Model Making Guides
Free tutorials, tips, and techniques to help you master the art of model making.
Showing 1-11 of 11 guides
A Guide to Making a Jig
This guide provides step-by-step instructions for creating simple jigs to cut and assemble a scale-model picket fence using card and styrene sheet. It explains how to build both a cutting jig for shaping individual pickets and a gluing jig for aligning and attaching pickets to rails with accuracy and consistency. The document covers safe cutting techniques, precise measurement methods, and recommended materials, enabling modelmakers to produce uniform fence components efficiently and reliably.
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Creating Roads and Pavements
This guide explains how to create realistic model roads, pavements, and grassed areas using spray-painting and flocking techniques. It covers essential preparation, safety notes, and spraying methodology, emphasising thin, even coats and rotational spraying for consistent finishes. The document details how to build up road tarmac using layered speckling of beige, white, and black paint, how to achieve natural-looking pavement tones with controlled speckle patterns, and how to apply flock to grass areas using adhesive and masking for clean edges. A full list of recommended tools and materials is included, making the guide a practical reference for achieving professional surface textures in scale models.
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Creating Surfaces with Kapa-line Foamboard
This guide explains how to use Kapa-Line foamboard to create highly detailed architectural and scenic surfaces for scale models. It describes how the board’s peelable paper layer reveals a dense, workable polyurethane foam that can be carved, inscribed, textured, or embossed using simple tools. The document covers methods for preparing foamboard panels, bonding them to backing structures, and forming brickwork, stone, wood grain, cobbles, and weathered or damaged surfaces. It also highlights techniques using pencils, scalpels, wire brushes, and pressed objects to achieve varied textures, alongside notes on painting, layering colours, and reinforcing larger constructions. Written by modelmaking author David Neat, the guide provides practical insight into achieving realistic, durable surface finishes with Kapa-Line foam.
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Desktop Modelling
This guide introduces the essential techniques for creating desktop architectural models using card and foamboard. It covers setting out elevations, cutting clean and accurate components, and applying printed details with spray mount. Clear instructions explain how to glue card edges using PVA, form strong foamboard joints with UHU contact adhesive, and produce neater corner connections by removing the foam core. The guide also outlines how to cut and apply fine card details such as window frames and stonework, helping modelmakers build crisp, well-finished miniature structures.
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Finnboard Modelling
This product information sheet introduces Finnboard, a strong, versatile, and sustainable modelling material made from unbleached wood-pulp offcuts from the Finnish timber industry. It outlines Finnboard’s key properties—its high strength, stability, smooth surface, acid-free composition, and ability to be laser-cut, glued, curved, and painted. The guide explains how to process Finnboard using standard modelmaking tools, form it into curves by dampening, and select from the available thicknesses and sheet sizes. Widely favoured in architectural modelmaking, Finnboard offers an eco-friendly alternative to traditional greyboard.
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Foamboard Modelling
This guide introduces the core techniques for designing and constructing simple architectural models using foamboard. It explains how to set out elevations, attach printed drawings with spray mount, and cut clean, accurate components by making controlled vertical scalpel passes. Instructions are provided for forming strong, neat joints using UHU as a contact adhesive, including a method for concealing joints by removing only part of the foamboard thickness. The guide offers practical, beginner-friendly steps for assembling durable, tidy foamboard models.
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Landscaping - Formal Areas
This guide outlines simple, effective techniques for creating a formal miniature garden using modelmaking textures, flock, hedging materials and small-scale trees. It explains how to lay realistic grass using flock adhesive, build textured garden paths with speckled paint and ballast, and construct hedging—from tall formal borders to low box hedges—using pre-textured mats and PVA glue. Instructions are provided for making saplings and pollarded trees by extending ready-made trunks, as well as creating flower beds and small bushes using coloured flock and texture mats. Designed for architectural and landscape modelmaking, the guide offers a practical introduction to producing structured, detailed garden layouts.
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Landscaping - Rough Areas
This guide explains how to create naturalistic rough-scenic landscapes for scale models using textured materials, flock, tufts, lichen and etched trees. It covers laying base grass with flock adhesive, forming earthy pathways with PVA and scatter, and building up varied groundcover using clumped textures, teased texture mats and long grass tufts. Instructions also describe adding shrubs from lichen and planting different types of trees for height and visual interest. Designed for architectural, diorama and scenic modelmaking, the guide provides simple techniques for producing convincing wild or rural terrain.
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Landscaping - Waters Edge
This guide explains how to create a realistic riverside scene in a scale landscape model, covering ground textures, planting, and water effects. It outlines how to build a riverside path with ballast, form the riverbank with layered gravels and stones, and add rough grass, tufts, reeds and overhanging plants using texture mats, flock and sisal. Instructions also describe preparing and planting the riverbed, then pouring two-part resin to form clear water with optional colour washes and ripple effects. Designed for architectural and scenic modelling, the guide provides practical methods for producing detailed, natural-looking water-edge environments.
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Styrene Modelling
This guide introduces the essentials of working with styrene sheet and profiles for fast, clean modelmaking. It explains the material’s key advantages—easy scoring, snapping, shaping and bonding—alongside the simple toolset required. Using liquid solvent adhesives such as Plastic Weld, joints are fused by capillary action to create strong, seamless bonds that can be reworked or separated if needed. The guide outlines basic cutting and assembly techniques, available colours and thicknesses, and the range of complementary styrene sections, helping beginners use this versatile modelling plastic with speed and confidence.
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Working with Oiled Manilla
This guide explains how to use oiled manilla—an oiled, durable, fine-cut card ideal for small-scale modelling—to create detailed furniture, architectural elements and textured surfaces. It covers selecting thicknesses, preparing templates, fixing artwork, and cutting intricate shapes cleanly using scalpels and metal rules. Techniques such as scoring, bending, layering, sanding for woodgrain, and shaping louvred slats are demonstrated, alongside advice on staining, painting, and assembling pieces with superglue. With its strength, sharp edges and wood-like finish, oiled manilla is shown to be a versatile material for refined 1:25 model components.
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