An interesting experience

No, I haven’t gone over to the dark side, but I spent the evening building a resin kit. (Gasp)

I recently took on a project building a railroad for a gentleman out East.  This came about after our demo layout received several offers of purchase wile we were in Springfield.

 Well, rather than part with my just finished railroad, I said “I don’t want to sell it, but I’ll make you one”.

As part of the deal I also offered to build several kits that my client had purchased.  Business is business and I brought home a Chooch “Columbia Depot”.  Now we make a very similar depot that’s base on an RS&SL prototype.  The best research I can find, puts the Chooch kit at just under $70.  Our branch line depot sells for $6.

So how does the resin kit stack up?  Well, it certainly has a lot of dimension, and a few air bubbles.  They obviously designed it to take advantage of resins strength.  The stone foundation and platform are nice, except for the bubbles.  I want to be fair and impartiality is difficult, possibly impossible, but I have to say the fit is rather rough.  The window castings are nice but some kind of template for the glazing (supplied plastic) would be nice.  The tin roof, I’m not sold on and I might replace it with our rusty sheet metal.

There are 5 basic resin castings.  All needed cleanup. and then there’s the bundle of sticks.  Yes sticks. Lots of sticks that I have to cut into rafter tails, fascia boards, posts and rafters.  There’s a small bag of white metal castings. (more clean up)  All in all this puppy is going to take 3 or 4 days to build.  I’m happy with the result so far, though all I’ve done is paint and assemble the resin castings.  I’m not looking forward to the sticks, but it should look fine if I can keep the texture from getting fuzzy.  If I can make an overall comparison, it’s that resin is the exact opposite from paper.  Resin is a lot of dimension with no effort (or skill) but the painting is challenging.  Paper of course puts the challenge in the building with almost no finishing.

I won’t be converting anytime soon.  Paper beats rock.

Thom

Comments

[Jim Gore]

Thom,

So what's wrong with resin? or wood? or plaster, for that matter? As you know, I build all kinds of structures in all kinds of media and each one is a joy and challenge in it's own way. I spend as much time on a cardstock model, adding layers and details, as I do on any other craftsman project. Each medium has it's own skill requirements. You are correct; resin models require attention to painting and detailing. With a little skill, they can be almost as good as cardstock models. I've sent a picture for a side-by-sde comparison. Feel free to post, if you like.

Jim

[David]

Thom,

Don't forget that with the resin kits as well, after the cast metal clean up, the resin "filling in the bubbles" and filing and sanding, and with cutting and painting (or staining) the sticks, you still have to get out the powdered chalk or greatly diluted in or dyes, and you have to go through the effort of "weathering" the model before you are done. Being a novice, weathering is hard and requires (in my mind) an artist's eye, something I am not. With your cardstock models, the weathering is built in and I GREATLY appreciate that.

David Morrow

[Dave]

That's true, working with your hands on any kit is pleasurable and I do enjoy the painting and weathering. (I can do without the clean up)
Building this Chooch kit is a refreshing change, It will be a beautiful model when it's done and certainly good as a gauge for what other manufacturers are doing. It's a bit crude. Before we ever started with cardstock I had another Chooch kit, also a depot but in white metal. It was so bad i didn't even try to finish it. All the walls were warped and the flash was everywhere. I'm not ganging up on Chooch, It's just that was my experience.
I think if we didn't go the paper rout we might have made plaster or resin kits. I like to sculpt so who knows. Some day there might be a Clever models hydrocal kit. I will leak something right now. I am developing a plastic (RP) critter. Almost as good as Card stock. I like that.

Thanks for the pic Jim. I'll run it when I finish this kit so there will be quite a side by side comparison.

Thom

[marc witten]

Thom,card kits i must say along with Resin have come on leaps an bounds since i first started,resin kits were usually garage kits,tons of air bubbles,and warpped like something out of star trek,but we persevered,we filled holes and heat it in water,then we had plaster later becoming Hydrocal/dental plaster in uk,then card models were simple printed affairs,now theyre photo rendition works of art,i would say that whatever medium its horses for courses some people never touch card or resin or whitemetal or wood,i have done them all from railway coaches from the 60's in wood to card stock irish ones along with resin wagons,to etch brass kits i love them all and each one was enjoyable to build,but i must say i really enjoy the challenge aspect of cardstock,Marc

[Ben]

I think the aspect of card modeling that I most appreciate is the fact that (generally speaking) the model is complete when you finish construction. Painting and weathering is taken out of the picture unless you decide to augment it with chalk, etc. I also like the challenge of trying to make the cardstock look more like the various materials we are all trying to replicate. Lastly, I think cardstock is WAY under represented in the modeling world and working with it and pushing its limits sets the resulting models apart from the now way more common 'box of sticks' models, nevermind the plastic kits, and forget about the pre-made/pre-painted plastic models that are so common now.

Paper rules! Of course, it helps to have an ace artist drawing the pictures.....

Please keep up the great work! And please make a paper turntable......

[Dave]

Funny you should mention a turn table. Haven't started it yet but there is one in the future.
What I really wanted to write about however is an up date on this resin kit. there is a rather involved passinger shelter attached. It's all wood and:
One, There's not enough wood in the kit to build the structure.
Two, The plan drawings are not to scale so using them as cutting guides is useless. The drawings are in different non scales in the same sheet.
ant Three... there should be a three. Does no one care about symmetry. You can't have 2 gripes there need to be three.

Also there is a tin roof provided. I'm going to replace it with tarpaper and shingle.

[Mitch]

Since stumbling across this web site. last fall. Buying a CD. Driving 2 1/2 hrs to Springfield. Buying another CD on faith and good vibes from the brothers. I find myself being pulled to this site everyday, looking for something new. I Love it when there is a new blog entry or a new discussion thread. I have read every thread in the blog and discussion section and was bummed when I had caught up to date. I'm on my third build. The first one was terrrrrible (Charles Barkley). But it will be on the layout. The second one is better. I will have to wait and see on the third one. Please keep the blogs coming, I don't expect everyday, every other day is fine.LMAO More pics, more video.

Good job. Brahs.

Mitch

PS, I now you and a lot of other vendors drove longer than I did to Springfield, I thank you.
See you both next year..

[Dave]

glad you like our models Mitch. keep building and send us some pix to post.

[Dave]

Not having a camera is killing me. I did finish the roof on the chooch kit. I used our wood shingles. I start with a layer of underlay texture to give a solid structure to add the shingles. This is in this case placed up side down because it will be on the exposed passenger shelter. To apply shingles, I cut them into strips. I go back over each strip and cut in a few notches and make the exposed edge match the printed random edge.(Im not anal about it).
Then I start at the bottom edge and overlap successive layers.
I cut the strips using every other row sow i can have extra depth to each line of shingle. To finish it off I built a ridge cap by cutting out individual shingles and folding them in half. Once again starting at the outer edge of the ridge and overlapping them back from there.
The result is excellent. Now if only i had a camera.

[Gael]

Hey Thom, I bought a camera recently to document one of your kits I'm building, and it's a sweet little machine. It does greart macro shots for close-ups. It's a little on the expensive side, but worth it as far as I'm concerned. It's a Panasonic Lumix DMC LX5.
Gael