I have just about finished the Habbaker's garage and had a lot of trouble getting the stairs looking good. Would appreciate any hints on how to make the treads look straight and uniform.
I model in HO scale and had one heck of a time with the stairs. I finally gave up trying to make the stairs out of paper as provided in the print-out. As a result I turned to wood and all turned out well.
I'm going to have to give some thought to this. All I can say right now is that it's certainly do able. I have done it several times but with mixed results. My brother seems to nail it but he's kind of obsessive. I could include an alignment stringer as a back side to the fascia board of the stair. I'll give that a try and if it works, I'll include it in kits from now on. I'm always open to ideas, so let fly. Thom
Sorry everyone, but this is going to be rather long, but I don't know of an easy way to explain how I did Habbaker's stairs. First a bit of construction theory. Habbaker's stairs are steep by typical standards. They are 50° as opposed to a typical 35°, or so. Also a typical run & rise would be in the area of 12" x 7.5", but it varied all over the place, back in the day. It was pretty much follow the typical trades practice, but if it don't fit, make it work. We supply 20 stair treads in the kit. If you do the math and lay them out equally, you get a rise of 7-5/8" x a run of 6-5/16". Not my ideal. Not east to walk up either. So I decided to eliminate 1 riser, which gave me a run of 6-5/8" x a rise of 8". Still not great, but OK. (I did say these stairs were steep.)
The first thing I do is to make all my threads. Make sure you cut them all equal in length.
Next, I lay out the top surface of each tread on the inside of the side board that is not on the wall side. Just real light pencil marks, so you won't see them when you are done.
Next, using tweezers or whatever, with the side board laying on the table, with the marked side up, I line up a tread so that its top surface is on a line and the front edge just touches the top edge of the side board. Hold it as vertical as possible.
I then take my ACC bottle, with a fine tip applicator on it and put a tiny drop of glue on the underside of the tread, near the center of the board.
The reason I use a tiny drop is that it allows me to tweak the alignment.
Once you are happy, go ahead and run a thin bead of glue on the underside. Capillary action will make it disappear and since it's on the underside, you won't see it anyway.
Do all the treads the same way.
Next, mark the other sideboard. (Or the wall in some kits.)
This time lay the new side board (wall) with the marks up and follow the same sequence you just completed.
The trick is to not apply any glue till you are sure of the tread position.
I'm guessing that some of the problem you might be having is that all of your treads are not the same length. This will really wreak havoc on your assembly as you try to stretch the shorter tread into position, the sideboards bend. You end up with a crooked staircase. Instead, just try making a small "cleat" out of a scrap and use it from underneath the tread to fill the gap. That's what a real carpenter would do.
There are many other ways to do stairs. I also make allot of jigs and setups, but this is how I did this set of stairs.
Thanks, That is helpful although I did follow that method to some extent. Not sure I am using the correct glue. I am not near any hobby store. Can you let me know what type ACC glue you use, and where I might get it and the fine tip applicators.
That was probably me that mentioned BSI glue. It is what I use exclusively. There are others out there, but this is the best I've found. He sells to hobby shops and usually puts their name on the label so it looks like the "store" brand.
I went to my local hobby store, Hub Hobbies, in Minneapolis and their house brand of SuperGlue was also BSI in small letters on the skiny sid eof the bottle
I model in HO scale and had one heck of a time with the stairs. I finally gave up trying to make the stairs out of paper as provided in the print-out. As a result I turned to wood and all turned out well.
John
I'll give that a try and if it works, I'll include it in kits from now on. I'm always open to ideas, so let fly.
Thom
The first thing I do is to make all my threads. Make sure you cut them all equal in length.
Next, I lay out the top surface of each tread on the inside of the side board that is not on the wall side. Just real light pencil marks, so you won't see them when you are done.
Next, using tweezers or whatever, with the side board laying on the table, with the marked side up, I line up a tread so that its top surface is on a line and the front edge just touches the top edge of the side board. Hold it as vertical as possible.
I then take my ACC bottle, with a fine tip applicator on it and put a tiny drop of glue on the underside of the tread, near the center of the board.
The reason I use a tiny drop is that it allows me to tweak the alignment.
Once you are happy, go ahead and run a thin bead of glue on the underside. Capillary action will make it disappear and since it's on the underside, you won't see it anyway.
Do all the treads the same way.
Next, mark the other sideboard. (Or the wall in some kits.)
This time lay the new side board (wall) with the marks up and follow the same sequence you just completed.
The trick is to not apply any glue till you are sure of the tread position.
I'm guessing that some of the problem you might be having is that all of your treads are not the same length. This will really wreak havoc on your assembly as you try to stretch the shorter tread into position, the sideboards bend. You end up with a crooked staircase. Instead, just try making a small "cleat" out of a scrap and use it from underneath the tread to fill the gap. That's what a real carpenter would do.
There are many other ways to do stairs. I also make allot of jigs and setups, but this is how I did this set of stairs.
Hope this helped.
In another post someone said that
the BSI gap filling glue worked very well on paper
http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_info.php/cPath/167_1625/products_id/37055/n/Bob-Smith-Industries-INSTA-CURE-Gap-filling-CA-1-2oz
Hope this helps
Aaron
and their house brand of SuperGlue was also BSI in small letters on the skiny sid eof the bottle
Thanks for the heads up
Aaron