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Craftsman bungalow window trim

The windows and door I’m using for my 1:24 scale Craftsman bungalow vignette are Real Good Toys components that I bought off eBay. I’ve never seen these available for sale individually, but they match the components in the (now discontinued) East Side Townhouse as well as the Queen Anne (which is only available in 1:12 scale).

These windows come with pre-assembled interior trim. I assume the window plastic is supposed to be wedged between the exterior and interior trim, but mine either didn’t come with plastic or I’ve misplaced it. I cut out some of the thin acetate and glued it to the exterior window piece with dots of super glue.

Then I covered the exposed wood with stained pieces.

Here’s how that looks. I’ll add additional trim, this is just the first step. I held off on doing the smaller windows for now because I might want to do those as stained glass.

Next I glued the windows into the house and added the headers I made back in the beginning of the project.

Back then I had also assembled a door frame, but that fell apart at some point.

The frame fit nicely into the door hole at the time, but the siding must have changed the size of the hole a little, because the pieces had to be shoved in there. I managed to get the door pin-hinged again and get all the pieces in place.

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Half scale checkerboard with checkers in a cigar box

The theme for this year’s half scale swap through the Half Scale Minis Group was Antiques, and my contribution was a checker board with checkers in a cigar box. As usual, I put these together over the holidays and took pictures then, but I didn’t write anything down, so let’s see how much I can remember…

Checkerboards have 64 2-inch squares. I bought 1/16″ x 1/16″ strips of basswood and mahogany from Balsa Wood Shop, which makes my squares 1.5″ in 1:24 scale. The next size up would have been 3/32″ strip wood, for the equivalent of 2.25″ squares… which probably would have been fine? I’m not sure now why I decided on 1/16″ x 1/16″. The math seemed to work out at the time.

Anywho, I started by cutting up the 24″ pieces of strip wood into 4″ lengths. (I needed to make 22 checkerboards for the swap. If you’re just making one or a few, you could cut smaller lengths.) I glued these together, alternating light and dark, with eight lengths per piece and eight pieces altogether.

I glued the eight pieces together to form a cane, again with the squares alternating between light and dark.

Here’s how it looks on the end. Although they were supposed to be 1/16″ x 1/16″, some strips weren’t a uniform width, so some of the squares don’t quite match up where they should.

The checkerboard cane is 1/2″ square and my cheap Harbor Freight table saw wouldn’t cut all the way through it, so I splurged on a Proxxon Mini Chop Miter Saw from Micro-Mark with a Black Friday coupon.

This saw can cut through 1″ of material and it has an adjustable stop, which made it easy for me to cut multiple checkerboards of the same depth.

I cut the cane into 1/16″ slices. I like the saw a lot, but the small, cut-off pieces do have a tendency to go flying. I’m not sure how well it will work for small pieces of trim.

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Craftsman bungalow porch roof

Moving right along on the Craftsman bungalow, the triangular front of the porch roof doesn’t fit snugly under the roof pieces. I could resolve this by adjusting the left side of the roof (which isn’t glued in yet) to meet the angle of the triangle, but then the roof pieces wouldn’t meet up at the peak and the triangle would not be level across the front of the house.

Using the lines of the siding as a reference point, I positioned the triangular piece so its flat bottom is level.

Then I adjusted the left side of the roof to be snug against the triangle. This leaves a gap on the right side.

I glued the pieces in place this way, with the left side of the triangle glued to the roof, and the back edge glued to the front of the house. I didn’t bother using glue on the right side since it isn’t actually touching the roof.

Then I created a new bottom piece. The porch roof happens to be 3″ deep, and I had a piece of 3″ x 1/16″ basswood that I cut to fit underneath it.

Next I created a paper template for the front piece of the triangle.

And I cut a new piece of siding to go over it. No more unsightly gap!

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