George the Mini Guy

Please Consider Switching

2010-02-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

   Hi. I'm writing today to ask you a favor. If you enjoy reading this blog, would you please become a follower to my other blog site, which is: http://tallminiguy.blogspot.com.
    I took a friend's advice in creating this George the Mini Guy blog address. It has always been a mirror image of the original blog (tallminiguy.blogspot.com). You and 23 other kind individuals have followed this version of my blog.
       I have stopped adding new material to this version of the blog, but I have continued to add content to the tallminiguy one. I really, REALLY would love to have you become a follower on the tallminiguy blog instead and remain one of my followers there. (I know a few of you have followed both blogs.)
         Thank you for following and reading this blog. I hope I can write about things that will keep you interested in reading my blog for many months and possibly years to come!
George

Work on the Walnut Project Has Begun

2010-01-12T19:21:00.000-08:00

I know I was accused of being a tease when I posted pictures of blank wood. It's been about a month since I posted that picture. I didn't mean to keep you waiting this long. I just didn't have much to show you. I still don't, really.

This is one of those projects that will take me several months to do. Considering all the other projects I have going right now - both large and small. The intensity of my work has been heightened lately, too. It could be a very L-O-N-G time before I have something in a finished form to show you. But at least, it's started.

By the way, the turning on the lower right was the first thing I've actually turned on my new lathe. Yeah. I know. I need to practice. That turning may not end up being my finished product... The two pieces to the left of the turning are parts of the wood that came off of the unit on the far left. I just love making cabriole legs! It's kind of like a chocolate covered caramel - there's something extra special on the inside!

Finishing Miniature Furniture

2010-01-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

Debbie S. posted a nice comment and a question about finishing materials for staining and varnishing minis. She had a House of Miniatures finishing kit, which included a stain, glaze and varnish. I used the House of Miniatures finishing materials on my Victorian bookcase. (See my March 12 blog for photos of the bookcase.)

When I purchased the finishing kit, the varnish had already gone bad; so I only used the stain. I wasn't sure how to finish it, though, until I attended a miniature show in Chicago. One of the professional furniture builders there recommended I use Deft semi-gloss. He noted that it dries quickly and goes on thin enough that it doesn't overwhelm the delicate work piece. I've used Deft ever since on all of my minis.

As far as stains go, I've used a variety of them. However, I don't use and don't recommend using water-based stains. The water-based stains raise the grain of the wood. Oil-based stains don't. Miniaturists don't need to be afraid of using commercial, oil-based wood stains.

Sherwin Williams used to sell small cans of stain that were about a half-pint volume. For miniatures use, they were perfect, since I didn't need very much of it. Now, however, I can only get their stains in quart containers. As long as you seal the can thoroughly, you can make one of those quart sized containers last a l-o-n-g time! (The stain doesn't dry out nor does it get a skin on the top of it like paint and varnish do.) If you have some friends in the hobby, you could by a quart of the stain, stir it up thoroughly, pour it out into a bunch of baby food jars, and share it with them!

The main thing to remember when using these stains is that you will need to stir the can (or jar) thoroughly each time you use it, because the dark pigments often settle to the bottom of the can. Also, if you're working with a wood grain that doesn't take the stain evenly (like pine wood), it's advisable to get a can of clear stain and apply that first to reduce the stain's uptake into the grain. This is especially important for end grain parts of the wood. They can become extremely dark, because they absorb too much of the stain - far more than the top and sides of a piece of wood.

Many of the paint stores will have displays showing the various colors of stain they have available. The display will often show how their stains look on various kinds of wood including pine, birch and sometimes oak. You'll get a sense from that display which color may come closest to meeting your needs. The commercially available stains may not offer a deep or dark enough color for your preferences. For example, I have not found a stain that matches the dark reddish furniture stain that Bespaq miniatures come in.

If you want to match the Bespaq stain, you may want to go to a paint store where the clerk is willing to work with you on customizing the stain. I found a nice, locally-owned paint store nearby that has worked with me on some of my paints and stains. A mom and pop store may be more willing to help you than some of the big paint or DIY stores. The paint store can add extra pigment to the stain, which will make it more opaque, but it will also darken it to a color you may prefer. Keep in mind that the darkened stain won't show as much of the actual wood grain as a lighter stain will.

Take a raw sample piece of the wood you used for making your mini when you go to the paint store; and start by experimenting with a dab of the various stain colors they already have. (Most paint stores will allow you to test a tiny amount of the stain at no charge.) If you're staining a kit, most of the dollhouse kits use bass wood. You can find that kind of wood in most hobby stores in the U.S. (I have no idea about other countries - sorry for my ignorance.) You can also mix and match stains, putting on one coat of a color and then adding another after the first one has dried.

If you want to have the wood grain show through and you're using a wood such as Walnut, then you don't even need to use a colored stain on the piece. You can use a clear, oil-based stain on it. This will darken your wood slightly with just that application alone. Let it dry a day or so before you apply any finish.

Before you do any staining, though, make sure you have sanded your piece to a smooth finish. (Start with 120 grit paper, then use 150 grit and then finish off your work with 220 grit.) I sometimes keep on advancing to finer grits. 3M makes an open coat paper (it's yellow in color) that comes in 320 and 400 grits. If I really want to smooth my wood, I'll go to that level of sanding.

When I build a furniture kit or make something from scratch, I usually sand the individual piece of wood first. I'll set the sandpaper down on a smooth, hard surface. A good, Masonite or plastic clip board with a smooth surface is ideal for this. The clip holds the paper in place and the smooth, flat surface under the sandpaper won't distort your sanding. I hold the wood piece by its middle and move it over the sand paper in the direction of the wood grain. After about 10 to 20 strokes, I reverse the direction of the piece in my hand and sand the same number of times on that same side of the piece of wood. That way, if my hand is accidentally applying more pressure on one end than the other, I even out the amount of material removed from both ends.

Once you're done with the sanding, make sure to wipe the piece down thoroughly with a tack cloth. Then you're ready to stain. I have applied my stains with a facial tissue; but some tissues can leave stained pieces of paper dust on the surface. If you have an old T-shirt or other cotton fabric you don't mind destroying, cut a small piece of that fabric and use it to wipe on the stain. With minis, a little goes a long way, remember!

Once the stain has dried, wipe the piece with a clean cloth to knock off any colored tissue dust (or regular dust). Next, spray it with Deft. Try to find a room that doesn't have a lot of sawdust in the air or thoroughly vacuum up your workshop before you begin to spray. No matter how clean your room, you'll still likely get some dust in the finish. I usually do a couple of coats with the Deft.

In between sprays, I gently wipe down the surfaces with 0000 steel wool. This removes most of the dust imperfections. You'll be able to feel any imperfections on the flat surfaces of the piece. I wipe it down with a tack rag after I've used the steel wool. Rub GENTLY with the steel wool - especially along any edges of the wood. It can cut clear down to your bare wood very quickly. If you want to add some luster to the piece and help protect the finish, you can also add some furniture paste wax to the piece. Be sure to thoroughly rub out the wax, though, after you've applied it to your mini.

Captured in Ink

2009-12-22T19:57:00.000-08:00

I wrote an article this fall about how to matte digital photos using Microsoft PowerPoint or Word. I'm delighted to report that the January/February issue of Dollhouse Miniatures has a four-page spread of the article, starting on page 28.

For some reason, the pictures on page 31 are slightly out of focus. That may because the matted pictures you see on that page were in a PowerPoint slide.

The magazine's artist pulled them out of the slide, added some shadows behind them and overlapped the images. It makes a nice collage, but the pictures lose a little in clarity.

If you're curious about the photos in the collage on page 31 of the article, I took all but one of the pictures myself. Starting at the top left and going clockwise they are: Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY; the Bundy family circa 1900 (this is the only one of the grouping that I did NOT take!); a view on Mount Lemon near Tucson, AZ; the Maroon Bells near Aspen, CO; my girls a few years ago; and downtown Chicago on a foggy night.

I've written a follow-up article, which is coming out in the next issue of the News with more information about how to do the matting with ovals and shapes. I hope you find the instructions clear and easy to follow. Since you're already a computer user and reading this blog, you may find it easier to do the matting than some of the other DH readers.

Let Your Imaginations Take Flight

2009-12-06T08:09:00.001-08:00

Want to guess what this block of walnut wood is going to become? (Hint: It won't become just a pile of sawdust or ashes in my fireplace!)

Having enough of the "right" tools makes miniature-making a lot of fun. If I succeed in using some of my tools skillfully, this block of wood will evolve into something quite interesting.

I wish I could say I am so skillful that I won't have to use any more than this 4" by 9" piece of wood. I might have to go back and cut another 4" piece to finish the job. We'll see...

It will take several months for me to get this done, since I've been extremely busy lately. I'll post a few photos along the way and see if anyone can guess what it's going to become. If you've been following my blog over the past months, you may be able to guess at least what part of this wood will be transformed into.

More on Table Saw Safety

2009-11-28T07:23:00.001-08:00

Following Evelien's comment to my previous blog, the two of us had an off-line email conversation about what might cause saw blade kickback. I ended up contacting Micromark to see what suggestions they might have about how to prevent this.

They recommended using a featherboard to hold the wood against the blade and fence. Of course, they sell such an item. However, it's a great add-on tool for the table saw, and one which I've written about before. I'd recommend it to anyone who needs to cut a number of pieces of wood that are the same width. It's a bit of a pain to have to keep resetting it each time you rip a board, but if safety is your number issue, then it's worth the time.

The folks at Micromark also shared a link to an excellent article, and I thought I'd share that same link with each of you: http://www.waterfront-woods.com/Articles/Tablesaw/tablesaw.htm

So, here's to safe and happy ripping on your miniature (or full-size) table saw.

By the way, for those of you who want a full-size, table saw that is extremely safe, I saw one demonstrated last week. It was invented by a lawyer. The number one tool for causing injuries in workshops is table saws - probably because it's one of the most common saws found in workshops. Anyway, the blade in this saw carries a slight electrical charge. As soon as human flesh comes into contact with the blade, it shorts out the saw, the blade instantly stops and snaps down below the table top. The demonstrator placed a hot-dog on top of the board he was cutting. As soon as the wiener touched the blade - BANG! And the casing of the hot-dog wasn't even cut! Now, the saw isn't cheap. Even a contractor version of this saw costs about $1700. But if fear of getting hurt on a table saw has kept you away from getting one, well, there is now a VERY safe one out there!

Table Saws Are a Valuable Tool

2009-11-22T20:41:00.000-08:00

When I think about the number of times I use my table saw in woodworking, I realize it's the tool I use the most. In fact, in my tiny workshop, I have a table saw sitting on a table saw! The smaller one gets the lion's share of use; but occasionally, I am forced to turn to the larger contractor's table saw that takes up the largest amount of space of any tools in my workshop.

Whenever I have needed to cut crown moldings, I have always turned to my table saw to do the cuts. When I need to make a compound cut -- where the saw blade is at an angle and the miter gauge is also at an angle -- the table saw is a great tool.

For those of you who know the story about the shingles on Sara's dollhouse, I cut all 1200 of the shingles on my Dremel table saw. I also have made many of my floors by cutting regular pine, walnut or cherry wood boards into thin pieces, which I then glued together to create the floors that are now in the house. A good orbital sander helps me smooth the rough surface down to a velvety finish very quickly. For furniture making, such as the Victorian bed? Much of that was also done on the table saw.

I realized a couple years ago just how much sawdust my table saws crank out. We had a plumber come in to fix a clogged kitchen drain. The pipe comes down alongside the wall of my workshop. As he got to work in the room, the plumber said, "Wow. This room must never get used. Look at all the dust in here." I didn't bother to set him straight. Since that time, though, I've begun to be far more conscientious about using my shop vacuum to suck sawdust from the table saw! (I've also started running an air purifier just outside the door to help pull more of the finest particulate from the air.)

I have cut so much wood over the years that I totally wore out my little Dremel table saw. I went through multiple belts. Then Dremel stopped making the saw, and I had to buy my belts from a vacuum cleaner store in town. The motor finally gave up the ghost, and that's when I decided it was time to get a new saw. I've liked the Micromark saw. It's a direct drive system unlike the belt-driven blade with the Dremel. With the Dremel, if I was cutting a lot of wood, I inevitably had to stop and put the belt back on the drive after awhile, because it would slip off.

The Dremel customer service rep told me that they discontinued making the saw because they had encountered too many lawsuits. People thought of the Dremel table saw as a toy. I can tell you in no uncertain terms: neither the Dremel nor the Micromark saws were or are a toy! I treat them with the same respect as I do the larger table saw. Here are some of the rules I follow:

I have my saw attached to a heavy MDF board which extends several inches in every direction from the saw. I use those extended sides to always clamp the saw in a stationery position when I make a cut. (The last thing I want is for a "live" saw to start sliding away from me while I'm in the middle of a cut - YIKES!)
I use push sticks to move boards through and past the blade. (That's what the big, ugly piece of plywood is that's sitting on the saw in the picture above.)
I turn off and disconnect the saw if I plan to change the blade.
I always make sure that only the length of a blade tooth extends above the surface of the wood I'm cutting.
I stand to the side of what I'm cutting so that if there is ever any kickback, the items don't get thrown into my face.
I always wear safety glasses when I use the saw.
I roll up my sleeves so that no clothing can catch on the saw blade.
I have the saw plugged into a power block up on my workbench. It's always turned off when I leave the workshop. It's also up and away from little hands - should my nephews ever wander in and accidentally push the start button.

On a couple of occasions I have had a piece of wood bind up on the blade. The wood flew out of my hands and smacked the door of my workshop with a loud thud. Had I been standing in its line of trajectory, I would have had a nasty bruise or cut from the board smacking me in the face.

So, would I recommend getting a miniature table saw? If you plan to make any scratch-built pieces of furniture or dollhouses, my answer in a heartbeat would be "Absolutely!"

The Dremel Rotary Tool - A Great Addition to the Workbench

2009-11-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

If my Dremel tool were to quit working for me tonight, I'd very likely go buy a new one tomorrow! It's just that handy a tool. It hangs from a hook in my workshop, and I frequently leave it plugged in, ready for me to change out the bit and use it for grinding or cutting.

The Dremel is a wonderful carving tool. I have many different bits for it. I use it to grind and rough out shapes on things I'm carving. Other bits work well for sanding and polishing. I also have various cutting bits I use to put tiny rounded edges on boards, or to cut delicate little indentations in a piece of wood.

When I made the clock for the Scrooge roombox, I put a bit into the Dremel that could etch glass. Then I locked the Dremel into a bench-top vice that held the tool at a 45 degree angle. Then I took the glass I wanted to etch and carefully brought the glass under the bit and gently touched it to the bit to do the etching. The tool is just too big and heavy for me to do extra fine hand movements with it, but locked down, I can do very exacting and delicate work.

The hole in the ceiling of the Scrooge room was another Dremel tool project. I attached a hand-held router attachment to it to adjust its depth of cut, then routed out the area where the plaster had "fallen" from the ceiling. I used a chisel to sharpen some of the edges of where I cut, and then pieced in tiny boards to make it look like the plaster had fallen from the lath.

I use my Dremel with its router table a lot. In fact, that's how I made the mop board in the maid's room, the bathroom, and the little girl's bedroom in Sara's dollhouse. (See photo at left.) I had a round-over bit that gave the wood a nice curved top. Then I took a slitting saw blade and ran my boards past that blade a couple of times, allowing the blade to cut only slightly into the board. (I used purchased quarter-round to finish out the detail of the board.)

In addition to all of these uses, I have found the Dremel tool useful for doing a variety of projects around the house. It's not just for miniature work!

Dremel Tool, Jigsaw or Table Saw - Which to Get First?

2009-11-10T19:34:00.000-08:00

I have three power tools on my workbench that I use constantly:

A workbench jigsaw
A small table saw
A rotary tool

I have depended on these tools so much over the years, I would have a difficult time deciding which one is my favorite. Each has its own unique value to me. If you were to ask me which tool a beginning miniaturist should purchase first for their workshop, I'd be hard-pressed to choose. So, the answer I would have to give is, "It depends on what you want to do."

If you're thinking about buying a power tool for your miniature work and can't afford to buy a LOT of tools all at once, I'd like to describe the strengths and weaknesses of these three tools in various applications. I'll do this in several blogs over the course of a few days here.

I have purchased my collection of power tools over many years, and I have used and had to replace each of the three major tools listed above at least once. Except for the rotary tool, I chose a different brand the second time around. In one case, I chose a different brand because of the tool's features. In the other case, I was forced to buy a different brand because the manufacturer no longer made the item. I'll talk more about that when I get to them.

The Jigsaw
The variable speed jigsaw is a terrific tool for making cabriole legs and for cutting fancy fretworked screens. It's good for making rough shapes that don't require precisely cut straight lines or for cutting sizeable, rounded over or irregularly shaped pieces of wood. I also use it to rough out the basic shape of an object that I plan to carve.

When I want to do really delicate fretwork, though, I don't use the jigsaw. I turn to my hand-held jeweler's saw instead. When I'm cutting a delicate piece of wood that is 1/16" or thinner, the relentless motion of the jigsaw makes cutting such fine wood very challenging. It only takes one upstroke from the table saw blade binding on the piece to rip out an entire, delicate leaf that I've just cut. You can't feel the saw blade start to bind with the jigsaw like you can with a hand saw. On the other hand, the jigsaw makes short work of cutting larger or multiple pieces such as roof brackets.

My first tabletop jigsaw used blades that had pins in the top and bottom of the blades. It was manufactured by Dremel, and it was a pretty good machine. It incorporated a sanding disk on the side of the machine, which was handy, too. The blades changed quickly. There was a lot to like.

There were other things about it that I didn't like, though. It vibrated a lot. After cutting a number of pieces of wood on that vibrating table top, I could feel the effect in my arms and hands. My fingers and wrists began to feel numb as a result of that vibration. I also didn't like the limited choices of blades. Also, the pin-fastening system of the blades required my drilling nearly a 1/8" hole in a piece of wood if I wanted to do inside fretwork cuts. On intricate fretwork, that's a sizeable hole! Also, it was a single speed machine. I couldn't slow it down for working on extremely delicate pieces.

One of the tool catalogs offered a fence for rip cutting wood with a Dremel jigsaw. The idea was that you could set the fence and "rip" boards lengthwise using the jigsaw. I purchased the fence and was very disappointed. It never worked very well for me. I have found that if I want to do a straight cut in a piece of wood - whether a cross cut or rip cut - I can do it faster with a table saw, and the resulting piece of cut wood has far fewer imperfections to the cut.

Speaking of cutting, the jigsaw can cut your finger, but it's far less likely to do severe damage to a digit than the table saw. (To be honest, I've never cut myself on either type of saw, and hope I never do!)Rule number one with any saw is to never put your fingers anywhere close to the blade. Use a push stick instead. Rule number two: Never try to touch any moving saw blade - even if it's just idling to a stop. A co-worker nicked my leg with a chain saw one time when it was idling to a stop. It put a gash in my leg that required about six stitches. Rule three: unplug the saw when you change the blade.

When I had some money saved up, the Dremel jigsaw table was the first tool I replaced. I purchased a Sears Craftsman jigsaw table. It had a slightly larger tabletop than the Dremel. It's variable speed, and can be slowed to a gentle cutting motion for working on really tight pieces. It also had a blower on the hold down clamp that helps to blow some of the sawdust away from the cutting line.

The saw itself weighs nearly twice what the old Dremel saw weighed; vibration is now barely palpable when I run this saw. Last, and most importantly, it has a set-screw system for holding down the blades. I can use very delicate saw blades on this machine as well as more coarse ones for rough-cutting wood. And I can adjust the tension level on my blades.

When I shopped for the new saw, there were table jigsaws with built in lights to illuminate the work. I already had a combination magnifier/lamp set up on my workbench that allows me to put the light very close to the work and peer down at what I'm jigsawing through the magnifier. Whenever I'm cutting out anything that requires precision, I always use that lamp magnifier.

There were even larger and heavier jigsaws that had their own stands to hold them. (I'm sure they have even less vibration to them.) I had two limitations to consider in my selection - workshop size and tool cost. The jigsaw needed to sit on my workbench. I could not afford to give up floor space to a saw on a separate stand. Likewise, I didn't want a monster saw sitting on my workbench, taking up a large amount of space there. And with two kids approaching college age, I didn't want to fork out the extra dollars for the higher end saw.

You may have noticed in the photo that there's a piece of plywood siding on the face of my jigsaw tabletop. I didn't like the size of the hole where the blade comes through the table. I cut a much smaller hole in my wood for the blade to pass through, which allows me to cut moderately delicate pieces of wood without its breaking.

So there you have it. A jigsaw is great for cutting out various shapes of wood and for doing some fretwork cuts. If the wood is quite delicate, the jigsaw is generally too rough a tool for cutting it. Thursday evening I'll talk about the table saw.

A Hundred Thank You's!

2009-11-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

Today was a milestone for this blog. One hundred individuals are officially now following my blog. (Even though there are only 18 of you following this version, the original version of this blog - and the same content - has now reached 100 followers. Some of you may be part of that 100 followers.)

I am so pleased that each of you have found something about this blog that interests you. The technology we now have at our fingertips is so amazing! Here I sit in my cozy little study in Iowa communicating with people all over the globe in Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, Canada, Argentina, Finland, Australia, France, Portugal and even Tucson, AZ!

If I've left out your country, please post a comment and add your nation to this list! I usually go to each of your sites if you have blogs, and look to see what you're posting and to see what coutries you're from. I love your energy, curiosity, humor, and creativity. I look forward to opening my emails each day to see if there are new comments from any of you, and I enjoy scrolling down to see what you have posted on your sites. Whether I can read the language or not, your pictures usually tell a story. And there's a thread of continuity throughout them all - miniatures are a fabulous hobby!

Blessings to you all, and THANK YOU!

Tomorrow I'll begin a series of blogs about some of my power tools.

George

Curtains for the Bedroom

2009-10-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, all you fabric arts specialists. This one's for you. At a miniature show last summer, I picked up a D'Anne Ruff Miniatures swag and tails kit. I met D'Anne at the Minneapolis NAME convention many years ago, and took her curtain-making class. She's just a really nice person and very talented with fabrics.

I did not purchase enough of the fabric to do both the bed and the curtains, and as a result, I had to find a different fabric for my curtains. I selected a beige, cotton cloth with a very tiny, subtle print to it. So, I'm happy with the fabric. Made up into a swag, I think it looks pretty nice.

I also found some bridal lace that made a good, lacy under curtain. After I pleated the lace, I glued white netting to the back of it using Weldbond glue. This will help stabilize the pleats, and keeps the lace portion self-contained, which then allowed me to glue that into the cornice of these curtains.

On my first attempt at the cornice, I misunderstood d'Anne's instructions and made four cuts that I now regret. You can see how the curtain on the left (below) is slightly different at the top from the curtain on the right. (There's an extra angle in the pleats at the top.)

Here's my quandary. It takes me the better part of a day to make just one set of these curtains. If I glue the improperly cut curtain into the window that faces outward, unless someone takes a hand mirror and holds it in the room to check to see how the drapes fit, they'll never see this flaw. I'm already facing a serious challenge with making the cornice for the center window. It will have to be narrower than the other two on the sides and it will have additional angles in the top so that the sides can touch the other two sets of curtains. I plan to glue all three together and then glue them all into the window.

So... knowing what I've now told you about the flaw and the work ahead... would you use the first set of curtains as I'm showing them here and not worry about it, or would you go back and redo that first cornice so the top is the same as the one on the right?

Here's how the bedroom looks with the curtains and bed. I think it's beginning to look like a very feminine little room. Once we begin to add the extra little touches, it should really begin to look quite homey.

So... what's your take? Redo or live with what I have? The front of the dollhouse is glassed in; so no one can stick their head in to peek at that curtain....

Using Spacers in Brick Laying

2009-10-21T19:40:00.000-07:00

Lisa asked a good question about the spacer I referred to in my article about creating a faux brick wall. Sometimes, the simplest tools can be very useful. I measured the width of the mortar lines on the bricks of my own house and found that the mortar was .4” wide. Divide that by 12, and you get a fraction of .03”. I have some, unused business cards from a previous job. I found that gluing three of them together comes very close to .03”.

I trimmed the cards lengthwise so that they were about ¾” tall by 3.5” long. This made the spacer high enough that I could grasp the spacer firmly, but not so high that it made the work awkward, and wide enough that I could glue several bricks in place before I needed to move the card over to lay more bricks. I also made a second spacer about ¾” by about one inch. I inserted that between the bricks so that I had consistent vertical and horizontal spacing throughout the project. I made two of those shorter spacers.

Each time I glued a new brick into place, I pushed it up solidly against both the horizontal and vertical spacers. The reason why I made a second, small spacer was that I needed to have the glue become fairly tacky before I pulled out my first spacer. By the time I had glued in a second brick, the glue on the first brick had usually become tacky enough that I could pull out the first spacer and move on to lay a third brick. And on it went.

I found only two disadvantages in using these paper spacers. One problem is that the glue occasionally seeped out from the edge of a brick and adhered to my spacer. (I had to replace one of my spacers after doing about half of the bricks.) The other problem is that the spacer somewhat obstructs previous rows of bricks laid. Once during the process of doing my wall, I had laid about four or five bricks before I noticed that I had not staggered the first brick of the row using a half brick. (My spacer had obstructed my view of the row just below it.) I ended up having to tear out the row and start over. Aargh!

I hope this answers your question, Lisa. Thanks for asking!

Protecting Your Wallpaper

2009-10-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

I considered taking Alicia's dollhouse to the state fair this summer. In preparation to do that, I took everything out of the house. Much to my amazement (and despair) I discovered how badly the wallpaper in the parlor had faded!

Some of the newer, Victorian wallpaper that I purchased has very tiny type on one of the edges recommending that the user spray the paper with fixative before applying the paper. Several years ago, I participated in a Web conversation where someone ranted about NOT using anything that a person printed on their computer printer, because it faded too quickly. Well, I installed the above paper about 18 years ago, and look at how it's faded. (Alicia had a couch in front of the area where it is darker.)

When I got into the discussion about not using computer printables, I contacted HP to find out what they predicted would be the longevity of their printed inks. The tech who spoke with me said it's hard to tell. He said use acid free paper for starters. Then he said, once it's dry, spray it with fixative. Their research had indicated that this would help reduce ultraviolet light degradation.

I also have used museum quality glass in areas of my dollhouses and room boxes where I can put real glass, because most museum glass also offers some protection against the damage of sunlight, too.

So, long blog short - spray your wallpaper with fixative before you put up any paper. You can get the fixative at most any art supply store.

One Way to Make Mini Bricks

2009-10-03T16:12:00.001-07:00

I have used a variety of ways to create miniature bricks in projects over the years. I have found one approach, though, that I like more than others. The end result can be quite realistic. I'm going to share directions with you for how to do it.

The picture on the left is the wall outside of the barbershop we're making in miniature club. It's my finished piece, and I made a mistake with it in the finishing process, but fortunately, it didn't ruin my wall. I'll tell you what I did and how I fixed it toward the end of this blog.

So, let's get started, shall we? I used white, acid free matte board to make the bricks. Whenever I use cardboard or paper in my buildings, I strive to make sure I'm using acid free paper. Card board, card stock or paper that isn't acid free tends to yellow and degrade over time.

I would like to think that a hundred years from now others will look at my miniatures and enjoy them as much as my friends and family do today. By using acid free papers, I come closer to assuring myself that they will.

Step 1: If you are using framed walls (like the ones you see in the above picture) rather than solid plywood or a foam core product , you must cut out two pieces of matte board. One piece has to be the exact the dimensions and angles of the wall(s) you plan to cover with bricks. The second piece should be about an inch wider and taller than the first. The larger piece will become your bricks.

There are two reasons I say make it larger. First, by doing this, you will make more bricks than you need to cover the wall. The last thing you want is to run short on bricks near the end of your brick laying. The second other reason is so that you have more to choose from. After I cut out my bricks, I didn't like how some of them looked. By over-producing them, you can be choosy.

Step 2: If you wish, you may paint the first piece of matte board to look like mortar. You can skip putting mortar in between the bricks, then, if you do this. (I prefer to fill the gaps between the bricks with mortar.) One of our club members chose to skip mortaring her bricks, and with the wall painted behind her bricks, I have to admit it looked pretty good.

If you choose to let the paint be your mortar, don't paint all of the surface with a solid color. If you study a brick wall, you'll notice that portions of the mortar whiten with age. Other parts actually get darker with dirt and oils splashed up on them.

Choose a light gray color of paint. Rather than painting in long strokes, take a sponge paint brush, get some paint on it, and then dab the matte board with the paint. You'll see little flecks of white appear that didn't get painted. Don't try to paint over them. Once that coat dries, take a darker color such as Payne's Grey and mix that with your original gray paint. dry brush over the first coat with this same dabbing technique. Be sure to make the color gradation get darker as you get nearer to the ground level.

Step 3: Now you can begin to paint your bricks. Before you begin, take time to look at various brick walls. You'll notice that the bricks are rarely a solid color. There are many colors - rusts, hints of ocher, browns, reds, yellows, touches of black, and, yes, even white! You can use the sponge paint brush again to create the bricks. If you're using the latex hobby paints that come in small bottles (2 oz./60ml), you can squeeze some out onto wax paper, dab your sponge into it and then tap around on the paper with the paint. Don't try to paint with strokes.

Linda from our miniature club painted my bricks for me while I helped others with their room boxes. As you can see from this picture of the resulting bricks, she created a variety of color and shades with her painting.

The colors we used for the bricks were Brown Iron Oxide, Georgia Clay, Heritage Brick, Burnt Orange and a very dry brush application of lamp black dabbed on with a paint brush (not the sponge brush). You can see from the picture how mottled the bricks looked.

Step 4: Once the paint has dried, you can then cut out the bricks. Cut the matte board in long, 7/32" wide strips. I use a rotary cutter for cutting the matte board. It's much easier to cut the matte with this tool than an X-acto knife. Take your time in setting up the cuts for these strips. Don't just measure once - measure at each end at least twice to make sure your rule is set for a consistent cut. (Using a ruler with a cork backing on it, will prevent it from slipping on the paper once it's it place.)

If you have a tool such as "the chopper" where you can set up a stop, you can cut your bricks very quickly and consistently. It's very important that you cut the bricks a consistent length! Other-
wise, you'll end up with a very odd looking brick wall. Also, remember to cut some half-bricks for the end of a row.

Step 5: Buy a felt tip art marker with a gray or dark gray color (I got one at Michael's). You'll need to color all four sides of each and every one of the bricks that you plan to use. This hides the solid white edges of your bricks. When they are laid down on the already painted matte board, they look quite real. (See photo below.)

Step 6:At this point, you are now ready to begin laying bricks. Start with your bottom row of bricks and glue them in place with a good craft glue. I created a spacer that was about 1/2" thick in scale (3/64" or .041") I made sure to space the bricks by that thickness as I glued each in place. Remember to start each alternate row with a half brick so that the bricks are correctly aligned.

Continue laying bricks until you have completed the wall. At this point, you could stop. (As you can see from the photo, it looked pretty good at that point.) Or you can add grout.

Step 7: Before you add any grout, you must first spray the bricks with a matte fixative. This makes your bricks somewhat water proof so that they don't absorb the paint from the "grout." The fixative dries quickly; so don't hesitate to put a couple coats on the bricks.

Step 8: To add grout, pick up a small container of spackling compound - the stuff you sometimes use to repair small dents or holes in drywall. Take about a tablespoon full of the compound, and mix in some gray latex paint. (I added color to this compound until I was satisfied with the color.)

Then using a putty knife, scrape it across the bricks. Fill in small squares at a time - approximately 3" x 3" squares. As you see that you have filled all of the lines between the bricks, use a damp paper towel to wash away any excess of the grout that is still on the face of the bricks. (You only want it in the grout lines areas.)

To add some realism to your grout color, you can start with a lighter shade of grout and dab it into various places, then add some color to the grout to make it darker and dab in more in various places until it's all filled in.

Another way to add realism is to use dry powders model railroad enthusiasts use to give their models that perfect dirty and aged look. This is where I erred with my project. I used too much of it. You can wash it off, but in the places where I had white on my bricks, the aging dust obliterated all of the white. It also made my grout look a little like it was becoming brick colored, too. So, I went back over the grout with a small round file to scrape away some of the stained grout, thus restoring some of the grout to its original color.

And that, my friendly reader, is how I make my bricks. I think that if I need to have my bricks form real corners such as on a chimney, I will make those bricks the length of one full brick and a half brick. I'll then cut away most of the matte board behind the brick surface where the brick touches the corner. That way, I'll be able to fold the brick and there will be no line where I have joined two pieces of matte board together. That will be an exercise in patience, but anyone who takes on a project of "bricking" a wall in miniature is in for a test of their patience anyway!

So Much to Say...

2009-08-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

To all of you who made such nice comments about my southwestern roombox, Thank You! The artist in me loves to receive compliments. (Actually, most people do!) Your comments and compliments make the long hours of miniaturing and my blog-writing even more fulfilling.

This past week, the total number of subscribers of my two blog sites (which are virtually the same, by the way), surpassed 90 members! I've not thanked each of you as you've become followers. Please know that as I see your names added, I deeply appreciate your choosing to follow my blog. I am so excited to have followers in so many different parts of the world, too. The Internet is truly a remarkable invention!

So, again, THANK YOU for following this blog and for your kind remarks. I'm so pleased that you've chosen to be a part of my mini world!

It's Official!

2009-08-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

I walked through the Iowa State Fair last night with a big smile on my face. As I carried my roombox away from the display building, a blue ribbon hung from my entry. It didn't win best of show. (A woman from West Des Moines won that with her dollhouse that she'd been working on for the last 20 years.) Nevertheless, I was a very happy guy.

Out of a possible 100 points, the judge gave my entry a 100. The judge commented that he/she liked the case I built for the roombox. The box includes stained glass panels on each side of the box, which are lit with rope lighting inside the box.

The rope lighting is fastened just below the top of the mountains in the background, which creates a strong source of light just behind the mountains. It helps create the sense that the sun has just set. Winding the excess parts of the rope light around to the sides helped me do two things. First, it allowed me to create some light to come out through the stained glass panels on the sides. Secondly, I was able to bring it back across the top of the stained glass to add a little more light for the orange stained glass.

I made the mountains using 1/8" thick basswood. After I cut out the mountain shapes, I used some of my small files to add some shapes and details to the hills. The weeds in the foreground are sisal rope that I took apart. I'd take a tiny hank of the sisal, bend it in half, twist it and add a little glue to hold it together. Then I drilled holes into the floor board of the box and glued the "weeds" into place. There are a few lonely saguaro cacti out in the background, too, which I cut from wood, sanded and painted.

The judge also liked the floor in the room, saying "The way you created the tile floor is wonderful." I made the tiles using digital photographs and PowerPoint software. On one of our trips to Tucson, I purchased a floor tile and a baseboard tile. When I got home, I created a grey background that looked like grout, then inserted the picture of the tile, sized it to scale and then copied, pasted and adjusted the placement of the tiles until I had a complete floor. I also used PowerPoint to create the entry floor tiles, too, which are plain terracotta tiles.

The camera has no lens in it. I took a digital picture of the roombox, then reduced it to the size of the screen in the camera, and printed it upside down and backwards (because that's how it would look in a real camera). A tiny light helps the camera picture show up a little more. The wire to the light runs up through one of the camera tripod legs. I made the camera from scratch, using some parts from a hobby store that were intended for remote control airplanes.

The fireplace is made of wood. I used a compass, and drew a half-circle on a piece of 3/4" pine wood. Then I set my Sears jigsaw table at a slight angle and cut out the semicircle. This made the bottom edge of the semicircle slightly narrower than the top edge. I next set the narrow edge of that semicircle on top of the board and traced the shape. Then I cut out another piece.

I repeated this step until the piece was very small. Next, I cut out the fireplace itself, using the jigsaw once again. Then I glued all the pieces together. There were places where I hadn't cut perfectly. So, I used my Dremel tool and sanding drums on the tool to smooth out those imperfections. The mantle is a piece of walnut that I inserted at one of the layers of the fireplace. It was the easiest way to mount it to such an odd-shaped object. The final touch was to paint the wood, smear some drywall compound in various places on the walls and the chimney, then paint again. I used charcoal pencils to blacken the fireplace to a level that satisfied me.

I made the box as a lamp. You can't see it from this photograph, but there's a stem area atop the box where the light fixture comes out. To hide the brass stem, I inserted a couple of four-inch round pieces of wood, and then affixed pieces of saguaro cactus ribs to it. (I noticed in some of the places in Tucson, people have created shutters using these cactus ribs in their shutters.) I intended to do that on the sides of the box, but realized it was too difficult to make with the glass insets.

I hope to publish an article one of these days about how I matted the pictures for the room. For a little more information about other techniques I used in creating this room, I had a post about this room on February 6, if you'd like to read more about it.

When Things Start Coming Together - Wow!

2009-08-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

Our miniature club met last Saturday, and worked a good share of the day on our barbershop room boxes.

I love creating a sense of depth in a box that is less than a foot deep and narrower than 18 inches wide. So, I spent quite a bit of time getting just the right picture to show a street scene out the front window of the barbershop.

The picture at left is from downtown Salida, Colorado - my home town. The sky is from a picture I took in Tucson one very moody evening.

I had hoped that it would look like very early morning or end of the work day for the scene, because it is lit by a 7 watt night light bulb. The picture above is not my roombox but rather another of our club members - Jane. Jane is the farthest along in our project.

I couldn't resist including a picture here of Linda as she worked on the brick wall of her box. (It's the wall just outside the doorway of the roombox.) Linda did such a beautiful job with this wall. She really is quite the artist.

I was so excited when Jane put her floor in, added her front door, temporarily mounted the matte board on the frame and then set her picture frame in front of it all! It was a goose bump moment for me as I saw how it is coming together. The box is beginning to turn out EXACTLY how I had hoped it might. And here's how it looks at this point. I can hardly wait until we begin to put in the tin-type ceiling and wallpaper!

Life Sometimes Gets in the Way!

2009-08-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, life gets in the way of important things, like having fun, working on miniatures or writing on my blog. July-August has been tough at our household. My wife caught her foot as she was climbing out of the minivan, fell and smashed her humerus near the shoulder. Fortunately, it's not her dominant hand, because she's been in a restraint/sling device ever since. She reported to school for her first day back yesterday; so I've been helping her get her classroom ready.

Then at work, we began moving from year-long temporary facilities (due to the Cedar River flood last summer) back into our regular office building. Then my secretary resigned to take a different position in the agency. Nothing personal, just a career move for her. But then my boss told me we couldn't replace her due to funding concerns.

Okay. I know I was a bit stressed out, because at that point, my back went out. Big time. I could barely walk, and I was out of commission for a week. So, my plans for entering Sara's dollhouse in the Iowa State Fair went down the tubes. I was able to get the southwestern roombox entered in the fair, though. It didn't require any heavy lifting, and thus I was able to get it there.

I'll let you know soon how it fared. (If you'll pardon the pun!)

Measures for Success

2009-08-03T16:19:00.001-07:00

"Measure twice, cut once."
Old carpenter's rule

This blog installment isn't pretty. In fact, I won't show you any pictures of miniatures I've made in today's blog. (I hope you won't be too disappointed.) As I said in one of my earliest posts, I want to share how-to information in this blog, too. So, today I'm talking about rulers, and I don't mean kings, queens or presidents!

I have LOTS of rulers, and I use almost all of them regularly. It's amazing how many different ones are "out there" and how each fulfills a unique need in my woodworking and miniatures. Below is an assortment of them I gathered up from my work room and toolkits. I thought that if you're trying to figure out what tools you might need for this hobby, then this could be useful to you (or if you're experienced, you may feel it's worth sharing with someone who is new to the hobby).

The largest ruler (#1 above) probably gets the least amount of my use. However, when I was preparing to cut out large pieces of plywood to build Sara's dollhouse, this ruler, which serves as a four foot wide T-square, was a very useful tool. I also use it occasionally when I need to cut a wide piece of matte board.

The smaller T-square, #12 on the right of the picture, hangs at the ready in my workshop. I use it for drawing and for cutting dollhouse wallpaper or fabric in exactly square dimensions. The easiest way to use this T-Square for cutting is to lay one edge of the fabric or the wallpaper along the straight side of a cutting mat. Set the T-square down on top of the fabric or paper with the plastic T placed against the edge of the mat.

Your ruler is now perfectly set at a right angle to make a cut. All you have to do is move the T-square to whatever width you need, and slice along the ruler. (Hint: Being a right-handed person, I press down with the fingers on my left hand about midway down the length of the ruler to hold it firmly in place and slice on the right side of the T-square with my roller cutter or Xacto knife.)

The "ruler" marked #2 above is a matte cutting guide, which also has a ruler along its edge. This is an especially safe tool for guiding your knife cuts on matte board, which requires either multiple strokes with your Xacto knife or heavy pressure on the knife.

When cutting matte board, it's easy for the knife to slip up over the edge of a thin ruler, putting your fingers in great jeopardy of getting cut. This special ruler has a center ridge that sticks up almost an inch and goes down the entire length of the ruler. I can use this ridge to pick up and adjust it by purhins or pulling on that ridge. Once the ruler is exactly where I need it, I can put my hands behind the ridge, and they are safely protected from the knife blade slipping over the edge of the ruler and toward my very tender pinkies.

The carpenter's ruler (#3), is a terrific tool for measuring inside distances within dollhouse or roombox rooms. It has a brass slide-out piece that can give you an exact measurement of the room's length. I like it even better than a standard tape measure (#5) for doing inside room measurements. That's because once you've slid out the brass extender to measure a room, it holds the measurement. (It does require a little math, though, since the brass insert measurement has to be added to the length of the yellow fold-out part of the ruler to get the complete measurement length.

Tape measures (#5) are designed to accommodate for inside and outside measuring by incorporating a little play in the steel tip. So, when I remove it from doing an inside measurement, and then try to place it onto a piece of trim molding and do an outside measurement, I can get myself quite confused. The carpenter ruler eliminates that problem. That's why I always use the carpenter ruler now for measuring my dollhouse rooms.

The problem with a carpenter rule, though, is its big. It folds up to a length of just under eight inches. When you're trying to measure doorways or windows, it can get awkward trying to fit this tool into tight spaces to get an accurate measure. That's where the mechanic's ruler (#10) comes into play!

I use the little mechanics' ruler a LOT. It has a scale on one side that goes down to 64ths of an inch and 32nds of an inch on the other. PLUS on the back, the ruler has a list of digital equivalents to the ten thousandths of an inch starting at 1/64 and going up to 63/64. It has a pocket clip affixed to it so you can clip it to a shirt pocket. That "clip" also can be turned so that you can measure inside dimensions of a window. I consider this a must-have ruler for an active miniaturist!

The two rulers marked #6 are both clear plastic, centering rulers. One of our club members introduced me to this kind of ruler. It has a zero in the middle, and then counts out inch by inch in both directions to the ends of the ruler, and it also starts with zero on opposite ends and goes to 12 inches. Set the ruler down on something and in short order, you can find the center of an object. When you need to find the center of a piece of fabric or a center point on a railing, this tool works great!

I use the white, triangle-shaped ruler (#7) for doing scale drawings. With its soft plastic body, it is NOT a tool to use for any knife cutting. It has a wide range of scales, dividing the inches into six different scales. It's useful for helping me to "draw" room plans on my computer, because it has a 1/10 scale on one of its sides. Since PowerPoint allows me to "move" and size objects using decimals of an inch, this ruler is a good tool. It also has a 1:6 scale, which can be used for 1/12 scale work, if you're imaginative. This one is NOT a critical ruler to use/have, though.

I use a caliper when I need some precise accuracy. I like it especially for setting up a cutting width on my miniature table saw. A caliper can measure both inside dimensions as well as outside dimensions. My wife gave me the digital caliper, and I must say, it's SO much easier to use than a vernier caliper! The jaws of the caliper can be set to slide a little stiffly; thus, like the carpenter's ruler, once you've tightened the caliper down on the wood you're measuring, you can slide it off of the object and this ruler stays open to the exact width you need.

The ruler at left is sometimes called a try square (it's number 9 in the top photo). Depending on the manufacturer, I've also found references to it as being called a tri-square, a combination square or an adjustable square. The one pictured here is a small, 4" long "adjustable double square." It costs about $10 from MicroMark. The ruler itself slides in the black metal handle, which allows me to make accurate measurements of depth. It's also machined so that it is precisely a 90 degree right angle.

You can buy a miniature square, or you can buy a full-scale, combination square for just a little more money - around $15. They are one foot long, and handy as all get out for little OR bigger projects around the home. You can buy this kind of adjustable square at virtually any hardware store that sells tools. If you're just starting out, and don't have any tools, buy a combination square ruler. The hardware store version even includes a level in the handle so you can adjust pictures on your walls!

I hope the photo below helps you see another key way I have used this square. I found that most of the miniature miter boxes are designed for cutting pieces of small, wood trim. So, when I was building my fancy Victorian bookcase, and wanted a precisely cut piece of cherry wood I couldn't pop a four-inch wide piece of wood into my miterbox and cut off a length of the wood.

When I built the bookcase, I also didn't have a good quality, miniaturists table saw. So, I put a piece of plywood down on my work space, set the cherry wood on top of that, and then pushed the black part of the square against both the plywood and the cherry wood. This lined up the edge of both the plywood and the cherry wood with the fat base of the ruler. I then carefully tightened a C-clamp down onto the ruler blade of the square. With the clamp holding everything perfectly square, I was able to set a razor saw flush against the ruler edge. This process produced all of the larger square pieces of that bookshelf, and it turned out wonderfully! So, if you're serious about making dollhouses and miniature wood projects, get thee to a hardware store if you don't have a combination square!

Wooden Wainscoting Adds Warmth to Rooms

2009-07-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

There's nothing quite as lovely as rich, wood paneling in a room - especially if it's a Victorian drawing room.

I wish I had taken pictures of this project in the stages of its development so you could have seen how it went together. I've admired several other blogs where the reader can see the project evolve with details step-by-step photos, but unfortunately, I did this work before I began the blog. Next time, I'll do a better job of documenting!

There are many ways a crafts person can make a paneled room, and it doesn't have to be as fancy as this one. I chose to use picture frame wood (PFE-5) from Northeastern Scale Lumber to create more personality to the panels.

Northeastern also makes raised panels that you can purchase. The raised panels, of course, could also be used with the picture frame wood that I used, and it would have been an even more involved "look" to the wall. I have some of their panels in one of my stashes of "someday" stuff that I've purchased, but I decided I was happy with this slightly simpler look.

The first step is to measure the wall to determine how wide the overall wainscoting will be on the wall. Next, determine how wide the wood dividers will be between each panel. I chose to make my vertical dividers a half-inch wide. Ultimately, in the finished form, the columns appear to be 3/8" wide. That's because the PFE-5 molding is 5/32" wide, and part of the molding is cut away so that it can overlap the wood it attaches to. As a result, part of it projected over the half-inch dividers. Knowing this, I could then calculate how wide each of my panels needed to be to fill the space. (This is also why I didn't use the Northeastern raised panels - the spaces I was working with were too variable, and I didn't want to fuss with ripping the raised panels to make them fit.)

I used basswood sheets that I bought at a hobby shop to make the wood panels. I purchased some 1/32" thick basswood in 4" sheets. This became my vertical wood that you see in each panel. Next, I cut 1/16" basswood for the various pieces of wood that were the vertical and horizontal dividers.

The most critical part of building the paneling is to make sure the pieces you cut for the dividers are exactly the same length. It's very difficult to hide any gaps in this kind of woodwork, and they show up dramatically if one piece is shorter than the rest. (Voice of experience here...)

The picture at right illustrates how I used my vernier caliper to measure the inside dimensions of each panel. Using the caliper, I was able to make minor adjustments to my upright pieces so that they were evenly spaced. The caliper is not a terribly expensive tool, and it has come in handy any number of times. An alternative tool to use would be a compass. The point of using either is that you can lock them into a set width, and then you can use the tools to compare the different panels to make sure all of the spaces are the same.

Cutting the PFE-5 molding was challenging, because you can't just measure the inside space of each panel and then cut the molding to that width. It has to be wider than that, since the edges project out a little more.

I started out cutting my pieces just a little too wide, and then slowly sanded and trimmed until the piece fit into the space without having to be forced in. I used the hand shear that I featured a couple months ago (purchased from MicroMark) to cut the mitered angles on the molding.

Before I glued the pieces into place, I stained them. That way, there was no concern that if I accidentally had any glue work out onto the finished wood I didn't have to worry that it wouldn't take the stain. I dipped a corner of a tissue into the stain and then each time I cut a mitered corner, I'd touch the stain-dampened tissue to the raw end of the miter. (It just takes a gentle dab to get the stain to absorb into the ends of the raw wood.)

Notice how the horizontal pieces of wood stretch across the entire wall? This adds stability to the panel. Unlike a full-scale wall made of wood, the miniature wall doesn't have to have floating panels, such as what you'd find in a real wainscoting piece. I cut the vertical back pieces in widths so that the places where the wood is pieced together, it's covered by a vertical divider.

Once the wall section was complete, I wiped it down with a tack rag and then sprayed it with Deft. I let that dry, then rubbed it out with 0000 steel wool, used the tack rag again and sprayed it again with Deft. I put three coats of Deft on it, rubbing it out each time with the steel wool. Then I let that sit for a couple of days to harden. Finally, I applied a thin amount of furniture wax and then used a soft brush to remove any excess wax and to shine up the wax. Finally, I glued the wall into place.

The Power of Accessories

2009-06-25T05:56:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have followed my blog, you may remember my post lamenting that the Victorian bed didn't quite look right in the master bedroom. Janice Lee Smith suggested I make a throw and toss it on the bed. She added that by fastening my cloth to aluminum foil, I might have greater control over how it drapes. I tried her suggestion and it turned out well! (See photo below.)

My wife and I agreed that perhaps the flooring wasn't making the bed "pop." So, when we attended the Quad Cities miniature club show, we found an oriental carpet to put under the bed. The two additions - a throw and a rug - made quite a difference in the look for the room, don't you think?

I'm now working on curtains for the bay window. I'm using a cornice kit created by d.Anne Ruff. I'll put some soft lace curtains under the cornice. Again, it will be mostly white on white with the curtains, but we'll be sure to include some colorful pictures on the walls. And I probably will add a colorful throw pillow or two beside the two white pillows on the bed. Then, my daughters (who love interior design) will add the final touches to the room and we'll call it done.

I've been tagged! Now I'm picking six...

2009-06-21T13:52:00.001-07:00

It's Father's Day here in America. (Is it celebrated in other countries, too?) So, I've taken lots of time to explore and make some selections. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I was tagged by LinsMinis who is in Durham, England. (I’m constantly amazed by the Internet – I follow blogs from people in a variety of European countries, down under" and various sites across the USA. How small our world truly has become because of this invention!) Lin is a very talented miniaturist, who also has some commercial sites and sells on eBay as well. Please do check out her blog. Her miniature food is exquisite!

I know the rule of the pick six is to tag six people whose sites I find interesting, and then list six things I like. I can’t just go post comments on six sites and leave it at that. I want YOU to know about their sites, too! So, here are the six I picked (in no special order of importance). I hope you may enjoy these sites as much as I have.

http://josje-bouwt.blogspot.com/ Josje Veenebos’ blog was recently picked by someone else for the “pick six” honor; so I don’t expect her to do a whole new group of six blogs to feature on her blog. I have just enjoyed seeing the pictures of her work. I was looking at the picture of her kitchen one night, and my son-in-law said, “You mean, that’s a miniature kitchen!?” It’s just exquisite. http://tinyurl.com/l76z24

http://dollhouse-tutorials.blogspot.com/ New England Miniatures in Kennebunk, Maine. It’s a small, family-run miniature business. Grazhina has several blogs – some feature the miniature houses and rooms she has made and then there’s this blog, which is right down my alley! It’s filled with all sorts of links to “how to” articles! Perfect for those of us who wonder, “How did they DO that?!”

http://libertybiberty.blogspot.com/ is from New Zealand, and she has done some remarkable things with her dollhouse in spite of not having any power tools for mini making! She does all this while still caring for her daughter who is preschool age. Way to go! She belongs to a miniature club, too. http://tinyurl.com/lmnwl3

http://caseymini.blogspot.com/ I thoroughly enjoy Casey’s Minis blog. Her sense of humor is delightful with her little characters Tessie and Zar helping her with her blog postings and her miniature work. Here’s a link to see her character Tessie taking a break between gluings: http://tinyurl.com/mddsqk

http://creatingdollhouseminiatures.blogspot.com Minimaker Anderson comes up with some amazing videos to share with us. Frequently, these feature “how to” information. This is one of the first sites I started following, and I have not regretted it since. If you haven’t linked to her blog, you’re missing some excellent videos. Please click on over to take a look at her site.

http://myrtlewood.blogspot.com/ Texas Belle is doing some wonderful things with her dollhouse. I’m so impressed by the rooms she has completed, and she says she doesn’t have a lot of miniature experience. Please DO check out her site. Here’s a picture of the wall she has created for her library. It’s very nice! http://tinyurl.com/l6ar7j

The other part of the pick six is that I’m supposed to share six things that make me happy.

Here are six for me:

Finishing a miniature and thinking, “Wow! I really like how that turned out!”
Cold, sunny winter days with lots of snow on the ground. I can stand in my workshop and look out at the blue sky and the white snow and feel comfy cozy in my little world. (And I also know I don't have to go out and mow the grass!)
Finding new tools that really fit my needs. I love it when I have a new tool to play with.
Discovering new ideas – especially “how to” ideas that I can add to my skills
Having a good laugh – it’s good for the soul and clears the cobwebs.
Having a supportive and loving wife (which I do), who doesn’t mind my spending inordinate amounts of time on my minis and/or on the computer!

http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/crafts

Details! Details! It's the icing on the cake!

2009-06-02T19:35:00.001-07:00

Adding windows to the top floor of Sara's dollhouse was one of the toughest things to do with this house. As I developed my drawings for the house, there were so many details I wanted to incorporate into these windows. In addition to the paint scheme, layers, angles, and carving, the windows were to be my only access to the attic rooms; so I knew I had to make them removable.

I later had to modify my plan about access to the rooms when Sara found a canopy bed she wanted for the little girl's room. I could not fit it in through the window opening; so I had to retrofit part of the back wall so that we could open it to insert the bed. Like I said in my previous post, the best laid plans of mice and men... and daddies... oft go astray!

The small circles and arch over the window were some of the trickiest pieces for me to make. They really challenged my carving and painting skills. In fact, there's still a little bit of detail to paint there, and I haven't worked up the courage/energy/patience to do it, since I know I'll probably go back and forth several times between white and red paints trying to fix slight imperfections of brush strokes. It's the details like this, though, that really give Victorian houses their personality. I love that wedding cake frilliness of Victorian houses! It's just that it's hard to replicate it in miniature at times...

I've been "tagged,"by another blogger; so in my next post, I'll address that.

Best Laid Plans...

2009-05-29T20:45:00.001-07:00

When I began to build this dollhouse, I fully intended to have a full-scale door beneath the stairs. In fact, I even had cut a doorway into the back wall of the plywood. As I got to working on the stairs, though, I soon realized that it wouldn't work. I had to give up and install the miniature door for a storage area beneath these stairs.

The stairs are solid cherry wood. The landing is approximately 3" deep; so I was able to cut one piece of wood for that step. The lower steps, however, progressively project out about 5/6" with each step. The easiest way to bump out the cherry wood steps was to stack up pine wood pieces behind the cherry. So, as you look at the stairs on the right, there's no fancy construction work holding up that flight of stairs. It's solid wood from the front step all the way to the back wall and up to the landing.

For those of you with a discerning eye, you'll know why the maid for this house has her bag packed and a letter of resignation on her dresser. Dusty stairs was bad enough, but then to have a broken dinner plate in the dining room?Unforgiveable! ;o)

How I Made the Belt on Sara's House

2009-05-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

This is the last post I'll make about the belt at the top of Sara's dollhouse. I promise! I just had to tell a little more about how I made it. Please do click on the photo to see it close up. The circles were wooden toy wheels that I bought at a Michaels store.

The wheels were approximately 1/8" thick and had a hole in the center that was just the right size for a 1/8" piece of doweling to fit snugly into. I drilled a 1/8" hole into a piece of 1 x 2 board and then set my table saw so that the fence was about 3/4" depth from the blade. The width of the blade is about 1/16", and so running the 1 x 2 past the blade, the saw would slice off the back half of a wheel (as long as the wheel was pushed flat against the 1 x 2).

I allowed a length of the dowel to protrude through the front of the wheel, because I held onto that piece of doweling to control the cut wheel. If I had not done this, my saw would have flung the wheels at me and all around my workshop! In fact, a couple of times, the doweling broke, in the cutting process, and that's EXACTLY what happened. (Flying saucers anyone?)

Painting Was a Challenge!
Painting these circles was a challenge. I had to do that free-hand. I used the 1/8" dowel once again to hold them while I painted, which made the task a little easier. The golden center of each circle is a brass tack that has a rounded head. I cut the nails down to a short length and glued one into the hole of each circle.

I cut the green pieces out of basswood, cutting out first the outline, then drilled a hole and carefully cut out the centers. Then I went through a dozen emery boards, which I wore out sanding the top edges of these pieces until they were rounded.

I've already told you about the brackets. I ended up making several more than the 24 that I put on the house. Sometimes they'd break on me when I tried to peel them apart from the double-stick tape. Other times, I just didn't do a good job of cutting out the fancy insides and had to start over again. People always say, "You must be a really patient guy." The truth of the matter is that I'm more of a perfectionist than I am patient, which means I often end up having to redo things because I got in too much of a hurry!

Opening Sara's Dollhouse

2009-05-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

So... here's the house with all its fancy details. The brackets and fancy belt under the eaves really give the house its personality. But they also created endless headaches for me when I began to figure out how the house would open to allow access to the rooms!

The brackets on this house took considerable work. I took two pieces of 1/16" cherry wood and temporarily held them together with double-stick tape (available from most office stores). I made a template of the design, which I traced on the pair, and then used my jeweler's saw to cut them out. I then laid the brackets on a third piece of 1/16" cherry wood and traced the exact shape of that bracket (since there is almost always some permutations when cutting pieces like this). Then I cut out two more pieces of wood that were slightly smaller than the rest of the bracket. I then painted the pieces BEFORE I glued them together. (I tried making one bracket, glued it all up and then paint it. OH MY! That was just too hard to do!) This was the only way I was able to keep the white and red paints from being badly applied!

At left and below are how the brackets (and the house) are fastened. Here's the first step in how to "open" the house: remove the bracket on the top right. (I made it removable by using a toothpick as my "doweling" to hold it in place. To get this centered just right, I first drilled a needle-sized hole, then cut a straight pin so that only about 1/16" of it stuck out from the end of the hole. That allowed me to put the bracket in exactly its rightful place, and then press in a little. I then removed the pin, found the hole it made in the wall of the house, and drilled a hole large enough to accommodate the toothpick in both the bracket and in the house.

The next step for getting into the house is to remove the whole belt from the right front side of the house. I made it removable, because if I glued the belt to the top of the plywood base, it scraped the under side of the eaves and the downspouts when I opened the case. It was just easier to make this piece removable.

Next, we remove another bracket, which is also doweled into place with a toothpick.

Then, the steps and railing from the front porch have to slide out of the way. The steps, by the way, are made from Corian (yes, the counter material). A friend who makes pens out of the material turned each of the posts for me.

I can now open the house by moving a very tiny pin closure I inserted behind the clapboard siding. It's just a piece of florist wire that I bent like a paperclip so that one point projects into a hole in the house and the other end sticks out as my handle. I did my best to make it inconspicuous.

I remove the bracket and steps whenever I need to open the middle section of the house. The only thing holding the middle section closed is a brass clasp I fashioned. It is held in place by a single screw and slides over another screw to fasten. The left hand side of the house opens much the same way as the right. Obviously, I don't intend to open the house very often once it's completed!

The Challenges of Building a Front-Opening Dollhouse

2009-05-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

Here is Sara's dollhouse nearing completion. I still have a punch list of "things to do" to complete it, but it's really quite presentable now and becoming more so on a nearly daily basis.

I designed this house using a variety of reference photographs I have taken of Victorian homes. I thought Victorian houses were ugly when I was a boy, but a contest in Sioux City, Iowa put on by the city's history museum gave me a new appreciation for Victorian tower houses. (The museum had over 20 paintings all done by a former Sioux City woman. Each painting featured a different Victorian house in the city. The contest challenged people to find all of the houses that were scattered all across the city. We found all but one of them!) Today, at least half of those houses are gone; so I'm very glad we took the time to see them and appreciate them.

I designed this house with the intention of offering the viewer enough architectural details to give them a real sense of the house's architecture. However, I also wanted the viewer to enjoy seeing the rooms with all of their details. Since I chose to maintain the integrity of the roof because of its architectural interest, that made making the third floor rooms more open impossible. In some ways I regret that, but I also like the unity of the roof line the way it is.

I didn't make any cutouts on the sides, so the viewer can see the bay window on the dining room side and the detail on the left-hand side of the house. I especially wanted to have the front door and stained glass window with its tiny balcony in plain view for the visitor. The brackets near the roof line also were a must to convey the fussiness of this painted lady Victorian.

All of those details made the front opening of this house quite a challenge! I'll share more details with you in my next blog about what all I did to make the house so it can be opened. I have to remove or shift several little pieces before I can open any one of the three different doors on the front.

Please do click on the photograph so you can see the house close-up!

Working with Greenleaf Kits

2009-05-17T08:51:00.001-07:00

Greenleaf puts out affordable dollhouse kits with attractive designs. This is Alicia's dollhouse. When she wanted me to build her a dollhouse, I started to think about designing one based on some of the Victorian tower houses we had enjoyed seeing in Sioux City.

Alicia felt it might take too long if I designed my own and built it. (She wanted it done quickly.) In retrospect, she may have been right, considering that it took me over four years to build Pam's dollhouse, and I've been "working" on Sara's house now for about 14 years!

So, Alicia lobbied her daddy to go with a kit. She liked the Greenleaf McKinley, and she begged me to buy it and complete it. I gave up my dream of doing my own design and used the McKinley.

It turned out okay, but I wasn't crazy about working with the kit. I don't like the thin walls, which made it difficult to create realistic doorways between rooms, and I really disliked the porous, grainy plywood the kits are made of. I also didn't like the windows that came with it, and I found that due to the tall, narrow design of the windows, I was unable to substitute better quality ones from Houseworks, which I would have preferred to have used. All that said, Greenlieaf makes attractive houses, and this one turned out pretty nicely in spite of its drawbacks.

I made a few mistakes along the way in building it. I chose a roofing material that went on quickly, since it came in long rolls and was easy to glue on, but in retrospect, I feel it was too thick. The copper tower roof was a bear to do. I spent many hours measuring, cutting, and bending the copper foil to make it fit just right. It was also difficult to find a glue that worked well in holding it onto the roof. Last, but not least, I sliced my fingers several times working on it.

The biggest mistake I made, and it's a design flaw of this dollhouse, was not enclosing it so that the rooms don't get dusty. The house has become terribly dusty, and it needs to have some sort of plexiglas cover or doors on the front to eliminate or reduce the amount of dust settling in the rooms.

All in all, I have to say this was a girl's play dollhouse - not a Thorne Room replica. Alicia thoroughly enjoyed her play with it - decorating it and redecorating it for various seasons. To this day, when she's home, she comes in and makes seasonal changes. So, though it's not a museum piece, it's definitely a well-loved dollhouse.

Making Your Own Shingles

2009-05-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

After seeing some real, miniature slate shingles at a dollhouse store in Denver, Colorado years ago, I set about saving my pocket change so that I could buy enough to do Sara's dollhouse. As time went on, I realized, there was no way I was going to get that money saved up any time soon since it was going to cost in the hundreds of dollars to do all the roof of this house!

If you read Dollhouse Miniatures magazine regularly, you may have seen the article I wrote about how I substituted real slate with wooden, faux slate shingles. The various gradations of color you see in the slate in this picture is real. After making these delicate little shingles, I sealed them with alcohol-based B-I-N undercoating. Next, I mixed red and green paint using colors as close to the colors of the house as I could get. I scumbled that paint onto the shingles. I was very sloppy in doing this - on purpose. It made the shingles somewhat wavy and revealed "layers" in some places, which made it look all the more real. Next, I took the red and green paint and mixed it together, added some lamp black to it, and thinned the paint just a little. I then painted over the shingles with that. The result? These lovely, various-hued shingles.

Creating with the Computer

2009-05-11T20:25:00.001-07:00

Here's the bathroom for Sara's dollhouse. I haven't mounted the mirror over the sink yet. I wanted you to see the floor, which I created using PowerPoint.

I created this small, black and white tile pattern using PowerPoint software. It took a while, but it was less time-consuming than trying to create little tiles and place them piece by piece.

Once I got the pattern laid out the way I wanted, I printed it out on photo (glossy) paper to give it maximum gloss. After that, I sprayed it with several coats of glossy workable fixative to further give it a shine and to protect the ink from ultraviolet light.

The last part was the hardest - I had to piece together the floor, since the space was larger than the 7.5 x 10" image I got from the PowerPoint slide. If you study the picture very carefully, you might see where the two pieces connect.

Wonderful Clock Face

2009-05-05T19:45:00.001-07:00

I was saddened a few years ago when I read that Suzanne Russo had quit her business, which was a specialty supply business offering various brasses, including escutcheon plates and clock faces. Fortunately, I had purchased this clock face, the clock hands and the brass finial on the top from her before she closed.

This clock hangs on the wall of the Scrooge room box. To be honest, as I look at this, I'm not exactly sure HOW I succeeded in making the half-round, mitered top to this clock! The carvings, of course, were created mostly through the use of my jeweler's saw. I also had some pieces of brass, which I cut out and polished extensively to create the pendulum.

The whole clock face and pendulum are covered over by a very thin piece of glass - about the thickness of a microscope slide cover. I bought the glass from a dealer at a miniature show years ago, and have never seen any more like it again nor have I seen the dealer! And, again, I honestly don't remember how I succeeded in cutting that rounded glass without shattering the whole sheet! Just lucky, I guess!

If you're wondering, yes, there's a "tag" hanging from the top of the clock. Throughout the Scrooge room, I have various items of value with the names of people who owed money to Scrooge and he's "holding" their items until the come forth with the money. This clock belonged to Owen Moore at 101 Queens St in London. He owes Scrooge 35 pounds. ;o)

Did I Name It Wrong?

2009-05-04T16:16:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I did it as a classroom exercise, and didn't have time to think much about how I named it. So, I chose the first URL that came to mind - tallminiguy, but then as I worked on setting it up, I titled the site "George the Miniguy."

When I was visiting with a communications professional recently, he looked at me and said, "Why would you give it one name and use a different URL? That doesn't make sense!" I had to agree with him.

The reason I named it tallminiguy is that I'm taller than average - 6'4" (193 CM) and slim - which accentuates my tallness. I thought it was a funny contrast between how tall I am and how small my hobby is, reflecting my somewhat warped sense of humor.

So, if you already follow this blog under the tallminiguy.blospot.com URL, THANK YOU! I thoroughly enjoy receiving your comments, and by the way, I'd be happy to reply to them via email, if folks let me know they'd like me to reply.

I have now launched a second blog, with the same content as this one. It follows the logic my friend had - name the URL what you call it: George the Miniguy. So, if you happen to come across georgetheminiguy.blogspot.com, it's just me.

Stay in touch. I'll try to remain in touch. My wife reminded me the other day that one of these days I may run out of pictures to show you of things I've created. That may put some pressure on me to create even more stuff! That's a good thing. At any rate, hope you're enjoying these posts.

Cordially,
George

Cabriole Leg Example in My Dollhouse

2009-05-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

The bed stand at the left is one of my scratch- built pieces of furniture. It's solid cherry wood, and I used the same methodology for producing the cabriole legs as what I illustrated in my previous blog.

Once I cut out the wood, I used a rounded head on my Dremel motor tool to carve out the indented areas toward the top of each leg.

In reality, they're not terribly hard to make. The most "work" involved with them is finishing them off once you've cut them out of the block of wood, since that involves quite a bit of sanding time.

Video: How to Make a Cabriole Leg

2009-04-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm just learning how to use the new Flip camera to do Web-posted videos. It's pretty cool!

Here, in video form, are the steps to making a cabriole leg. Whether you're building a table or a chair, the steps are pretty much the same. The video is about 7 minutes long. (Sorry it's so long, and filled with so many ums and ahs!) I cut down the video as much as I could, and in the process, when the software condensed the video even more for Web production, it cut off some of my words. Oops! Obviously I have still more to learn...

My Fancy Victorian Bed Is Finished... or Is It?

2009-04-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

At last, I've nearly finished the Victorian bed I've been building for Sara's dollhouse. I knew I wanted a fancy Victorian bed; so I went on to the Internet and "shopped" for full-size, Victorian bedroom furniture. I found many examples, and downloaded several retailers' pictures of antique beds. Next, I began to work with those pictures to develop my own set of shop drawings.

What you see at the right is my "interpretation" of many design elements I pulled from those examples. I liked the idea of the tall pyramid tops to the posts. I considered doing pineapples, and then decided that I didn't want to take the hours and hours it would take to carve four pineapples for each bed post, although it would have been a cool touch.

The bed is made of cherry wood. I didn't have any good burled wood to use for the insets; so I used painting techniques to create the faux burl. As you may recall from a previous post, I stitched the coverlet and pillows for the bed. The "mattress" is balsa wood cut and shaped to the size of a mattress. Using the off-white silk for the coverlet prevents any color clashes with the carpet and walls, but it's a bit bland.

I welcome ideas and suggestions for how to add a touch of color to the bed now that it's almost done - a colorful nightie laid out on the bed? A dog and cat sleeping together on the bed? Perhaps add some delicate ribbons and some bows to the bed coverlet? What's your idea? I'd love to hear!

The Walls Go Up!

2009-04-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

It's not much to look at yet, but this is the start of a new roombox. In an earlier blog, I showed a picture of a PowerPoint slide where I had drawn out the floor plan.

Since this was my idea to make an old-fashioned barbershop, I'm leading our miniature club in this project. I hope it turns out well!

As you can see, we glued a framework very much like what you'd see in a real building, except for one thing - these boards would be 4 x 4's if they were in full dimension. I discovered when I built my last roombox using this methodology that gluing up a scale 2 x 4 wall was flimsy. When 2 x 4 frames are built in real life, builders use big honking nails to hold the pieces together. But in miniature, I used only glue. End result? My walls weren't very solid - they fell apart on me a couple of times when I moved the frame around. This time, I've used a heavier base wood (3/8" x 3/4") and 3/8" x 3/8" timbers for the uprights. As a result, the walls are far more sturdy.

I will change the photo in the back wall. I didn't like the angle, and there were too many cars in the photo. I took a different photograph from First Street in Salida, Colorado, did some photo shop work to remove two cars, and now have a wonderful set of Victorian store fronts with no cars!

We'll add acid free matte board to the front of the framework above to create the walls for this old fashioned barbershop. Next month we'll be adding the revised "view" out the front window, walls with wallpaper, a wall of bricks outside the shop door along the back, and maybe even the tin ceiling and if time allows. It will be a busy day of building!

Layers of Wood Make an Impression

2009-04-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

At the left is the newel post of my latest dollhouse. I turned the ball portion of the post on my miniature, Dremel lathe. Once I had turned the piece, then I used my Dremel tool to rout out the side of the post near the base.

Next, I took a 3/32" piece of walnut and rounded the edges of the wood using the Dremel tool again. Once I made the half-round edge, I ran it through my miniature table saw to cut the molding that protrudes just above and below the flowers on the post. I had to carefully miter these pieces to fit the post. (I cut this wood extra long so I had plenty of wood in case I made any erroneous cuts, and I did make a few bad cuts.)

Last, I took out my trusty jeweler's saw and cut out three very tiny flower appliques from 1/16" walnut. I then used my carving knives, rifler files and emery board to add the detail to the center of the flower and the flower petals. Then I glued the appliques to the post.

The finish started with some clear stain applied to the post to bring out the wood's natural color. I finished it off with several coats of Deft spray varnish, rubbed down with 4 ought steel wool between coats of varnish.

Whimsy in a Box

2009-04-18T15:47:00.000-07:00

This jack-in-the-box is in the baby's room of Pam's dollhouse.

I made this piece a number of years ago. The teddy bear in the box is made of Fimo. The box itself is cherry wood that I cut on my old Dremel table saw (which I wore out completely over the years).

The B on the front of the box and the raised wood on the edges surrounding the B help to give it an old-fashioned building block appearance. (I used my jeweler's saw to cut out the B on the front.)

I used watercolor paint to paint the toy horse on the side of the cube. There's a picture on the top, too, although, where it sits in the dollhouse, no one ever sees it. I added wood stain over the top of the watercolor painting, which gave the piece a somewhat aged appearance.

I mounted the bear on a toothpick and then inserted the toothpick onto a ballpoint pen spring. So, if anyone ever picks up the toy, the bear wobbles inside just like it would in a real jack-in-the-box. However, I didn't make it so that the bear pops up out of the box. The lid is permanently ajar.

(By the way, if you click on the photo, I think you can get a much closer/larger view of the box. This Web site works that way on my PC, at least.)

Building Exact Replicas

2009-04-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

This is a replica of the secretary desk my grandmother purchased from a second-hand store in Kansas City back in the 1920's. It's solid cherry wood, and it's cut out exactly to the dimensions and details of the old desk.

In fact, the flip-down writing desk has some ink stains on the original where someone dripped ink down the side of a bottle of ink - probably when they were filling a fountain pen. I duplicated that ink stain as well using a brush and some india ink. I didn't stuff the little drawer full of pens, however. (Whenever I needed a pen or pencil, I went to that top, right-hand drawer to get one.) Going to that extreme with the realism was just too much work for no visible reward!

I couldn't have made this replica without the use of the scale I described in my first blog. For those of you who didn't read that one, I've taken some pictures to show how this works. You can see in the first picture I'm measuring a tiny drawer from another full-size object.
Next, I take that measurement over to the 1" to 1' conversion scale and set the ruler down onto the scale.

Finally, I turn the ruler sideways on the conversion scale (see photo below) and then measure up to the mark I made on the scale. I now have a precise measurement of the drawer in 1/12th inch scale.

I created the conversion scale using PowerPoint and printed it out on a legal size piece of paper. If you'd like me to send you that file, please post a comment and let me know. I'm happy to share it. Thanks!

Waiting for a Home...

2009-04-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

I saw this fireplace in a home decorating magazine and it looked so tasty, I just had to try to build it! Our club had recently learned how to make faux marble; so I used those techniques to paint the wood.

The hardest part of making this fireplace was to do the turnings on each side of the firebox. They still aren't quite perfect, but I'm not going to go back and do it again at this point.

On either side of the round inset near the top, there's a leaf pattern carved into the "marble." I used my jeweler's saw and simply cut out the effect and then when I painted it, I allowed the paint to settle down into the hole cut by the saw. That was probably the easiest part of making the whole piece!

Soon, very soon, this fireplace surround will find a home in front of a pretty, painted yellow wall with a window beside it and a view of the Collegiate Peaks in the distance. But I first need to finish the dollhouse and the barbershop!

Tiny and Very Messy Workshop

2009-04-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have visual proof that it's time for me to slow down, and spend a complete weekend cleaning up and reorganizing my workshop. There isn't a single surface that isn't currently cluttered! For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, here are two different views of my tiny workshop. It would make a very small bedroom, if I cleaned everything out of the room.

The top photo shows the cabinet I built to sit on top of my workbench. The bottom two drawers have small paint bottles in them. The area overhead holds all my miniature wood and various types of moldings. I used cardboard tubes from wrapping paper to create small, long containers to hold the various pieces of molding.

In the lower photo, you can see the start of a new room box sitting on my workbench with a picture frame on top of it. Michaels had a sale on them; so I bought one I liked for the antique barbershop I'm building.

S-c-r-o-o-g-e!!

2009-04-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

I thought you all might enjoy seeing a complete view of one of the roomboxes I've built. This is the Scrooge! roombox I built a number of years ago. It won a blue ribbon and best of show at the Iowa State Fair. I did my best to incorporate everything Dickens described in Ebenezer Scrooge's bedroom, including the barely burning coals in his fireplace.

I also let my imagination spin free with adding details I think would have been a part of Scrooge's room, such as cracks in the walls, a broken window with a rag stuffed in it, a broken chair leg propped up with books and a board, a hole in the ceiling and items with IOU tags attached to them throughout the room.

This project started with my building the fancy bed and wondering, "Now, what do I do with this?" The bed had a fancy coverlet on it. Once I realized it had to be Ebenezer's bed, I took the coverlet off, created a sagging mattress and stained the sheets with tea bags. I left the bed unmade. That's how I imagined Scrooge would live. He never would have taken the time to fuss with making a bed - a useless expenditure of energy!

I drew the image of Marley's ghost, then had it photographically etched into a piece of glass that now fills the doorway. The ghost "glows" because I placed a light that shines down on the edge of the glass. I also drew the fireplace tiles and stitched the fireplace screen. I carved Scrooge from a 2x4 piece of pine, and created all of the furniture in the room. (My Web browser allows me to click on the top image and view it in much greater detail. I encourage you to try that, since the quality and details are so much better when it's larger!)

Knot That Easy

2009-04-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

"What," you say, "are these pictures!?!?" Well, it's the bedspread for the master bedroom. I thought I'd share the project with you in stages. I'm hopeful the entire piece turns out well in the long run! Because the room is already quite colorful, I chose off-white for the bedspread so that it doesn't conflict with the other colors.

I'm not the most precise person with hand sewing; so, I used graph paper to guide my work in inserting French knots into the top of the bedspread. Then, I transferred this grid to a thin layer of wood. I drilled holes into the wood, and then laid a couple layers of felt under this cloth. By drawing the fabric down tight in between the holes through the wood, I was able to create the above quilted appearance. (Once I had completed the bedspread, the wood backing looked very similar to the graph paper in terms of seeing long stitches stretching between the tufts/French knots.)

Next step is to add lace to the sides and to glue things down so that the bedspread conforms to the mattress (a block of balsa wood). I already have the headboard and foot board assembled.

Making It Look Real

2009-04-03T15:58:00.001-07:00

This is the attic of Pam's dollhouse. It was made out of Gatorfoam; so the wood beams you see in the attic were not part of the construction of the house. I added them to create a "real" look to the attic.

Most wood in attics isn't smooth and nicely finished. It was really rather fun to do this part, since I merely had to run some boards through my table saw, and then could glue them up immediately onto the ceiling of the attic. Once the boards were in place, then I added the beams. I waited until I had all of the wood in place before I painted.

I wanted to make this look like an artist's garret. It's a bit on the rough side - perhaps like the character who does his painting and thinking up there...

We purchased the stove in Frankemuth, MI and the fold-up cot from Norm's Dollhouse in the Denver, CO area. The rocking chair was a gift my folks picked up on a visit to China.

You may have noticed the door to the room is slightly ajar. It leads nowhere. That back wall sits against the wall, since this dollhouse is only one-room deep. I designed the house to sit on a shelf on the wall.

Adding a Ghost to Your House

2009-04-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

She's there. Unfortunately, she looks like a blur in the right-hand window of Pam's dollhouse. She's a proper Victorian lady standing sideways by the window.

When children visit, it's fun to challenge them to see if they can see the ghost. They usually find her after a little looking.

Since you're reading this blog, you obviously have access to a computer. If you have a colored printer and some overhead film compatible with your type of printer, (available at your nearest office supply store) you can create your own ghost! Here's how:

Find a picture of a person that you like. It should be one that has a white background behind the individual and no added details. If you have software on your PC that allows you to crop out the background so that only your subject remains, use that to isolate your "ghost."
Next, crop the picture so that it's in the same dimensions (roughly) as what you'll need for your window. Then save your ghost's picture in a place you can find easily such as your desktop or your miniatures file.
Open a Microsoft Word document or a PowerPoint presentation - either works for this. Or if you have the fancy photo software I mentioned above, you probably can make this effect without having to use Word or PowerPoint.
In the MS Word or PPT, click on view and select toolbars and make sure the drawing toolbar is activated.
Draw a rectangle that's the same size of your window where you want to insert your ghost.
Next, right click on this rectangle and select "Format Auto Shape."
Select the tab marked "Colors and Lines."
You will see three sections in this dialogue box: Fill, Lines, Arrows. In the "Fill" area click on the down arrow for color. You'll see many different colors, and near the bottom of this drop-down box, you'll see text that says, "Fill effects..." Click on it.
You'll now see a new dialogue box with four tabs. Select the one marked "Picture."
Click on the box that says, "Select Picture."
Navigate to your ghost's picture and double click it. This should insert your picture into the box you have drawn. Then click OK in the dialogue box.
You will have returned to the original dialogue box and you should see your picture in the box where you would ordinarily see a color. It will be badly distorted at this point, but don't worry about that.
Underneath this box you'll see a slider bar and the word "Transparency." Simply slide the bar to the right until your picture becomes ghost-like.
Since you'll use up a transparency page whether you print one photo or many, I suggest you copy the boxed picture and paste it several times onto the page, and then adjust the level of transparency to several percentages (10%, 15%, 20% and 25%) would be a good start. Then print the transparency.
All you have to do is take your scissors, trim the ghost out of the transparency film and glue her to frame of the window (or just set her into the window). Voila! Your dollhouse is now a haunted mansion!

Tools I Use to Cut Miters for My Miniatures

2009-03-30T18:48:00.001-07:00

There are a number of good ways to cut miters. I use three different tools to cut mine. Each has its advantages.

The first, and simplest way to cut them is to use a miter shear called the Miter Master available from Micro-Mark. This scissors-like shear is extremely sharp and cuts a very precise 45 degree angle in moldings.

Micro-Mark says this tool can cut wood up to 1/2 inch thick by 1-1/2 inches wide. I would never try to cut anything that thick with this shear, but cutting a flat piece of molding? It's awesome!

The next tool I have used extensively in dollhouse miniature making is a miter hand saw. I use the Dobson Miter-Rite from Micro-Mark. With its well-designed, two-screw locking system, you can secure the saw very precisely to the angle you need to cut your wood.

The 45 degree angle marked on the plastic arc on the top is "fairly" accurate, but if you're a perfectionist, don't trust it. You'll want to use a plastic 45 degree angle ruler to set the saw accurately. The stable sleeve that holds the saw blade ensures you will make a virtually straight vertical cut in whatever piece you're mitering.

Finally, my tool of choice for cutting thicker pieces (such as the dentil molding around the ceiling in yesterday's blog), is my modeler's table saw (also purchased from Micro-Mark). It can cut up to an inch thick piece of wood. Again, to get a precise 45 degree angle quickly, use a plastic triangle between the miter gauge and the saw blade to get your angle. (Be sure the saw is turned off before doing this, however!)

Since my workshop is so small, I have my dollhouse on display in my living room, but my workshop is downstairs. So, I frequently get a workout running up and down the stairs to cut wood on my table saw. That's why I've become more comfortable using the Miter Master shear - it's so easy to measure, cut and glue molding - especially window trim. If we had small children in our house, though, I would be very careful in where I left this tool. I shudder to think about how badly a child could get cut on it. (Of course, they could get hurt with my table saw, too, but I can lock my workshop when I'm not in it.)

My thanks to Micro-Mark for permission to use their photographs in today's blog.

Finishing a Ceiling

2009-03-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share briefly about finishing ceilings. This is the dining room of my latest house. I used a combination of things to do it. The ceiling itself is acid-free matte board. (I use acid free materials whenever I can in my work, since I want my grandchildren and maybe even great grandchildren to be able to enjoy my miniatures long after I'm gone.)

With wooden dollhouses, I think matte board is really the easiest way to finish off ceilings. A small piece of molding around the edge helps to hide any imperfections as well as to help hold the matte board in place.

Even though I thought my walls were perfectly straight and all corners were 90 degrees, I checked to make sure using a right angle square. If any corner was not precisely 90 degrees, I would have had to adjust the angle of my miter cuts for that corner. In cases where my ceiling has a cut-out or extends into a smaller nook area, I create a paper model of the ceiling before I ever cut out the matte board. (Saves making mistakes in cutting.) Be SURE you mark which side is up so that when you place the model onto your matte board to draw lines, you have the proper side selected!

I purchased the sconce above the chandelier as well as the ogee and dentil moldings around the edges of the ceiling. (I've tried making my own dentil molding. It's a pain.) However, I did make the octagonal molding that floats around the chandelier sconce. To do that, I cut out straight pieces of wood approximately 1/4" wide and then I used a compass to draw quarter inch wide arcs on the same kind of wood as the straight pieces were cut from. I then cut out the arcs with my table jigsaw.

Next, I used my Dremel tool and one of the Dremel router bits to create the indented and rounded effects of this piece. I routed both edges of each piece. I then used an emery board to smooth out the top of the rounded "bead" to remove any imperfections.

Next, I set my table saw miter gauge at 22.5 degrees. I cut the straight pieces in appropriate lengths so that I had two sets of equal length straight pieces. Then I cut out an arc that filled in the remaining portion of the inner curve of the routed pieces and created a right angle. Holding the curved piece against the arc, I was then able to cut the 22.5 degree angles into the curved sections. The last step of creating this molding was to carefully measure where I wanted the molding to go on the ceiling.

I should mention that I worked on the ceiling outside of the dollhouse. I cut the matte board slightly narrower (about 1/16th inch) than the length and width of the room, so it would go in easily. I then centered the sconce in the middle and glued it into place. With the ceiling flat on the workbench in front of me it was fairly easy to measure and piece together the molding pieces described above. Next I glued the matte board into place. I used a few pieces of thin wood that were about 1/16" taller than the floor to matte board ceiling. I bent these and set them in various spots around the room to help hold the matte board in place while the glue set and dried. (I used at least six boards to hold up the ceiling.) Once the ceiling was firmly in place, I glued in the ogee/dentil moldings.

By the way, I use a capenter's ruler to get precise inside dimensions for the molding. I find it a very helpful tool. Most any hardware that sells tools also sells these rulers. They are eight inches long when folded up. The segments can be twisted 180 degrees to extend out, making the full length of the ruler six feet long when fully extended. Inset into the last piece of the ruler is a sliding brass rule that can be extended. You can insert the folded up ruler into a room, push out the brass extension and get a precise reading of how wide your room is.

It's crucial to get precise measures of the room so that you can cut your molding exactly. If your measurements are too wide, the molding won't fit in the room. If it's too narrow, you'll have ugly gaps in the corner(s) or molding that doesn't go all the way to the wall.

Thank You, Friends!

2009-03-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

I have received three blog awards from you, my friendly readers. Thanks to De at De~lightful Minis (twice!) and to MiniMaker at Creating Dollhouse Miniatures for both of you thinking enough of my blog to recognize it.

I'd love to pass along the award, but I'm so green in the blogging arena, I haven't spent enough time snooping around to find a lot of blogs.

I must say, most of the sites I have found have been delightful, and I'm fascinated with what I find. As with all things, though, time is our greatest enemy. I have a full time job and enjoy a full time hobby; if I spend much time on the computer, I'm actually cheating myself on workshop time, and there's still so much to do! I'm working on a fancy, dressed Victorian bed right now, which I'll share with you one of these days soon.

So, to my fellow bloggers and new-found friends, thank you again!

Hand Laid Floors Add Beauty to a Room

2009-03-19T18:37:00.001-07:00

These photos illustrate two floors I hand laid for my latest dollhouse. For the floor on the left, I used my table saw to cut three different kinds of wood into small pieces. I used stops on the table top so that each piece would be exactly the same length.

I then took a piece of acid free drawing paper and drew out a grid pattern on it. The lines helped me keep everything in alignment. I dabbed some Weldbond Glue on the bottom of each piece of wood and when I set it down on the paper, I slid it around in a circle in the general area where it would go to even out the glue underneath the piece of wood. Then I pushed it into place and held it momentarily until the glue began to set. I found that I got a more precise pattern if I pushed fairly hard to hold the piece in place. If any extra glue emerged around the sides onto the paper, I immediately scraped it off with a wooden toothpick. If it oozed out from between the pieces of wood, I used a damp tissue to wipe away the excess.

By the way, if you know someone who is diabetic and uses syringes, I've found they are terrific for applying glue - especially if the needles are cut down in length. (If you have small children anywhere around, though, I don't recommend this method.) You can remove the plunger, squeeze a modest amount of glue into the syringe and reinsert the plunger. Don't plan on reusing the syringe. I normally can't reload and do multiple loads of glue in a syringe. The syringe allowed me to squeeze much more precise amounts of glue onto each piece of flooring so that I had far less excess glue to clean up.

Although I had to pay some attention to what I was doing, the process was one that I could do while watching TV. It took me about a week to complete each of these floors. Once they were all glued up, I then took my orbital sander and smoothed them down using some of the finer grades of paper. I finished them using clear stain to bring out the natural colors of the wood, and then I coated them with several coats of Deft varnish. I rubbed the varnish out with some 0000 steel wool and then coated the floors with wood wax. I then buffed down the waxed floor.

By the way, before I began each flooring project, I made a precise model of the room that I intended to floor. I trimmed about 1/16" of wood away from each edge, since I knew I would be adding wooden wainscoting and trim with miniature quarter-round, which would hide all edges of the floor. By cutting it a little shy of full width, it was easier to set the floor down into the room. You can use glue to hold the floor in place or if you think you might have to someday remove the floor to fix some wiring, you can always use double-sided carpet tape to hold it in place. I recommend gluing it down, though; especially if you live in a humid climate.

My First Project

2009-03-17T16:58:00.000-07:00

This was the first room box I ever created from scratch. My wife was a fourth grade teacher at the time, and my parents had given her a McGuffey's Eclectic Fourth Reader.

I decided to build a shadow box that held the reader in the top half of the box and created this old fashioned classroom for the lower half of the box.

At the grade school where I attended so many years ago, the walls were all painted with an industrial green paint, similar to what's here. And, yes, I sat in desks fastened in rows to 1 x 4 boards, just like these are in this tiny classroom. We even used the Big Chief tablets for writing in when I was a kid - just like this one I found at a miniature store.

Other than the tablet and the books on the desk, I made everything in the room as well as the cabinet that this is in. If you study the chair in detail, you'll notice that the three spindles in the middle are a bit mismatched. I didn't do that on purpose. It just happened.

I made all of the spindles for the chair using toothpicks for the wood. I "turned" the wood with needle files. Since I didn't have a lathe at that time, I would hold a needle file against the toothpick using my thumb to apply pressure and turned the toothpick around and around with my other hand until I got the approximate "turning" that I wanted. I used the triangular shaped needle files to create sharp lines and the round needle file or the half-round needle file to create more rounded grooves. Depending on where I placed the needle file helped determine how wide the gouge would be. I would then finish the turning with pieces of fine grit sandpaper.

The pencils in the pencil cup were two more toothpicks that I made ever so tiny using the same turning method and an emery board. The apple on the teacher's desk was a wooden bead.

If you look really closely, you'll notice another error I made in building the room. I didn't realize that the wood of my wainscoting would shrink over time. (I made this nearly 30 years ago.) Since it did shrink, there are gaps exposed between the pieces of wood I used for the wainscoting. I wish I had taken a dark felt pen and had colored the wall with a stripe about 1/8" wide behind the area where the wood came together. The shrinkage would have been far less visible as a result.

The truth is, I think most of our best learning occurs from our mistakes, and I made some with this project.

Looking Into The Shop Window

2009-03-16T16:22:00.002-07:00

I received a nice note from Brenda that concluded, "I would never dream of having the ability to do what you do..." That makes me feel a little sad when I hear that, because so many folks have the ability, if they have the right tools and/or the right resources. I've just been incredibly lucky in that regard.

Please know this: I got a D in wood shop in the 7th grade! Of course, I wouldn't mind showing that shop teacher a few of my pieces today...

A lot of the stuff I do requires patience, occasionally a steady hand, and a willingness to give new things a try. I'm hopeful that through this blog I can inspire others to try some new things in mini-making. There are always new skills and new approaches to learn. Sometimes the items I work on turn out wonderfully. Other times, well, let's just say the old shop teacher would have smiled and said, "See? I told you so!"

I often talk to myself when I'm working - sometimes out loud and frequently within my head. I coach myself as I go with statements such as: "Careful! Slow down. Steady.... Did you measure that right? Check it again! Looking good. Yes! That's the way to do it." I try to tune out the voice that says, "I could never do that..." Instead, I more often think, "I'd like to try that sometime..." It certainly leaves me with endless projects to do!

All of this said, please understand how much I appreciate your kind comments for this blog. Thank you, Brenda, and thank you also to the many others of you who have left such kind comments!

More Uses for Jeweler's Saws

2009-03-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

The sign "GOGANY" and the panels just below the roof line were all cut out using a jeweler's saw. The shop was a miniature club project. We were given the basic box with a front window and sidewalk and room for a front door. What we did with it from there was up to the individuals.

GOGANY stands for George's Oddities, Gimcracks, Antiques and Nicknacks of Yesteryear. In other words, a store full of odds and ends - a great way for me to include "stuff" I've collected or received over the years; although, it hardly made a dent in that collection! The rocking horse in the foreground was my Christmas gift to club members one year. I made a couple extras so that my children would also have one. For the life of me, I don't recall who made the doll. We bought her at a miniature show, and she's a gem!

You may notice that the letters for GOGANY may appear to be rounded on the edges. They are. Once I cut them out with the jeweler's saw, I used one other tool that I most frequently rely on with miniatures - an emery board. I use these tools to sand off any rough edges, smooth any bad cuts and in this case to finish off the letters making them nice and round! I sometimes cut the boards in half lengthwise (or even narrower) as needed to get inside tight areas for sanding purposes.

Another Example...

2009-03-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

Here's another example of a multi-layered piece. Again, I used cherry wood (my favorite for carving and furniture making). This piece was very challenging, due to the various angles, shapes and pieces of wood involved. The bonnet in the center posed some particularly difficult problems in how to piece together the top horizontal pieces of wood, which were routed, to the hand-sawn and carved bonnet piece in the center. The carved pieces on the corners (also cut out with the jeweler's saw and then shaped, carved and sanded) were much easier to fit into the scheme of the piece. (If you want to view the piece in larger size to see the detail, I think you can click on the photo.)

Where the Jeweler's Saw Shines

2009-03-12T17:07:00.000-07:00

This bookcase is one of my pride and joys. A number of years ago, my wife gave me a book titled Blackie and Sons The Victorian Cabinet Maker's Assistant. It was filled with what I thought were accurate scale drawings. Turns out, not quite.

I followed the drawings to a T only to discover that the top portion of this bookcase could never hold any books on the shelves - they were too short! The two months' worth of carving the side pieces for the top had to be done all over again, only taller. Aargh! Sometimes miniaturing is an exercise in patience!

Everywhere you see fancy filigree on this piece, I used a jeweler's saw to cut it out. The teeth on a jeweler's saw are so tiny on the smallest blades, you can't even see them. You can only feel them when you run your finger up the blade. The blade I currently have in my saw is .48 deep by .2 mm thick. In inches, that's .013" x .007". Tiny! You can drill a hole the size of a pin and thread the blade up through to do your cutting.

The disadvantage to using a jeweler's saw is the delicateness of the blade. If you don't keep the saw perfectly vertical as you saw or if you try to push too hard as you make a downward stroke, the blade snaps. If you're lucky, you may have snapped it at one of the extreme ends of the blade instead of in the middle, which means you can shorten the saw and keep using the same blade! (I LOVE that about the jeweler's saw!)

By the way, there are three layers of wood in the front drawer of this bookcase and on the sides, too. I cut out the outside of the carved design first from 1/32" cherry wood, then glued the piece to another equally thin piece of cherry wood. (I used clothes pins as my clamps to hold the piece in place while it dried.) Then I cut out the inside, giving me a depth of 1/16". Then I glued this piece to another 1/32" piece of wood. So, it's approximately one inch thick in scale.

Power Saw vs. Hand Saw

2009-03-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

When friends discover that I like making dollhouse miniatures, one of the first questions they ask me is, "What kind of tools do you use to do that?!" Depending on the object I'm showing them, I might answer, "A very small table saw," or "A table mounted jigsaw," or "A jeweler's saw."

The table saw is great for making straight cuts and cutting down regular wood stock into the more manageable pieces we most often need for making minis. At the left is a picture of the table saw I use.

The two add-on devices are a featherboard (the wooden device on the left near the front) and a micro-adjustable fence for my mini table saw. The featherboard helps me keep the wood against the fence, thus creating a much straighter cut. The fence allows me to make very tiny adjustments in the thickness of my cuts. When doing miniatures, even a thickness variation of only a few hundredths of an inch makes a difference in how something looks!

By the way, I have the pictured table saw attached to a board, and that board is clamped onto the top of, well, an even larger, 10" Dewalt portable table saw. (I use the big saw when I have some heavy-duty cutting to do.) I also have a power miter saw, but it sits in my garage most of the time, since I have a very tiny workshop. (It's slightly less than 10' x 9'. With workbenches along both of the longer walls and a short L at the end, you may have a sense of how tiny the workshop is!) One of these days I'll show you a picture of it. It's a total mess right now - not a scrap of available work space for anything!

The jigsaw is a terrific tool for cutting out larger shapes and stuff with curliques. When I have my table saw set up for a specific cut, and need to cut a piece of wood, and if precise right angles or width of the final cut are not a concern, I'll flip on the jigsaw and cut the piece.

The jigsaw is also a wonderful tool for cutting cabriolet legs. In an upcoming blog, I'll show you how to do that. They are a lot of fun to make, and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that.

For precision cutting, though, there is nothing like the jeweler's saw! In my next post, I'll show you a couple of items that I could not have made without the jeweler's saw! In many ways, it's my most favorite tool. The pieces I create with it frequently cause the most jaw-dropping responses from others who look at my work, and for me, that's the joy of crafting miniatures!

Creating Delicate Spindles

2009-03-10T16:32:00.000-07:00

I thoroughly regret that when my kids were little and my budget was tight that I still didn't buy a very special tool. It was a turning duplicator and lathe made by (I think) Anker Rasmussen. He was able to make some very delicate spindles using his duplicating jig.

In lieu of that, I found a way, when building my wife's dollhouse, to create some very delicate spindles for the front porch. I used florist wire and threaded tiny wooden beads onto the wire. Then I added glue to hold each bead exactly where I wanted it. Finally, a coat of paint, and it was ready for the next step.

I cut out the curved sections that hold the spindles using my jigsaw. I then drilled holes into this piece to insert the ends of the wire spindles. I also cut out a smaller curved section for the corners and drilled holes in those to hold the other end. Once it was glued up, we had a lovely set of one-of-a-kind spindles for the front porch!

You'll Never See This One at the State Fair...

2009-03-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

I would love to show this house at the Iowa State Fair, but it is too wide to qualify. I designed it back in the late 1970's, and had thought about marketing the design. Unfortunately, Greenleaf introduced a cheaper front-opening dollhouse about a year after I started working on this one.

The building itself is made out of Gatorfoam, which makes the house VERY light and easy to move. Instead of using nails, I used dowels that I sharpened on a pencil sharpener and then pushed them into the house in the places where fastening needed to occur. Ceilings were a breeze, since I left them all white, and the Gatorfoam comes in a pleasing white finish.

The main open area on the front is enclosed by two, sliding panes of glass. This significantly reduces the amount of dust that makes its way into the house. We have a Greenleaf house, too, which one of my daughters begged me to do for her. I never installed any cover to the front, and the dust is really a problem.

So, whether you buy a manufactured dollhouse or build your own, one simple piece of advice - ENCLOSE IT to keep the dust out. You'll appreciate this little piece of advice much more over time...

More of Grampa's Office

2009-03-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

Here's grampa's office. The scene through the door in the rear was a photograph of the actual office through the window in that door.

I made the old-fashioned comptometer on the desk, which was a painstaking process. I took a batch of pins, and cut them at precisely stairstepped lengths to create the keyboard. Then hand-filed the round faces of each pin head so they were flat. Then I painted them. I also made the manual typewriter, which is hidden in the background. I carved the hat (hanging on the halltree) from a piece of pine wood.

Sharing Memories

2009-03-06T16:36:00.000-08:00

When my younger daughter was in high school, she came up with the idea of recreating her grandfather's fruithouse in miniature. She found a wooden apple crate and asked me to work with her to turn it into grampa's office.

She did all the fruits and vegetables. She also painted the walls, which was a dry-brush effect we developed to simulate the compressed wood walls that covered the fruithouse walls.

I helped with the overall construction, built the hand cart and banana room cooler door. I "aged" the cart using the mixture of India ink and rubbing alcohol. I dabbed this mixture away in places that would have had high levels of rubbing. Where the dirt and grime would have settled, I let the mixture puddle a little extra.

Yes, You Can Use Your Computer for Rugs

2009-03-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

Casey from http://caseymini.blogspot.com/ sent me a note and asked if I have thought about using pictures printed from my computer to produce a rug. The answer was, "Yes!"

I took a digital picture of a southwestern rug and then transferred it into my PC. I then enhanced the picture for colors and all those wonderful things you can do with the photo editing software. Then I printed it out on photo paper.

Once I had printed it on photo paper, I then sprayed three coats of semi-gloss workable fixative, which I had picked up at Michaels. The fixative does two things - it seals the inks into the picture so that they won't smear. Two, the fixative I used adds protection against ultra violet rays, which are a key cause of colors fading in fabrics or in printed materials.

Once I took those protective steps, I then went back to the tried and true tissue paper and Deft process. I liked the rug well enough that I made them for all of the members of our miniature club for our gift exchange.

By the way, I DID try to print off a beautiful Victorian rug design onto cloth using the T-shirt transfer printing materials for inkjet printers. It didn't even begin to do justice to the depth of color and beauty of the carpet I saw on the Web. I even had contacted the rug merchant to request permission from him to recreate his carpet in miniature for my dollhouse bedroom. That whole effort was a bust, unfortunately!

Creating a Believable Persian Rug

2009-03-03T18:20:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I read somewhere about how to make a miniature Persian rug. The instructions said, "Start with a magazine page or advertisement of a Persian rug." I found a good photograph of one from a Southern Living magazine and used it for my Scrooge! roombox, pictured above.

It's simple to make the rug, actually. You'll need the picture, of course, plus a can of semi-gloss Deft spray varnish, one ply of a facial tissue, some grosgrain ribbon and a little bit of glue. Trim the photo to the exact dimensions of the carpet. Next, lay it down on a surface that can be heavily doused with Deft varnish. Spray it once to seal the picture. Let it dry.

Most facial tissues are two ply. If you tease it apart, you'll get a very thin piece of tissue paper. Most likely, it will have a bad crease through the middle. You'll need to steam iron it carefully to flatten the tissue.

Once your tissue is prepped, go back and heavily spray the Persian rug again with the Deft. Carefully lay the tissue down onto the rug and pat it gently into place. Do your utmost best to make sure any little wrinkles are smoothed out. Now spray it again until the entire surface is heavily soaked with the Deft. If any bubbles form beneath the tissue, use a pin to pop these out and make sure you see no white tissue that is standing up from the surface of the rug.

Let it dry. You'll now have a much softer tone quality to the picture of the carpet. Take a piece of grosgrain ribbon and cut it the length of the end of the carpet. Then trim the edge off one side of the entire length of the grosgrain ribbon and fray the ribbon by removing the threads. You'll now have a beautiful piece of fringe. (This technique works on draperies, too!) Glue the fringe to your rug, and you now have your Persian rug.

How to Strain Family Relations

2009-03-02T16:33:00.000-08:00

As part of the design of the current dollhouse I'm finishing, I decided to put a stained glass window above the front door on the second floor landing. I fiddled with various media, and then talked with my brother-in-law, Paul, who has done some beautiful stained glass windows.

Paul will be the first to tell you, "I'm a patient guy!" But his tongue is squarely in his cheek when he tells you this. Nevertheless, I had seen his meticulous work, and thought, "Let's go for it!" Being up for an occasional challenge, he thought so, too.

So, I designed the window at right. To give you an idea of the diminutive scale, though, the three red circles in the middle of the window are each about the size of a pencil eraser - less than a quarter inch in size.

Paul dutifully created the window for me, and as he handed it to me, his only comment was, "Don't EVER ask me to do another one for you!" He had multiple pieces of glass that he had ALMOST ground down to fit into these positions, only to have them shatter against the grinder or fly out of his grasp and shatter against the floor or wall.

It makes for a great story. Plus, it is a lovely, totally unique, very real, miniature stained glass window that our family will treasure for as long as we have the dollhouse.

Curtains and Lace

2009-03-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

I'm frustrated! It's such a hassle trying to find fine lace and cloth for the curtains and bedding in my new dollhouse. When I recently shopped for lace and cloth, the fabric store here disappointed me. When I did my last dollhouse's curtains and bed, I don't recall having this problem!

As you can see from the photo, I built a rather intricate pelmet for the study window. I don't want to install an out of scale fabric that detracts from the "reality" of the scene, but I may have no choice!

Weathering and Aging Miniatures

2009-02-26T16:58:00.000-08:00

Freshly built dollhouses or roomboxes often have one small flaw about them - they're too perfect. The average home has an assortment of furnishings - some new and some old. Some things are pristine and others are well used. For instance, I remember in my family's home the doorjamb to the study had little tiny pen marks on it where my mother had marked my height as I grew taller.

Adding a little of that "used" look to a scene can make it more homey and realistic. In this photo, you can see a very weathered front door. I intentionally aged it down low where the rain would most have been blown up against the door. (If you study doors on old houses, the lower portions seem to show the most wear.)

Here's how I "weathered" the door. I put some rubber cement on the bottom of the door first. Then I painted it. After the paint dried, I rubbed hard where the rubber cement had been, and the raw wood began to appear. I continued rubbing until all of the places that had the rubber cement on them were once again bare wood. As needed, I used a little sand paper to enhance some of the erosion in addition to this method.

To grey the wood, you can use Bug Juice, which some miniature stores carry. Or you can create a stain by taking old nails, soaking them in vinegar for a couple weeks and then painting the wood with that "enriched" vinegar. Another way to age or dirty-up wood is to take a small amount of india ink drip it into a baby food jar and then fill the rest of the jar with rubbing alcohol. You then can paint this alcohol-laced india ink onto the places where dirt would accumulate on doors or walls. If the first coat isn't dark enough, you can add progressive amounts.

Mix of Scratch Built, Kit and Purchased Items

2009-02-24T20:53:00.000-08:00

Not to belabor the point, but since this blog site only appears to allow only one picture per blog, I just had to share another photo to illustrate my point from the previous blog.

Here is a real mix - the sink and hutch were purchased. The stove was a kit. The baby chair and the table in the foreground were my own creations.

I made all the veggies on the work table using Fimo clay. Little details such as the kitchen witch over the sink make it feel "real."

Mini Decorating - Scratch Build, Use Kits or Buy Stuff?

2009-02-24T20:16:00.000-08:00

Personally, I don't care whether or not all the items in my roomboxes or dollhouses are one thing or another. I opt for what fits my needs. Sometimes that means purchased items. Other times, a kit is a simple and usually economical solution for satisfying a need. And at other times, I can't be satisfied unless I add my own personal touches with pieces I have created.

There are so many beautiful items that crafts people turn out. The problem is, if you have multiple rooms to fill and a small budget, then filling it with expensive pieces by all those craftsmen and women may simply be beyond your means. It doesn't mean you can't have a beautiful room.

The photo at right is a mixture of craftspersons' work, manufactured pieces, my own handiwork, and a couple of Hallmark ornaments. Ornaments?! Yes, ornaments. The dollhouse in the foreground was a Hallmark ornament as was the rocking horse on the left.

The tiny table was a gift from my parents. They picked it up on a trip to China. The dresser, rocker and baby crib were purchased. The jack-in-the-box on the dresser was my own creation of wood and Fimo. I also created the bookcase in the corner.

Some of the toys on the shelves and on the floor were created by members of our miniatures club for our gift Christmas gift exchange. This room, in essence was heavily "purchased," and yet if you were to look at another room in this dollhouse such as the bathroom, it is almost entirely made from a kit. Other rooms such as the parents' bedroom have even more handcrafted items my wife and I created such as scratch-built bed stands and a quilt on the bed.

The honest truth about this hobby is that if you stay in it long enough, you'll have more "things" than you have places to put them. It then becomes a challenge to search through your stuff to find just the right pieces to put into a room to give it that lived in look. To be totally honest, though, I would not be happy if I created a dollhouse or a roombox and did NOT have some items in it that I had created. That's what ultimately sets my room setting apart from all others, and I like that uniqueness.

Building a Barbershop from Scratch

2009-02-18T19:56:00.001-08:00

As I approach my sixth decade of life, I now realize that people who I knew as a young boy gave me a perspective on how their life was like now well over a hundred years ago. Such is the case with my old barber - Jack Merica.

He began barbering just before the turn of the 20th century, and gave me my first haircut sometime in 1949 or 50. He told me how in the early days the livery stable was across the street from his barbershop. That was a problem for the more refined ladies of Salida, Colorado, because lots of guys hung out at the barber shop AND at the livery stable.

Jack recalled with delight how the ladies couldn't split the difference by walking in the dirty street - it got their black shoes and long dresses muddy or dusty. So, they were forced to choose one side of the street or the other to walk on the wooden sidewalks. My! How they hated to walk down that block! So, they scurried by the barbershop as quickly as they could.

In those days, lots of guys shaved about once a week. They didn't do it themselves. They went to the barber and had him do it for them, and each customer had his own personal shaving mug and brush. Many of them were quite fancy.

I'm now working on building my own replica of an old fashioned barbershop that is based on a picture my barber had hanging in his shop, and I'm helping a few of my miniature club friends build similar models for themselves. (The picture above is the rough layout I put together in PowerPoint, which I often use for doing up my working sketches of projects.)

So far, we all have empty roomboxes. (We painted them both on the inside and outside last month to reduce potential warping.)

Now, we'll start on the inside.

I used my table saw to cut miniature 4 x 4's for the wall that will have the front door and windows. I prefer to build a stud wall, just like the real thing rather than to use solid plywood or fiberboard. It's lightweight, but sturdy. I also discovered in the building of a previous roombox that it's better to use 4 x 4's than to try to build with miniature 2 x 4's. The top surface of a 1/12th scale 2 x 4 is not very big - about 1/8" x 9/32". (Keep in mind that real 2 x 4's are actually 1 1/2" by 3 1/2" in dimension - not 2 x 4. Such delicate pieces aren't quite as sturdy as I like as a result. So, I have gone to miniature 4 x 4's.

I quickly discovered as I worked on cutting regular 1" pine lumber down into roughly 9/32" square pieces that I needed a couple of tools to make the work safer. (Even miniature table saws are extremely dangerous tools and can damage fingers and eyes in a heartbeat!)

I used a featherboard, which was made for miniature table saws. It holds the pieces of wood tight against the fence, and helped keep the wood from kicking back at me. I also made myself a very think pusher stick out of a paint stirring stick. The stick kept my fingers safely away from any spinning blades.

This Saturday, we'll glue up the walls for the barbershop and will cut matte board to fit the various walls. Next, we'll wallpaper each piece of matteboard allowing the paper to wrap around the edges of the matteboard. Then, we'll glue the matteboard to the framework.

As this project emerges, I'll share pictures of it on this site.

Tools for Doing Miniatures

2009-02-13T21:01:00.001-08:00

People often ask me, "What tools do you need to create miniatures?" The answer is: many of the same kinds of tools you need to do large-scale woodworking, only smaller.

I have a miniature table saw that I purchased from MicroMark. Prior to that, I wore out a Dremel table saw. It's one of the tools I use time and time again.

Another power tool I often use is my Dremel tool. I use a variety of bits with it to shape and create various edges on wood that I have trimmed and for roughing out items when I carve them. It can be inserted into a drill press or inverted and set up as a miniature "router table." It, too, is invaluable to me in this creative work.

The next most important tools for me have been my jeweler's saw and miniature drill. The miniature drill allows me to put holes into very thin pieces of wood. (I sometimes will cut pieces of wood that are 1/32 in thickness.) I can drill a pin-sized hole, and then insert my jeweler's saw blade through that hole. I can then carefully cut very intricate scroll saw patterns into the wood.

This step takes a steady hand, good eyes (or a good magnifying glass), and patience. You can't cut fast with a jeweler's saw. You must keep your fingers very close to the blade to hold the wood down so that the delicate pieces don't break with your upward strokes. (The downward strokes normally cut the wood, but upward strokes sometimes catch the wood and snap it off.

You'll also need a "bird's beek" to hold the wood you're cutting. This is a solid piece of plywood that is normally 1/4" thick or thicker. It is the platform you set your wood on to cut. This piece of wood has to be large enough to hold your piece of wood and still have an inch or two to fasten down onto the edge of your counter top, table or workbench.

The "bird's beek" is a narrow V that you cut out of this piece of plywood. You must center the saw blade close to the narrow end of the V so that very little of the wood you're cutting is exposed. This reduces the strain on the wood that usually causes it to snap.

Other critical tools include:

emory board fingernail files - they are an incredibly handy sanding tool
needle files
good woodworking and/or craft glue
a quality, steel ruler
a right-angle ruler - I have them in miniature, but I often still use my full-scale adjustable right-angle ruler
a good quality miniature saw - Exacto makes a good one.
a miter box - I have one that is small and plastic that I got from Micro Mark. Again, it's been incredibly handy for doing picture frames and other mitered projects

The above photograph is the study (still a work in progress) in the latest dollhouse that I'm building.

Tall Guy Doing Small Things

2009-02-12T07:28:00.001-08:00

I love to think big when creating miniatures. I enjoy challenging myself with creating a piece where people say, "How did you DO that?!"

Doing miniatures doesn't require fantastic woodworking skills. (After all, I got a D in woodshop in junior high.) It requires patience and a willingness to try more than once to get it right.

One of the critical miniature woodworker skills is to realize that wood joinery is not as complicated as full-scale woodworking. For instance, miniatures wood joints could never hold up in a full-scale piece. That's because the "real" furniture has to hold up under our weight or under the weight of many objects (like a bookshelf). Miniatures rarely hold any weighty objects.

Understanding scale and making SURE your miniature is truly in scale makes the difference between the model looking "real" and looking like a child's toy. Me? I prefer to make it look real. (The Thorne Rooms at the Chicago Museum of Art are the standard of excellence to which I aspire.)

How to Create Accurate Replicas
You can create a scale to measure any piece of furniture (or other fullsize object) and know instantly EXACTLY what that item's dimensions should be in 1/12th scale. Draw a vertical 1" line near the left-hand side of a piece of paper that is at least one foot wide. Now, set your ruler at a right angle to that 1" line and draw a horizontal 12-inch line that meets at the bottom of the 1" line, creating a right angle. Next, draw a diagonal line to create a triangle.

Here's how to use this tool you have just created. You can measure anything that is a foot or smaller, then take your ruler and set it along the 12-inch base of your triangle. Now find the measure of your object on the rule. Set a sharp pencil at that point on the scale and then draw a vertical line up to the hypoteneuse of the triangle. You can now measure this new line you have drawn. It will be exactly 1/12th the size of your object!

I used this methodology to create an exact replica of a small writing desk that has been in the family for years. That desk is pictured above in the background on the right-hand side of the photo.