Real Glass Window Glazing

In earlier posts, I have mentioned that I like to use real glass for the window glazing in my buildings. The more typical approach is to use a clear plastic of some type, either a sheet material that is cut to shape or a hard plastic part that is cut from a sprue, normally found in a plastic building kit. I grew frustrated with all types of plastic glazing for four reasons:

1. The surface is very easy to scratch, even from a simple cleaning.
2. Clear plastic windows cut from a sprue are not completely transparent.
3. Whenever you see a window in the real world, there is almost always some sort of reflection in the glass. Even though your mind normally ignores the reflection, it is still there. Many plastic windows produce no reflection at all, which is not prototypical.
4. If you accidentally get adhesive where you don't want it on plastic it normally means that the window is ruined as the adhesive has either etched the surface of the plastic or its removal creates scratches.

My solution to all of the above is to use real glass. For this, you need three things:

1. A sheet of real glass.
2. A reliable method of cutting the glass.
3. A reliable method of gluing the glass to the inside of the window frame.

My source of real glass is eBay and the product is microscope slide covers. NOTE: this is microscope slide COVER glass, not microscope slide glass. When using a microscope, the specimen is placed on the microscope slide and then a piece of slide COVER glass is placed on top of the specimen - I am speaking about the COVER glass. Here is a picture:

These come in various sizes but I prefer those that are 24 mm x 50 mm because these are large enough to cover the entire area of most HO scale windows. I paid $4.88 (Canadian dollars) with free shipping for a package of 100 slide covers. At less than 5 cents per slide, the handful ruined by either clumsiness or the learning curve is not an issue.

Cutting the glass is easy. If you have used the wheel-style of glass cutter, you won't be able to use it for this application as it will simply crush the very thin microscope slide cover glass. What you need is a diamond tip glass cutter which is available from eBay, Amazon or other sources for less than $20 or even less than $10. The alternative, borrowing your wife's engagement ring, is probably not a good idea!

To cut the glass, place it (or the object is fastened to - read on and you will see what I mean) on a very clean rigid surface because you don't want the glass to flex. Then, using a straight edge placed on top of the glass where you want to cut it, lightly run the diamond tip cutter across the glass surface. This will create a very fine scoreline. Finally, snap the glass along the scoreline. A few practice attempts are needed at first. I have found that practice makes "almost" perfect.

My go-to adhesive is the following product which I purchase from Michaels. Canopy glue works just as well. These products dry quickly, stick to practically anything, are permanent, dry clear and are odourless.

For many buildings, I simply glue the entire slide or part of a slide to the inside walls of the building so the entire inside of a window is covered. However, if the walls of the building are fairly deep this would produce an unrealistic effect.

The following step-by-step process allows the glass to be cut and secured very precisely. The windows am using in this example are made by Tichy and are HO scale.

1. First, paint the exterior of the window frame the trim colour of the building.
2. Carefully clean both sides of the microscope slide cover with your favourite cleaning solution.
3. Using a fine tip tool such as a toothpick place very small dots of adhesive at several places around the perimeter of the interior of the window frame.
4. Very carefully place the glass on the window frame (I like to do this with the window frame placed on a black surface under good lighting as the glass can be hard to see).
   
   
   
   
   
5. Wait for the adhesive to dry.
   
   
6. Using a straight-edge, very gently score the glass along one edge of the window (note my diamond tip glass cutting tool in the above photograph). Snap off the glass by pressing down gently on its loose edge. Repeat for the second edge.

If you find that the glass was cut a little too wide it can be filed down by VERY gently using a fine emery board or extra-fine sandpaper.

Here is a close-up picture of one of these windows installed in a structure.

Safety Comment

I have never cut myself on these slide covers but would be possible to do so - be careful. Also, while I have never experienced broken glass flicking anywhere, eye protection is a good idea.

Scratchbuilt Building in 1 Day

The next scene on my home HO model railroad is a logging area. I need one simple wooden building which would depict a site office. My last post outlined my first-time use of a Cricut Maker machine to cut out the wood components for a building flat. This project is a simple building but is a complete structure, with four walls, a peaked roof, a floor, two windows and a door. This building needs shingles so I thought I would see if I could create my own shingles using the Cricut.

I began by drawing the desired dimensions on graph paper (when I took this picture I had not yet drawn the floor).

The following photograph is a closeup of the front, back and side walls just after being cut by the Cricut using its knife blade. The machine took 18 cuts of the pattern, going slightly deeper each time, to cut through the 1/16 inch thick board-and-batten siding which I purchased from Mt. Albert Scale Lumber (part of Fast Tracks). After taking this photograph I removed the pieces from the sticky Cricut cutting mat and gently passed a file around the edges to remove leftover wood fibres, of which there were few.

Next, I stained all components using my homemade medium wood stain (recipe is 2 teaspoons of Fiebing's Cordovan leather die in 8 ounces of 70% isopropyl alcohol). I always stain both sides of all pieces because this greatly reduces warping. I place the stained pieces in front of a small fan to speed up the drying process which also reduces warping.

I then added dimensional basswood bracing to the edges of the walls:

Here is a photograph of my first attempt at making a sheet of shingles using the Cricut maker. This was using the machine's fine cutting blade. I used a sheet of commercial shingles that I had on hand to come up with the dimensions. I can't recall the source of the paper because I purchased a package of it several years ago and the label is missing - I probably purchased this from Michaels. It is 8.5 X 11 inches, brown and about the thickness of construction paper but with a slightly smoother finish. The paper has no self-adhesive backing but that did not turn out to be a problem.

Here is a picture of the beginnings of the application of the shingles:

Note that I used scribed wood for the roof panels. I thought that the lines in the material would come in handy for ensuring that the shingles were straight - this worked very well and avoided having to draw lines on the material. As this was 1/16 inch thick scribed wood I used my detail power sander to reduce its thickness somewhat by sanding the reverse smooth side. I did this because the 1/16 inch thickness looked a little too thick for the scale of the building.

I applied Aileen's Tacky Glue to the entire top surface of the wood and let it dry. I then poured some Aileen's Tacky Glue into the white bottle cap in the above photograph and added water equal to roughly 1/8 of the quantity of glue. This was to make the glue slightly runny and easier to apply with a brush.

In the above picture, you will note that the first row of shingles has already been applied. I used the brush to apply a bead of glue to where the next strip will be located, making sure that only a very small amount of the glue found its way on top of the first strip of shingles - I was trying to avoid having any more glue than possible ooze out from under the shingles. This technique worked very well because the scribed wood roof surface allowed excess glue to squeeze through the grooves in the wood before it squeezed between the shingles. The reason that I covered the roof with glue and let it dry before starting this process is that Aileen's Tacky Glue will become sticky again when it gets wet so the slightly runny glue adhered extremely well to the surface, and did so very quickly.

I did try painting Aileen's Tacky Glue to an entire sheet of paper and letting it dry. My plan was to run this through the Cricut once the glue had dried on the backside and then rewet the glue when I applied it (the way postage stamps used to work) - this did NOT work as the paper curled up very badly as the glue dried. I shall experiment with other techniques in the future.

Here is a shot of one-half of a microscope slide cover glued to the inside over one of the Tichy windows:

Finally, here are front and back shots of the completed structure. The entire project from start to finish took about 4 hours of elapsed time during a 24 hour period. I am delighted with the way that the Cricut Maker machine works. All of the pieces fit perfectly in alignment and all cuts are perfectly square - as precise as a laser-cut commercial kit.

I sparingly applied another of my homemade wood stain to the lower half of the structure to depict further weathering, this time for a more grey look (recipe: 1/8 teaspoon of Fiebing's black leather dye in 8 ounces of 70% isopropyl alcohol). If you add too much black die the resulting black has a blue tinge).

Scratchbuilt Building in a Weekend

The other members of our model railroad club, the Echo Valley Railroad Guild, sometimes rib me over how quickly I sometimes get things done. This time I have to admit that I outdid myself. Today is Sunday at noon. I just came from my model railroad room after putting in place a new scratchbuilt building that I started on Friday afternoon at about 2 PM

On Friday I set about designing a skinny building that is needed in a narrow place against the backdrop of my layout. Put another way, it is like a deeper than usual building flat in that it will have an interior and be lit with LED lighting. The building is made from scribed 1/16 inch basswood and depicts the home of a ficticious building in Salmon Arm, British Columbia on my HO model railroad. The business is named Henry James Ltd. - Manufacturer of Fine Furniture. My late brother's name was Henry James. He died in 2018 after a short but painful struggle with cancer.

I started with a pencil sketch drawn out in 1:1 dimensions on 11" x 17" graph paper:

The building is two-storey with a slab front and a railway platform for receiving raw material and shipping product.

My wife and I recently purchased a Cricut Maker cutting machine. I would say that I am 20% up the learning curve on how to use the Cricut. This the first project for which I have used the machine to precisely cut out major components.

Using the above drawing I created a digital drawing in Cricut to the precise dimensions. Since I am using Tichy HO Scale windows and doors for this project I measured these items very precisely so the openings cut by the Cricut would be as precise as possible. I did a small amount of filing of the openings in a couple of places to ensure a good fit.

Here is a picture of my computer screen before doing the cutting with the Cricut:

The horizontal pieces toward the bottom of the image are 1/16" slots into which the platform will be inserted and glued in place.

Because the Cricut was to cut through 1/16" basswood it needed the knife cutting blade inserted:

The basswood sheet is placed on a Cricut Strong Grip cutting mat. A few passes were made with a brayer tool to ensure that the adhesion was good:

Before starting the print I also used masking tape around the wood, as recommended by Cricut to ensure that the wood cannot shift out of place (a "belts and suspenders" caution):

The print file was then sent by Bluetooth to the Cricut and it cut out all of the openings in the basswood. The job took about 20 minutes because the knife made 14 passes to gently cut through the wood.

I next stained the wood with my homemade concoction of wood stain made from leather dye in 70% Isopropyl Alcohol and fastened the doors and windows in place (after having painted them with an airbrush using Vallejo acrylic paint).

Next, I added glass microscope slides covers
behind the windows, gluing these in place with canopy glue. I also added some strip wood braces to ensure that the basswood won't warp over time:

I added 4 warm white LED's to the back of the front wall, facing the back wall which will have a photograph image attached to show the semblance of an interior:

I then used the Cricut to cut out the platform, with corresponding slots (actually you can see in the above photograph that the platform has already been installed as the slots show the wood tabs glued in place) as well as braces to under the platform. I used the Cricut to cut the braces out of 0.020 inch styrene sheet. This is what the braces looked like before being removed from the cutting mat and being painted black.

I made a back wall out of 1/16" chipboard, which is like a dense cardboard. To that I glued photographs of commercial shelving units I obtained online and edited to size using Microsoft Word. I printed the images onto ordinarily printer paper. Because the viewer is looking through windows that are about 30 inches away the image of the shelving units gives a good suggestion that there is a complete interior.

In the picture below the back wall has been attached. The wiring for the interior lighting can be seen coming out of the bottom of the building. I did not bother with a floor as the building sits directly on the layout surface.

I made the sidewall of the building angle slightly inwards towards the centre of the building (around 15 degrees). This is to avoid the somewhat disconcerting effect of seeing a building wall abutting the scenery which, in my opinion, looks goofy. If your eyes don't see where the building meets the backdrop your brain tends to see the building as being much deeper than the 1-inch depth that it is.

Finally, a few shots of the completed building. I created the sign using Microsoft Word. In memory of my dear late brother Henry, I added another sign which depicts the business's slogan. This shows that my brother and I shared a somewhat irreverent sense of humour. The borders of both signs were cut from 0.020" styrene using the Cricut.

From beginning to end this project took about 14 hours to design, create the pieces, paint, stain, assemble and add lighting. The use of the Cricut didn't save any time because the time I saved on having to cut out the openings was taken creating the digital file using the Cricut software, preparing the material for printing and then doing the printing. However, the Cricut really shines by ensuring that the doors and windows are precisely placed and cut. I am quite pleased with how this project turned out. Next up is to add some ballast to the tracks as well as some ground cover, trees and shrubs.