Principles of Paper Models Construction, Design, Thoughts By David M. Lukens Copyright 2019 http://insanityunlimited.com Version 0.56, 2019-04-03 Table of Contents Rotary tool Table of Contents Mandrels Photo Etch Benders Forward Wire Bending Jigs Introduction Art supplies History Pencil Pin Vise Basics of Building Paint, Brushes and Airbrushes Choosing Your First Model Make your own tools and jigs Tools Sealing Cutting mat Scoring the Backside Scissors Slicing and Cutting Cutting blades Blade thickness Straight edge Blade edges Scoring tools Blade angle Dowel and pad Why edges matter Paper Edge Coloring Printing Laminating Cutting Building Square Structures Scoring Panel Layering Folding Boat Hulls Rolling Glue Tabs vs. Strips Glue Railings and Ladders Markings Wirework Advanced Building Techniques Paper Moulding Environmental Concerns Filler Tools Converting Scales Clamping tools Adding Durability Tubes and rods Weathering Weights Non-Paper Materials Brayers Design Circle cutters Toolset Punches Manual Toolsets Draw plates Computerized Toolsets Files and sanding sticks Graphics Software CNC cutters CAD Software Unfolder Project Definition and Scope Presentation Research Glue Tabs Internal Structures Fitting to Page Design Tricks Design Concerns of Paper Instructions Using Non-Paper Materials Test Builds Glue Joints Publishing Printed Detail My Workflow Coloring Licensing Shading Glossary Materials Markings Printed Detail and 3D Detail Forward I would like to thank everyone that prodded me and encouraged me into writing this book. I hope you, the reader, enjoy it and I hope it gives you some meaningful information. Special thanks go to all of my friends that encouraged me to undertake this project and for helping to turn my word vomit into coherent writing. ● Dr. Nancy Hoalst-Pullen ● Parker Huellmantel ● Etienne Roserie Through the book you will find terms defined in the footer of many pages. These terms can also be found in a glossary at the end of the book. Beyond that, I will be including offsite links and annotations as needed. Those annotations can be used for further reading and research if you desire. I am self publishing this book and distributing it for free over the internet. This way as many people as possible can utilize it. If you think it is worth something, please drop a few dollars in the tip jar. Knowing that people are getting value out of all the work that goes into a project such as this makes a big difference. The writing easily consumes several hundred hours to compose, edit, layout, and make presentable. Thanks. If you wish to download any of my public models, you can do so here: http://insanityunlimited.com/modelplans/ -Dave QR code for the tip jar: Paypal Link Introduction If you are reading this, then you likely have an interest in model building of some manner or another. I will be approaching this set of topics from the standpoint of paper models12 (also known as card models). I hope this book ends up meeting your needs as a technical guide and one that propels you through many years of an enjoyable hobby. You never know, you may find a way to turn this hobby into a side business or career. That last part I am still trying to figure out and is a little bit more difficult. Overall, I want to present information to you and I hope it opens up new possibilities that you will enjoy and generates more ideas. When I first began building models I was about five years old. The models I constructed were made of plastic3. As you can imagine for a kid, they were rarely painted and included plenty of glue fingerprints. My skills were quite rudimentary, but I enjoyed seeing these constructs come together. There was something magical about turning a large number of discrete parts into a project that was more elegant and more complicated than the original pieces. At this same age I would visit my grandfather’s model railroad4 layout in his basement. He had constructed it to appear like the western side of Columbus, Ohio in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Very little prefabricated scenery from the hobby store met his needs, so he made many of the buildings from scratch5. I knew that he built them out of balsa, cardboard, cardstock6, and other hobby supplies. But having only been exposed to plastic models myself, I could not and did not comprehend how a paper model might work. Intuitively, it felt like working without pre-shaped parts would be significantly more complicated than that of a plastic model. Not only did you need to assemble the parts into a finished model, but you also had to form and construct the parts prior to assembly. As happens with kids, my interest in making models waned and changed, and I stopped building for a number of years. While in grad school a friend convinced me to take a break from schoolwork to go to the hobby store as a relaxing diversion. While there I stumbled across a large plastic kit of the USS New Jersey7. For not a lot of money I grabbed the plastic kit and supplies to complete it. Working on that model for a 20-30 minutes every day kept me sane through the end of school and was very fulfilling. 1 "Paper model - Wikipedia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_model. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018. ​ ​ 2 Paper model (n.): A model made primarily of paper or cardstock. Also known as a card model. 3 "Plastic model - Wikipedia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_model. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018. ​ ​ 4 "Rail transport modelling - Wikipedia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_modelling. Accessed ​ ​ 9 Oct. 2018. 5 Scratch build (n.): A model made without utilizing a prepared kit. From the phrase “from scratch”, meaning that there is no defined kit or set of parts. 6 "Card stock - Wikipedia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_stock. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018. ​ ​ 7 "USS New Jersey (BB-62) - Wikipedia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_New_Jersey_(BB-62). ​ ​ Accessed 9 Oct. 2018. This rejuvenated my interest in model building and I began buying more and more kits once I finished school. Jumping forward a number of years, I realized that I had accumulated several hundred plastic model kits. I had been stopping at hobby stores regularly and purchased whatever caught my attention or was a good deal. My shopping trips most definitely outpaced my ability to build the models. They filled case after case and took up lots of room in the crawlspace and on shelves in the basement. About this time in my life, the cost of plastic more then doubled and this led to a price tag of $80 or more on a nice kit of a 1:72 jet from a quality Japanese manufacturer. Even the kits based off of worn out moulds8 that were inexpensive were now priced at $40 or more. Obviously, many hundreds of kits represented a non-trivial amount of money invested. At the same time I was developing a critical eye in an attempt to improve my results. This led me to a loss of confidence in my abilities and I became afraid of making a costly mistake. I did not want to mess up an expensive kit and ruin it due to just a single misstep. When I realized this I recalled the scenery that my grandfather had constructed out of cardstock for his model railroad…. This caused me to put my hands of ham and fingers of butter against the keyboard and search for information on paper models. I quickly found the Paper Modelers Forum9 which held a wealth of resources, fellow enthusiasts, files10 of model plans, tips, tricks, and a large group of others interested in the paper model hobby. I quickly began downloading every model I could find because your stash11 can never be large enough. I also saw that it was possible to produce a finished model made of paper that looked just as good or better than one made of plastic. Paper models usually have colorings, markings, and detail printed onto the parts prior to assembly. This is in contrast to plastic models where they require painting as part of the construction process. It also quickly became apparent that the number of different paper models available was far greater than that of plastic kits. The investment required for a plastic kit to be produced involves $10,000+ worth of tooling in order to produce the parts. At the same time, for a paper model, the equivalent was a decent printer and a ream12 of card stock. Recouping the investment to press out a plastic model requires selling enough kits to make that money back… and if you pick an obscure subject with a niche set of customers it seems less likely you will be able to pull that off. As a result, uncommon or obscure models often do not get created in plastic. Since the investment to design a paper model was mostly measured in time and skill set, this opens up the possibilities to a huge breadth of subjects. This drove my desire to learn how to design my own paper model kits. 8 Mould (n.): A vessel used to contain a liquid material that will later harden. It is used to impart shape and detail into the exterior of the material injected into it. 9 "Forums - Paper Modelers." http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018. ​ ​ 10 "What is PDF? Adobe Portable Document Format | Adobe Acrobat DC." https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/about-adobe-pdf.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018. ​ 11 Model stash (n.): A collection of models that have been acquired but not yet built.