Sneaking up on Cricut masks

As I thought about it, it seemed that the problem with the Cricut masks was that the vinyl material relaxed out of the grooves in the combine’s siding. Almost by the time I had finished thumb-nailing the mask down firmly, the other end had begun to lift out of the grooves. While the aero modellers […]

Cricut masking

As I mentioned, I’m not finished with Morrisey Fernie and Michel #61. I’ve had another technique rattling around my head, looking for an opportunity to leap out on an unsuspecting model, and this little car was the perfect victim. Masked and painted insignia are all the rage in the aero modelling world these days. When […]

What the Cricut wrought

Mark asked how the styrene cutting is going. Here are the parts I cut last night. There isn’t meant to be any part here that is less than half a millimetre wide, although I haven’t taken out my calliper to check them yet. One thing is certain: this is going to be a tiny model! […]

Invasion of the dining table

It couldn’t last forever. Sooner or later I had to make something that I could touch, despite everything still buried in Mt Flood. Fortunately the Cricut has been stuffed in a corner of our bedroom since that fateful day in January. Even more fortunately, Cricut supplies were on special this weekend at Michaels! I have […]

Roundhouse mullions

The window pattern for this roundhouse came from a drawing for the roundhouse at Barry’s Bay. Each of the three windows has six large sections, each of nine panes, making 172 panes in all. That’s a lot of careful cutting, but trivial for the Cricut! I don’t know why I’d been putting it off, but […]

Smoke jacks

Ordinarily I don’t like to build with pre-cut parts. I find it much easier to glue parts together and trim off excess. However, in the case of the smoke jacks, there are some funky angles around the base, which made it more convenient to draw the parts and cut them on the Cricut. I started with […]

Roundhouse doors stress Cricut accuracy

I should know better, really I should. Time and again, I press forward only to run headlong into reality. This week I’ve stolen only a few minutes away from work; or more accurately, work has stolen most of the evening hours from me. Those minutes that I could apply to the railway went to creating a […]

Roundhouse doors cut

I warmed up the Cricut for a little workout this evening, cutting out the doors for the roundhouse. The blade is not super-sharp, and two passes didn’t reliably cut through the 3-ply Strathmore on the “Iron On” setting. No matter, it was a few minutes’ work to chase all the cuts with an Olfa knife, […]

Exploring the Cricut

There were about 35 folks in the audience for this morning’s clinic at the Railway Modellers’ Meet. That was pretty good, considering it was the first clinic of the day, and many attendees had a late night of operations on Thursday. As usual, I’m offering the slides under a Creative Commons license. Also, here is […]

Roundhouse front wall

It appears that the front wall of the roundhouse was individual vertical board siding with about 6″ boards. So, I designed that up for lazy-guy individual boards on the Cricut and hacked it out of more Strathmore card. This time, I was slightly more careful not to paint adjacent boards with the same load from […]