Posted 17 May 2014
I really wanted to make a single room to start with, with a staircase, wood door, classic trim, real wood flooring and a couple of features I decided would be interesting to add.
I had it mostly planned out in my head- a formal 1900-1940-ish era room with hardwood floor, fancy crown molding and ceiling, wallpaper and wainscoting, stained wood stair case going back, and then up left, a door in the wall beneath the stairs, with a carved fancy upholstered chair, little table with lamp and old telephone in the corner by the stairs, and chandelier. An arched doorway in the left wall, and behind that as well as behind the other door- another wall to create a dummy space so that when you open the door and look you see what appears to be a hallway (but you wont be able to see further)
same for the doorway in the left wall, you would see what appears to be another room but only the visible portion in the rear would be finished.
I bought the chair and the door but I'm not real happy with the "wood" floors I've seen- printed paper!
Today I made strips of real mahogany which would be stunningly rich when stained and fine enough grained that the grain doesn't look "out of scale" as cutting strips of oak or pine would.
Here's a quick poor, cell phone image of just a rough set up of a couple of the plywood pieces with the door, and the strips of flooring I cut and loosely laid out to make sure I have enough before undoing the table saw setting.
I just drew some pencil lines approximating where the stairs will go, and the arched doorway on the left wall, after seeing some classical wood stairs I only found one site/maker (they are in Hong Kong) that seemed to have good looking banisters , newel posts and spindles, but the quality of the construction was iffy and their price was almost $100, so I decided I will build my own staircase but look for some nice turned spindles, newel posts and banister, I found a few possibles but I really like that Hong Kong's staircase that has a curved banister at the bottom- real elegant!
A site in Hong Kong I found with the stairs shows this staircase which I really like
I really like that curved handrail and the spindles.
I can easily build the stairs myself, the actual steps in that photo are nothing more than approximately 3/4"x3/4" scraps cut off at a 45 degree angle, the stairs are the easy part, the carved turned spindles, newel posts and banister are the tricky part which I have no tools or equipment that small to make, ditto for those raised panel doors.
The door I bought is from Houseworks #6025, I was amazed to discover it's constructed exactly like a real raised panel door! I have made a number of raised panels on the shaper, as well as raised panel doors for my house and they are a lot of work, I can't imagine doing this so small!
The wood chair I bought is from that same place in Hong Kong the stair picture is, here's the chair- very fancy, and it will be stunning with the mahogany floor.
Posted 17 May 2014 - 10:28 PM
A previous room box of sorts that I built, I made use of some of the resin ornaments from lawbre, but the rest I made from wood, mostly cherry, all of the bricks are individual bricks cut from strips of cherry:
Mahogany varies a lot depending on the variety, the Honduran variety is not nearly as hard as oak, but harder than pine, but some other mahogany is harder than oak and up around the hardness of cherry, so it really depends. The mahogany boards I can get were originally used for glue-ups to be turned on a lathe and then painted and used for garden planters because this mahogany is very weather and insect resistant, seems like a horrible waste of so nice a wood to paint it and use it on so temporary a thing as a garden planter...
I bought a piece of board large enough for my floor project 5/4" thick, 4" wide and 18" long, I resawed it on the bandsaw into about 5 slabs and then used the thickness planer to take them down to 5 mm thick (we use metric at work) For cutting the strips I used a small carbide smooth cut rip/crosscut blade on the regular tablesaw with a zero clearance insert in the table so there were no gaps around the blade.
I set the fence to about 7.5 mm which gave me strips a little over 1/4" wide, or in 1:12 scale that would make the floorbaords about 3-1/4" wide or thereabouts. It only took about 15 minutes to cut all the strips and there was no waste other than the blade kerf.
I don't like flimsy or "cheap" and I always tend to overbuild, thus you'll find me using 1/2" thick plywood not thin stuff or MDF/hardboard etc., I also don't like resin, plastics, popsicle sticks, or such things as "wood" flooring made from printed contact paper or the like, so I'm glad you are planning to use real wood flooring!
The cherry bricks I made for that other room box, and the box itself were scaled 1"= 8" due to using the real size of bricks for the scaling, so the cherry bricks are 1"x 1/2" x 1/4" and they were all cut out on the large commercial Powermatic table saw at work, the key is not so much the size of the machine as it is selecting a good BLADE and a good quality one at that, one with fine teeth, narrow kerf. We use Forrest brand blades, they run about $150-$175 whereas the cheap 10" tablesaw blades you can get for under $20. The Forest blades are extremely balanced, stable, can be resharpened and retoothed many times, cheap blades are thinner and flimsier and tend to wobble, bend and vibrate.
I don't like flimsy construction! The other build is actually the upper two floors of what was a real building in NYC that was torn down around 1980, I only did the front room and the top two floors, the building was 75 feet deep, so to do a whole floor the model would have had to be made 9 feet deep, and to do all the floors it would have been about 6 feet tall. I actually started to make that with the full front but the perfect sized and color little "bricks" I found which I salvaged from a floor of a nearby building that was abandoned- suddenly vanished one day and was nothing more than a vacant lot- my supply for the little "bricks" was therefore gone and I only had enough to do one floor. Over the years and with a flood it was discarded.
So this roombox shown above is the second version, and I have not done anything to the interior of it.
The scale is an odd 1" = 8", so nothing standard would fit this, that means the windows which I wanted to be functional would have to be scratch made, and the little carvings the building had over and under the windows I planned to model in clay and cast in plaster for this, but this is a project for another time. I have more than enough cherry strips cut to easily provide the supply of "bricks" needed to finish it.
I applied a few of the mahogany floor boards to my room box floor, here's a closeup of the 5 strips so far.
I will just cover the whole plywood with the strips and attach the walls on top.
I used a air powered micro pinner to secure the strips down after brushing on a small amount of wood glue to the backs of each strip.
I also gave the top edge corners of the strips a light sanding to accent the spaces between the boards, otherwise they would fit so snug against each other it would look like one board all the way across.
I used compressed air to blow off the sanding dust but when this is all done and sanded I won't blow all the dust out of the little gaps and grain, that way the gaps and grain won't look quite as deep as they do here, and the stain and top finish will hold the dust in place.
I think the mahogany was a good choice
I bookmarked that miniatures.com site the other day in fact, and yes, I believe those are the same spindles made by Houseworks- they are very nice and geez, for $4.05 for a package of 12 you can't go wrong there!
Blackwells I see has spindles, and the Centurian newel post I've also seen around too on multiple sites (looks good too) You will notice their inventory number for those two items starts with the prefix "HW" which almost certainly stands for "Houseworks" and I'll bet if you google that stock number you'll find them elsewhere.
An old standby for many distributors and stores is to retain the original manufacturer's stock numbers on the products (or at least a part of it) - makes it much easier on the bookkeeping and inventory paperwork to use the same numbers in your own store for keeping track, re-ordering etc.
Once you have the number google will usually, but not always, find it elsewhere.
I think most of the products Houseworks makes look good, a lot of these types of commercially made components are almost certainly made overseas in China, Taiwan and elsewhere, and by a small number of manufacturers- I see the very same items such as wood windows, doors, lighting, wood moldings and furniture on numerous web sites and almost always at extremely reasonable prices.
My opinon is most of these vary from pretty good, to good, much seemed to be geared for the low to mid range price buyers and people who are willing to kitbash, re-sand, re-work many of the items to get what they want.
Of course there's the low-end stuff geared for children too.
On the other hand I've seen a few items of very nice wood furniture and lighting that is priced quite a bit higher- no doubt geared more for the collector and buyer who wants and expects quality and doesn't want to have to re-sand, re-work to remove defects or poor workmanship.
I looked on the micro mark website. They no longer carry that one. They do carry one for 800 and some dollars that made me drool a lot. Here's the URL for their catalog.
http://www.micromark.com/ Just thought you might be interested.
I have the Dremel lathe. I haven't used it for a while. I might just have to dig it out.
We'll just have to see how it goes. I think I am not very enthusiastic about the quality and durability of what I HAVE seen in the way of the mini table saws and the like, coming from a professional wood shop I'm used to the quality of things like the two $20,000 sliding tablesaws from Germany we have. I know when I did the floors in my house in porcellain tile I had to buy a small wet table saw to cut the tiles with, it was the kind of machine that is cheap, cheaply made in China, use for the job and basically throw it away- just sheet metal, about a 5" blade, tiny motor. After it was used and stored away I went to use it to cut a couple of tiles with and the motor had rusted locked, I was able to get it to work again, but it kind of soured me on such items.
$800 is actually pretty high for that by comparison with a commercial/industrial 3 hp 3 phase Powermatic 10" saw as we have, those run around $3000 but they weigh about 600 pounds with a heavy steel deck and all the rest, but I suppose the micromark machines are priced higher than I would expect due to their being marketed to a relatively small, niche/specialty market.
I'll take a look at what micromark has, they might have some hand tools, clamps, small drill bits, router bits and things that WOULD be helpful.
Sure do appreciate your interest, and suggestions however!
Meanwhile, I had 15 minutes so I tacked on a little more flooring and then I decided to make the box wider after sort of visually fitting things a little more, because the left wall will have I think- a wider arched door opening almost certainly with no door in it, and behind that was to be just a dead space that you would only be able to see a little ways into due to the angle of view from the front, but I started thinking a bout about the outside wall being only about 2-3 inches out, and thought it might not look right to have that wall so close to the doorway, so after this photo I cut a new back wall piece and added about 4 inches. I also moved the door over an inch to get it further away from where the stairs will go.
The rear wall with the door is now 60.0 cm long- just a shade less than 23-1/2 inches, and I can always cut some length off if I decide the dead room behind the open arched doorway doesn't need quite as much space.
This photo below is before I changed that wall panel to the longer one, the flooring is almost halfway to the wall and the floor behind that wall doesn't need to be completely covered since the door will never open further than shown and you won't be able to see very far to the right inside that space either.
I was going to say that the nice thing about this 1/2" plywood is that if I did have to add more length or something, it's easy to do with a biscuit jointer and glue, we do that all the time, but since I only cut the doorway out I decided to just use that piece for another part and cut a new piece.
By the way, I decided to order the Houseworks narrow Centurial newel posts- they fit what I consider to be an ideal newel post for that style, not clunky and crude, they look very nice.
I also ordered the Centurianm spindles, these also look very nice as well
If you are considering a lathe, you might want to check out the ones used by pen turners--my husband has a "Turncrafter Commander" that he likes and it's mostly cast iron.
That's actually pretty decent quality- I looked just now at the 10", nothing like cast-iron for durability and stability and at $350 it looks good.
What would be interesting to do is make these kinds of spindles out of oak or mahogany, so far I have not seen any and I suspect others have tried it and there's good reasons why Houseworks et al don't seem to make their mini components and doors out of anything other than basswood, pine and so forth.
I suspect the very open grain in oak creates big problems in small scale due to tear-out and weakening, but I bet mahogany would work, maybe maple, or sugar maple.
We also have a supply of sugar maple, hard maple, even ebony boards in the warehouse stored away for occasional use.
Sugar maple might be another wood that could be good to work with but I don't know about turning at all since I have not done any turning before myself.
I now have more of the floor on almost up to the inner wall as shown in this dry setup with the longer wall panel I previously posted about.
The wall with the archway will go right where the floor ends and I'll have to add a little floor piece for that section by biscuiting in a piece.
The little dead space there will probably get a different floor than the mahogany.
I need to glue and pin down about 3 more strips to the wall and under it, and then some short pieces on the otherside of it where the door is so there's a finished floor there.
As I mentioned earlier, the door will stay open about where it is now and nothing behind it on the left will be visible so that won't need mahogany there.
I cut just enough strips to do the floor.
The wallpaper, spindles and newel posts should be here before the weekend but not the Yes! paste.
I think I might put some of this together this weekend- the floor on the left, the 3 exterior walls, the wall with the door just loose fit for now since it will be easier to work on flat, but I'm hoping to get at least the floor and the 3 exterior walls put together
Posted 24 May 2014 - 09:19 PM
I spent a bit more time on this today, now the exterior walls are glied and pinned to the bottom, the inner rear wall is just secured in place temporarily with 4 small screws, and the left inner wall and it's door frame is just taped in place for the photo. I just went with the door frame facings I had left over from the HW door kit since the back of the door won't need any trim, I made the doorway a little wider than a doorway with a door in it, and made a little basswood piece for the top since the one with the kit was too short since it was for the regular width doorway.
I did a very rough mockup of a wainscot panel with some strips of the basswood left over, laid over the piece of mahogany used for the flooring and decided I didn't like it- the edges of the frame around the enset would need a minute little ogee molding or the like to get rid of that sharp 90 degree edge.
So I think what I'll do is something like the raised panel door's raised panels, that is their faces will be FLUSH with the wainscot frame just like the doors are, and the narrow edge around the panels will be beveled just like the door panels are and that should look good. I just don't like the looks of those wainscot I've seen where the raised panels project out what in real life would be about an inch or more in front of the surfaces of the framework.
As can be seen, there's really not a lot of wall that wainscot can go anyway, a little on the right to the stairs from the front, a little under the stairs to the door frame, and 3 narrow pieces between the doors etc.
That Northern scale lumber place has some already grooved on the edges- strips for doors that should work well to put the little panels into. I need to order some stuff from them next.
Meanwhile, I decided to order the table that matches this carved chair.
As can be seen on the left, that "dead space " I mentioned that will be closed off since the viewer is only supposed to see partly into it through the doorway and what can be seen would be finished, the issue is dealing with the front since the front edge of the box will get a picture frame treatment to cover the plywood and hold glass in place, so I'm thinking that area between the left frame and that wall needs to be filled as glass won't go there, there's only two options- finish that little space to be a hallway, or cover that front area- it's about 4" by 9-1/2" with some exterior house wall treatment, possibly also putting a small window either on the back wall or the left wall near that back corner- visible thru the open doorway.
I think a small window in the back wall (which has a 3" deadspace behind it to the exterior back wall) with some kind of color landscape transparancy with lighting behind it would be very cool, I'll have to give it some more thought.
Meanwhile I set the little chair in place to see how it might look, the table will go next to it and hopefully it will fit okay. The table will have a telephone, lamp, maybe a vase of flowers, I also have a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey that I'm thinking could go on the table as part of the theme of the scene.
I found the Thorne rooms now after seeing photos of the 68 rooms and ordering the book to look at, I have to wonder if Mrs Thorne had sold any of her rooms or made any on commission, because my late cousin I mentioned who had a large estate on Long Island had two large Victorian roomboxes in wood and glass cases very much like the ones I saw that Thorne made, the quality of them with my cousin's money would have been at least as good or better. I first saw them around 1966 or 1967 so she would have likely had them in the 50s or even earlier.
