The Little World

All three huts, in fact, destined for either the radar station at Wet Dog Regional or the ablutions block at RCAF Wet Dog – wherever they will do the most good.

They are the first fruits of Frugal Days – the week in which I do not build an expensive plastic kit, but rather turn to other modelling that can be done from basic materials. It will make a nice counterpoint to the normal run.

This time it is paper and cardboard 1:76 scale buildings. The plans for these basic huts came from a firm in the UK – paid for and downloaded some time ago from the internet. It is quite a popular thing for builders of OO gauge railways to do – and I see that it is not only in the UK that this form of construction is done – there are American firms that offer the same thing with their prototypes.

The basic materials are cereal box cardboard or an equivalent thickness from the newsagent, standard A4 typing paper, cheap photo paper, and PVA glue. You use an inkjet printer to copy all the plans in the downloaded pdf, then glue some of the sheets to the thicker card and cut out the shapes.

It is not an instant form of building as you need to wait a decent time for the thin PVA glue to set. I have a large flat tabletop and any number of heavy pieces of board that serve as weights while this is going on, and the shop is warm enough to let it all happen aver a couple of hours.

Of course you need to cut out the cardboard, so it needs a sharp Xacto knife and a metal ruler, but this is just basic work. The parts laminate and then assemble within a day and there is very little more that you need to do.

Just the same procedure with commercial card kits from the hobby shop, but there a great deal of the dog work is taken out by the fact that many parts are die-cut. Unfortunately, few of the commercial kits are aerodrome-oriented – and unless you are staging your Air Force out of a Tudor mansion or Ye Olde Swanne Inn you are out of luck. Still, there are bound to be light industrial buildings that would fit on a modern airport lot, so maybe on Not-So-Frugal Days I’ll see what is available.

The rest of the week will be engaged with an equally inexpensive Nissen hut and then a transportable office. No cereal box or old picture matting is safe!