Thursday, November 1, 2012

This is a model from the Japanese animated film "Howl's Moving Castle."  I built it smaller than the intended size; the body of the castle is about the size of a small grapefruit.


Those are standard-size business cards for scale reference.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012


I've been building HO-scale outhouses for a client this week, and they've all got the doors closed, because they're made out of solid wood.  I decided to attempt building one with the door open, showing the interior.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Disneyland Train Depot


This is a roughly HO-scale model of the Disneyland Main Street train depot. It was designed by Robert Nava and can be downloaded from his website, The Disney Experience.

I built it at about 1/2 the intended size, which makes it roughly 1/87th scale. It's laser-printed cardstock, and all pieces were hand-cut by me, including a lot of Victorian trim around the gables, dormers and support pillars.  I printed the flags double-sided on thinner paper, and used sewing pins as the poles. To eliminate all the white edges of the paper, I trimmed with gouache paint.

Video includes an excerpt from the song, "What? No Mickey Mouse?"

Great Northern Railroad Oil House



I just delivered this oil house to a client. Gave it to him unpainted, at his request.

Made of basswood, some of which has been treated with wood hardener to make the structure sturdier.

Originally, my client asked me to build accurate rafters, which I did, but since they're not visible in the final model, and the client wanted to drill a hole in top to accommodate a boiler chimney, he agreed I should leave them out and use solid wood triangles instead.

I left the roof ventilator taped on, rather than glued, because the client is painting the model and adding roofing material himself.

Here's the link to the item in my Etsy shop.