small N-scale projects like this.

I made mine with scribed-and-bent computer card, typing paper and masking tape. I stained the card, and it looked like wood. My freelance design is kinda 1920-ish. The legs and below-seat braces were one cut-out; the seat and back were another. I think I used this as the basic construction for chairs, table and roll-top. No warpage or time damage - after 37 years, they look brand new. For years (decades!) I waited for Bill Gates and Word to give me the checkerboard.

I agree, this probably is too tedius for most. If anyone is seriously interested, I'll fire up the camera when my chores are done.

Scott

 

Are your interiors lighted? I'm assuming they must be with your low room lighting problem the only way anyone is going to see an interior is if it's lighted. A night scene is the only situation where the insides of any kind of enclosed structure or vehicle are visible, even a structure with large windows is difficult to see inside when the ambient light is brighter outside. I would focus more on the lighting of the layout so it doesn't look like Alaska in the winter all the time. You might be surprised at how good direct lighting brings your layout to life. Most of my structures have no interiors, and only blinds, curtains and suggested interiors when they are lit at night, yet the effect is good. If you concentrate on those few really obvious storefronts and not try and do every room in every building, the task of making furniture will not be so daunting.

On the other subject floating around here, the working model-model railroad is an HO scale layout in N-scale. You can see it on YouTube, I think it's under the title "World's Smallest Working Model Railroad" or something like that.

 

Wow - and I thought my table and chairs were neat.... Look at John's typewriter stand! Then look at the macro - his layout phtos. John, you do it all! Fantastic.

Scott

 

Don't get me wrong Scott, I am definitely one who believes in detailing the areas that will be seen. Unless you're modeling an abandon or for lease structure, you need something in there. I have a two-story apartment house that has one room fully furnished, granny in a rocking chair looking out the bay window, plants and even a cat walking on the back of the couch. Even with the best of lighting conditions, it's almost impossible to see all of that. Although it was a kick to do, I wouldn't do any of the other apartments.

As far as the old time lampposts are concerned, have you looked in the Walthers catalog or their online website to see what they stock? Here's another place in an ebay store that sells quite a number of lampposts as well as other model items:
eBay Store - everydaygoodz: Model Lampposts: Train Model Lamppost, Architecture Model Lamppost
I have purchased a few items from them and they are pretty dependable.
Jimmo