It is completely possible! If you can post a photo and what information you have on it I will do my best to make one! Ok that I can understand. I agree that the differences between the designs would be enough to throw off the whole model if I were taking ALL my measurements off of the Superliner. However, there are more than a few places where the measurements are exactly the same such as car width and I believe overall height where I can take my measurements and the rest can be researched. When I decide to make a car or something similar, I try my best to fully research and obtain the data needed to make the item. Take the beacon lights for example, my first few tries were based off of lights I found being sold by industrial suppliers. Had they been the correct style, they would have been spot on. However, being supplied with pictures and the correct data for the style of light that was requested, I was able to make one that has been pretty popular thus far. Please keep in mind that when I start a project, I like to rough it out to get my basic shapes and such and then start adding in details from my research. Nothing goes strictly "by eye" or "guesstimated from a pic". I will go as far as to load the picture into a modeling program scaled to size and take my details and correct placement straight from there.
The z scale hopper looks great but I would like to see the car painted. I was checking out the online store and would live to see that backhoe in N scale.
Wow! Those are cool. It should be enough for me to try! I will start on those tonight when I take a break from my current project.
It's a do-able goal providing you don't have to spend too much time marketing what you produce. I started in January and now have over 300 items in my store ( Tebee Models by tebee on Shapeways ) though some of them are commissions and not visible to all. I have about another 50 items that I haven't got around to listing yet and about the same number in progress. But I find I'm having to spend more and more time replying to questions about my items and talking about them on forums and the like. I've also had a major project setting up an eBay shop and working out what to sell there and trying to calculate the pricing details. I know I'm not spending enough time doing marketing or even explaining in my shop what things are and how to use them, it's much more fun designing things. But I'm doing this full time and trying to make a living out of it so I know these things need to be done - just don't underestimate the amount of time you need to devote to it ! Tom
Very cool shop Tom! I'm just in it to make some awesome stuff and if I get a decent wage from it, awesome. If not, then at least I made people happy and a lot of really cool stuff that I can buy as well! Like a friend of mine once said "if you're doing it for the money, you're in the wrong business. No one gets rich off of trains".
tebee said: I started in January and now have over 300 items in my store ( Tebee Models by tebee on Shapeways ) though some of them are commissions and not visible to all. I have about another 50 items that I haven't got around to listing yet and about the same number in progress. Very nice -- do you have samples? I noticed that all the pictures are design models, not what is actually produced. (That would go a long way in helping you sell stuff. Hmmm ... that seems expensive.) For example, Cool looking trucks.
Yep, I don't think I'll ever ever make my fortune of this either! It's taken me six months and a loan off my girlfriend to get to the point of being able to buy enough of my own stuff to be worth opening an eBay shop. I'm currently making about a third of what I need to live on from Shapeways, hence my desire to move into new areas. I'm keeping my Shapeways mark-ups low, around the 20% mark, but it's necessary to make rather more to cover the extra costs on eBay and it's a hard thing to get right, the gap between not making enough profit and being too expensive is a small one. I've got some HOn30 Trucks already - I'll try and get some photos of them in both the old and the new materials, also some of my Nn3 stuff. Tom
I would love to see more reference photos of finished products. Most importantly, put an object of reference in the photo! A coin usually works best. It's extremely hard to judge detail if there's nothing else to compare it to. For example:
Yes I must do this - problem is I've not been able to afford to buy one of everything I've designed yet. At the moment I don't have a sample of that truck for instance - though it is next on the list! Think it would be a bit big for you though - it's a HOn30 version of the Carter Brothers trucks fitted to some of the SP narrow passenger cars - though it would not take too much effort to shrink it and make an N gauge version if someone can give me the dimensions. Here is a somewhat bigger(Gn15) model that I have printed out
Tebee- That loco looks like it was made in a sandstone material. What is it? I like that look and might use it on a few of my larger projects for the texture.
It's in WSF, but dyed a rust color which rather accentuates the texture. Much of this disappears when painted , though it is still not a perfectly smooth surface. The dyeing is done with Rit dyes. The mix I use is cocoa brown, black and wine in roughly 3:2:1 ratio one packet of dye in a pint and a half of water. Bring to near boil drop stuff in for 30-40 mins stirring from time to time. Wash in cold water on removal. Painted WSF to my mind looks OK as aged steel in G sale or wood in HO. In N I think the only thing I might use it for is trucks - it's a lot stronger than Frosted detail. Tom
OK here is a photo of the HOn30 archbar truck in Black strong Flexible and frosted ultra detail with an Injection molded N gauge truck for comparison .
And here is an even more close up one of the FUD truck where you can see all the paint on my finger nails ! And here is a British 4 wheeled tank car in Nn3 - this is about 20 mm long overall - note it's not been fully cleaned yet there is still some of the yellow support material on it/
It sure does look good. I think where the strength comes in for the WSF material is the thickness requirements. If it was as thin as the FUD I think it would be comparable on strength. I will definitely look into the WSF for a few of my "concrete" projects due to the texture and price though.
I have another idea for you, Sierra. Modular walls. I am wanting to build a locomotive shop based on a scaled down version of Norfolk southern's Juniata shop. Walthers used to make a backshop that was kinda close to what I want. But walthers being who they are they no longer make it in n scale. So here is the idea, make wall sections with a single roll up door and the windows above it. Then we can make a shop with as many doors as we want. Also do some blank walls to use as side walls. Here s a pic to help illustrate.
I would say that where as WSF is not far off indestructible, FUD is a little brittle. I do some British HOn30 cars, here is an a example in WSF, blown up more that life size so you can see every flaw in my painting and a little of the texture remaining - this is not really viable in real life. Now these work quite well in WSF but they include their own chassis and I've had people tell me that when they have had them made in FUD the bit where the wheels clip in ( the axleguards in UK parlance) has snapped off when they are trying to put the wheelsets in. I myself dropped one of these in FD when I was washing it after dyeing it. It fell 3 ft to my ceramic tiled kitchen floor and shattered. This is with exactly the same design but different materials. I've managed to stand on one of the trucks shown above in WSF and not break it. On the other hand WSF is sometimes too flexible. When I first designed the archbar truck I made the bar section a near scale 0.95mm x 0.75mm. It looked wonderful but was flexible enough to allow the wheels to drop out if you weren't careful. I have to increase the thickness to 1.5mm to make them work properly. By the way I apologize for the lack of depth of field in the photo above - it's raining outside today and I can't get a photo in sunlight. One of the things I'm in the middle of doing is setting up a table indoors with photographic lights so I can take some decent shots to use on my eBay listings. Just one more thing that is taking up some of my time when I could be off designing new things !
Ok guys. I took a break from things to work on a few requests from the Z scale side and after a few hours of work I turned this out: The render doesn't really show the detail in it due to the fact that I can never get the lighting right in my modeling programs lol. I still like it though! And in Z scale I'm sure it will be liked as well.
Tebee, Do you have any photos showing those Nn3 FUD cars painted to show the detail. I'd like to grab up a few. Thanks Chris
I've not got around to painting any of the Nn3 stuff yet - it's going to be marketed by a N gauge specialist not me, I've got far too much on already ! I'll try find out if he has any painted ones, but it may be awhile as my internet connection is down and I can only get on when I cycle 4.5 miles to my friends - one of the disadvantages of living in the country !
