OST Publications Blog
Foundation Skills: Straight and Square
After a part is laid out and cut from the rough stock, the edges need to be trued up, and brought to finished dimensions. Straight and square are two fundamental aspects of any build. Our eyes can see very small errors in misalignment quite easily. Edges that aren't...
Foundation Skills: Measuring and Marking
When I was actively drawing in pen & ink, I used to do practice exercises like the one above. The purpose was to train my eye and develop the control and muscle memory in my hands. Like the exercises music students do to train their ears and eye/hand coordination...
In The Process
Think back to the beginning of your interest in model trains. The odds are you started from zero, knowing nothing or very little about the craft. So you read a bunch of books and magazine articles, or scoured YouTube and learned how to do stuff. Your knowledge was...
Moving Forward
As I shared in the last post, the current build reached an important stage. With the underframe all but completed, it was time to evaluate the work. Having done so, I'm both pleased and disappointed. I'm pleased that most of the critical dimensions are on either...
It Rolls!
Cataract surgery on my right eye had me down for a couple of days this week. The procedure went fine and the follow up visit with my optometrist seems to indicate a good outcome for my future vision. Throughout my life, I've been extremely nearsighted and I didn't...
Soldering Small Parts-2
The striker plates are the heavy metal pieces that protect the ends of the center sill from damage. They can be a single casting, or individual components. With the addition of the striker plates on the front of the center sill, I'm calling the bolsters done. The work...
One Step At A Time
I want to thank everyone for their comments and encouragement from the previous post. I truly appreciate knowing when a topic is helpful for you all. Let's get to it. Every build is a process: a series of steps taken in a certain order. As fundamental as that seems,...
Soldering Small Parts
The knee jerk choice in a post like this is to convey how pleased I am with these pieces, how they weren't that big of a deal and went together with relative ease. What utter nonsense that would have been, because it minimizes the process of learning I experienced....
My Approach To A Subject
There's more than one way to approach a subject.My early approach to modeling was shaped by the general interest magazines. Being a rank novice at building, I wanted to know how to do things like capture the shape of the object, the sizes of the parts and how to make...