Backesto Block Bldg ~ Score and Snap!

 Using the Tried and True Method of Score and Snap to Assemble this Styrene Building Model.

Score and snap is a surprisingly effective way to model with styrene.

I started by printing out a horizontal flipped image of the dimensional drawing and then gluing it to the back of 1/16" thick styrene. This side will be the interior of the building for reasons I'll explain in a moment.

The first cuts are precisely where the top and bottom of the windows line up.

Snap!  The styrene is first scored about half way through the thickness with an X-acto and then it is bent to snap it the rest of the way. The cutting distorts the plastic, but the snap makes a perfectly clean cut on the other side!  When the pieces are glued back together (minus the window openings) the joint on the snapped side of the styrene will be all but invisible.  That's why the mirrored imaged drawing is on the inside of the building- to hide the cuts. But the exterior side of the styrene will be almost pristine!

The top and sides of the wall are then glued back together minus the window strip.

The windows are carefully removed from the sprue and cleaned up.

The windows will be glued to the exterior of the building (the drawing is on the other side).

The styrene walls between the windows are scored and snapped from the window strip...

...and glued in place between the windows. Notice how the cuts in the styrene are almost invisible on this side of the wall.

The same process is used for the ground floor doors and windows.

Here is the building reassembled. You can really see how effective the score and snap technique is with the clean snap lines.

Then it was a matter of adding the entryways, posts and piers, cornice moldings and whatnot. I had to fabricate the roof peaks, cornices, as well as the belt course (look at me throwing around fancy architectural terms!) with various Evergreen dimensional styrene strips.

When I was satisfied that there wasn't anymore to be done while the walls could be laid flat, it was time to square them up and glue them together in the magnetic squaring jig.

Now with the walls squared I can focus on the parapet roofing and its rounded corner. For the roofing I used Evergreen Standing Seam Roofing.

Plain styrene sheets were used for the rear walls since they'll butt up to its future neighboring buildings and therefore not seen. The chimney 3d prints have also been added to the parapet roof.  

So there we have it. The basic building. So far so good. But there is still a lot of work to be done. 

Yes sir!

There's still a lot of work to be done!

Dandy

Backesto Block Bldg. ~ Gettin' My Kicks Printing Backesto Bits

 The Backesto Bits Sprue has Returned from the 3D Printers!

It took many tries, many revisions, (and many dollars!) to get it to pass the printers standards. But it's finally done! 

Despite following the printers minimum standard of 1mm thicknesses, they pushed back a lot on how delicate the whole thing was. After a lot of back and forth and many revisions, I eventually figured out that their "Fine Detail Plastic" could handle the delicacy. But of course that is their premium plastic and cost a freakin' fortune to print- $272.39!  I could have bought an actual 3D Printer for that kind of money (I'm looking in to it now.). But this has been going on for too long now so I bit the bullet and ordered it. Live and learn. Yes sir- live and learn.

But man- you can't beat that detail! This printed beautifully. The finished model should be ridiculously realistic!

Yes sir!

Ridiculous!

Dandy