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Peter Wiles
United States
Charleston
Illinois
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So I am ready to start cranking out some Imperial forces. Not being one to waste paper, I've fit all the parts I need onto one sheet:
(The astute observer will see why I cursed when I first looked at the printout... two of the ATST legs on the right side of the paper got cropped off by the margins. No worries, I still have snowspeeders to make. I'll include those legs in that page of parts)
As I get started in ernest, I thought I would talk a bit about materials.
First, the paper. I am printing these models on Staples brand Double sided Matte Photo paper. One reason I use it is because I love the look of the printouts on this stuff, very crisp and clear. The other reason I use this is because I walked into Staples one day (about 3 or 4 years ago) and saw that they had their matte photo paper on clearance for about $3 a box (it normally goes for $15 or so). Needless to say, I bought every box they had! I still have quite a few left:
I will cry when I run through my stockpile. I am way too cheap to pay full price for it.. I will probably have to start being selective about which projects get the good paper and which get normal cardstock.
The printer I have is a Canon MG6220. This is fairly new, but so far I am very happy with it. The printouts have been quite good. I want to try out some 3rd party inks, though, to save some money on print costs.
Here are the rest of the relevant tools:
1) A self-healing cutting mat. This is absolutely vital. The one I have is probably about the smallest that one could comfortably use. It will hold two letter size pages side by side. I wouldn't mind a bigger one, but this one is handy for when I decide to work at my desk, which is a bit small. When I am gluing, I typically have a scrap piece of cardstock next to my mat. I prefer to do my gluing on it rather than on my mat as there is inevitably a bit of glue that oozes out.
2) For cutting I use a run of the mill utility knife that you can get at a hardware store. I like the ones with the blades that snap off. They are cheap, sharp and the one I have is pretty comfortable. While I do have a rotary cutting, it isn't very useful for detail work like this.
3) Here is my new toy. I picked up an embossing stylus the other day. In the past, I have always scored fold lines with my utility knife. This works well, but it leaves behind a white cut. In the past I either ignore the cut, or try to mark it with a sharpie. Invariably, it bleeds. So now I am using this embossing tool to "crimp" the fold line without cutting into it. So far, it has worked pretty well. I think I will still score the tab folds, but I will use this for folds that are in the middle of the model.
4) Metal ruler. This is obviously a handy tool. I don't generally use a ruler for the small cuts that are required on a model like this, but there are always long fold lines that have a precise straightedge is very handy for.
5) I always have some toothpicks nearby. They are useful for holding parts down, scraping away excess glue, burnishing in hard to reach places, etc
6) Glue is pretty helpful for a project like this. I am a bit worried, The glue I had before was also Elmers, but it was not exactly the same as this stuff (The one I had before said "no wrinkle" on it and it had a bit of an orange color). I bought this in the scrapbook section of the store. I hope this is basically the same because I was happy with that glue. I never had any wrinkling or warping with it.
7) Markers. Edging is very important when making a papercraft model. If you don't run a marker along the edge of the parts, your model is going to have distracting white edge lines. Here is a good example that came from the AT-AT instructions. There is a picture of the completed model without edging:
I wanted to pick up a gray sharpie, but they didn't have one where I looked. I bought a set of "school" markers that had a gray in it. I tried it out and am afraid that it will bleed a bit too much. We'll see. I am now wondering if I shouldn't switch to some kind of paint rather than marker. Are there any people reading this who use paint for this? I would be curious to hear about your results. Maybe a paint pen?
Okay, so that is all for now. I'm going to get to work cutting all these pieces out. I'll pop in and post when I have that all done. I will probably have to do this a little at a time, so I suspect it will take the better part of a week.
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