Finishing sheet flooring: When using a wax to finish the wood flooring that comes on a sheet backing, I use steel wool (#0000) to apply the wax. It sands as it finishes, no pre-sanding needed. I use Bri-Wax which can be purchased at most woodworking stores or from their catalogs. Bri-Wax comes in clear and 3 stain colors, so you can sand, stain and finish in one step by applying with steel wool, then wipe with a paper towel (this buffs it to a satin shine). It also doesn't show any overlapping. It comes in a Simonize type can and a very little amount on the steel wool goes a long way. Keep in the fridge when not using and apply while still cold. I would suppose similar brands would work the same. Its amazing what a smooth and beautiful finish you get. People will think you labored for hours when it took only a matter of minutes.

Mary Kay Gentile Ft. Myers, FL

Board Materials: Matte Board is a heavy card stock used to mat pictures. It is not meant to be painted or glued. Illustration board is a heavy card stock that is meant to be used for posters, signs or graphics and is meant to have paint, ink or glue on it. Foam core is two pieces of lighter card stock with a layer of foam between them. It can be painted but will warp easily. Gator board is a plaster type board with a fine foam between them and it used by museums and graphic artists for signs etc. It is meant to be painted, inked or glued so it will not warp easily. Obviously, illustration board and Gator board are best for building. Illustration board comes in two thickness’ and so does Gator board. The late Gail Vaughan used foam core which is cheaper than Gator board when she made a wall that was meant to look like adobe type building because she covered it with a layer of joint compound which strengthened it.

June in London Ontario Canada

Wainscotting: I use the coffee stirrers to make wainscotting. I cut cardstock to the height and length I want the wainscotting. I then glue on the sticks vertically across the cardstock with a white tacky glue. When completely dry, I cut the extra wood off using the cardstock backing as my guide. I paint both sides (or stain) and then glue to the wall. Painting both sides will prevent warping.

Mary Kay Gentile

Siding: My husband makes my siding and flooring by taking 3/4" pine and slicing it really thin on his big circular saw. We also made shingles from the strips by cutting them into squares and trimming the edges to make fancy shapes. It works quite well and I would recommend coating both sides with shellac to keep moisture from getting in so that it doesn't warp.

Barbara Del Duco

Splintery Luan Plywood: Try spackling the pieces. When I made my house I used spackle to fill in all the bad parts in the wood. You can buy it in the hardware store in a plastic tub. Use a palette knife of spackling tool to spread it on the wood. Let dry. Then sand. (Preferably outdoors with a mask.) This is done after the shellac is put on but before you put the pieces together. (If you want to do this step.) I found it a lot of work but really worth it in the long run. The wood is so much improved. It makes the dollhouse look really nice. Some people use wood filler or water-based wood putty. It is a personal preference. I like the spackle. It lasts and it is easy to put on. Like icing a cake. I did almost every piece of wood in my DuraCraft house that is made of the luan plywood.

Barbara Del Duco

Log Houses: Here in Canada, Manitoba to be more precise, a lot of our log cabins were built by Scandinavians. They used a substance called "bunkum" for insulation between the logs. It looks like horsehair, or the hair on coconuts, and comes in long, thick ropes wound in coils. It is the exact colour of peat moss. As the owner of a log cottage built on the lake in 1922, I was looking for some authentic bunkum and found it at a boat builder’s. They import it from Scandinavia; it has a distinctive, pleasant, rather tarry odor.

Jill Brooks

Log cabin logs: I've been planning to build a log cabin from scratch for my first dollhouse. I got books on real log cabin design and construction; it's amazing how many different techniques there are to build a cabin. You can use the logs vertically (called 'palisade') or horizontally--or use both together. You can peel the logs or leave the bark on--but the bark encourages bugs and the cabin won't last as long. And there are several ways to notch the logs, and endless ways to chink them (my favorite look is 'chinkless').

The books recommend using 12"-14" diameter logs--that would be 1" to about 1-1/8" sticks or dowels in 1" scale. To figure out how many logs you need, measure the length and height of each wall you're building. If you're using 1" diameter logs, you'll need as many logs as the height of the wall in inches, and each log should be the length of the wall, plus any bit of log you want sticking out at the corners.

So for an 8" high, 20" long wall where you want 1" of log sticking out at each corner, you would need 8 logs (one for each inch of height), each 22" long (20" for the wall, plus two 1" sickouts for the corners). So a four-wall cabin 20" by 30" with 8" walls would need sixteen 22" logs and sixteen 32" logs, plus the shorter logs that form the pointy section of wall supporting the roof peak (is that called a gable wall?)

I've been considering using dowels [because 1) I haven't found any trees available to me with enough of the right size branches, and 2) I don't really want to peel 800+ inches of branches]. But dowels are awfully smooth and milled-looking, so I've been coming up with ideas for making them look like hand-peeled logs. I haven't experimented yet, but will let you know my results when I get that far. I'm thinking of using dowels in a range of diameters--maybe from 7/8" to 1-1/8". I'll stain each dowel brown, then figure out how to scrape off bits along each one, to make it look peeled. (Hand carve them with an exacto? Maybe line up all the dowels together and hit them here and there with a sander? Have to contain the dowels some way so they wouldn't go flying around the room.) Then stain the new bare spots with a yellowish color to look like inner wood. (Stain colors would depend on what kind of tree you're representing.) I suppose I'll have to stain the notches after I cut them, too.

Lee Menconi

If you use OAK dowels and stain them, the graining shows through very nicely. This looks very realistic. Don't know how to simulate the bark.

Marlene

Glass bricks: You might be able to make an illusion of glass block using plastic canvas with the threads removed to make the size block you want and adding some clear silicone in the spaces. The canvas should be flat on a sheet of wax paper. When dry, you could pull it off. I have never tried it, but, I think it might work.

Mary

Glass bricks: I have seen the smaller pieces of clear Lego used and didn't realize it as Lego. Looked pretty cool in fact. Also, Hobby Builders Supply out of Ontario makes sheets of clear plastic in grids of various sizes. They have various sizes of squares on these You could water down Tacky glue and paint that on the back of one of these to give it that opaque look and the front would still remain shiny. That could work.

Debi

Ripping Lumber: Here are some safety rules associated with this practice.

First, and most important, NEVER put your hand beyond the center of the blade. If the strip kicks back it can push an unsuspecting finger into danger. ALWAYS use a push stick when cutting thin strips.

Lower the blade so that it is no more than 1/16 inch above the work. Learn to rip pushing with your right hand only. You are less likely to twist the wood with your left hand causing binding and kick back.

After you turn the saw off make sure the blade has come to a complete stop before reaching toward the blade to pick up your work or remove scrap.

Pete

Logs: For 5/8 half round logs, try contacting a dealer who carries Celerity House dollhouses. Celerity is back is business again with new owners and they manufacture that type of log (or at least it looks that way)...but be forewarned they're pretty pricey.

I've just finished building a RGT Adirondack cabin and used their logs for the interior and exterior and found it to be a very enjoyable product.

Kathy

Logs: For your 5/8" half logs, find someone with a table saw and have them slice the appropriate sized dowels in half. If you are careful it can be done pretty easily. Attach the dowel to the edge of a scrap length of 1" x 2" or what ever flat stuff you have with masking tape in several places. This way when you slide the dowel / scrapwood across your table and into the blade, the dowel won't turn and rotate and give you a crooked cut. Remember you will lose a thickness of your dowel equal to the thickness of your table saw blade, so you may want to buy dowels slightly larger in diameter than you want the finished width to be. Hope you can understand my computer drawing below:

saw table/wood/dowel -blade slices only center of dowel, NOT scrapwood
-(blade here)
_________lllllllllO__________

Bonnie Gibson

Molding for a log cabin: First of all, don't let ANYBODY at a lumberyard treat you any differently than they would some guy walking in there. Remember that some "guys" don't know which wrench to use to pound the screw into the board.

Second, 5/8" molding may be an odd size. Look for companies that specialize in molding in the yellow pages. They do make dowels in 5/8" size, but if worse comes to worse, use 3/4" and fake it. Remember that a 3/4" log would be 9 inches in the 'real' world, and that's about right for a log.

You could also use screen molding, which is about the same 3/4 width, with slightly rounded edges. I have a book on hewn-log cabins that shows almost exclusively that the logs used were square, and a lot of those cabins were in Kentucky, Tennessee, and thereabouts.

Karen Isaacson

Half round logs: Try the half round molding and you will find it comes in many sizes. Look in your local Home Depot or the equivalent.

Charlean

Damaged MDF: MDF fibres tend to absorb moisture (from acrylic paint or gesso) and swell. So you probably won't end up with as smooth a surface as you started with, especially if you have sanded the MDF - as this will take the flat shiny surface off. However you ought to be able to compensate for this by using some sort non water based filler to even up your surface. I use the modeling putties used by plastic/metal kit modelers. Fill/rebuild any damaged areas, let dry then sand smooth. You may need to repeat fill if you are trying to fill a deep gap like where you slipped with a saw because the putty will shrink a little.

I have used several brands: Tamiya Modeling Putty (from Japan), Humbrol filler (From UK), Squadron filler (from USA)

These all come in a tube like toothpaste. The first two were grey - good for filling metal models but may show thru on lighter surfaces. But by far my favourite is the Squadron in comes in white & green - I use the white for filling MDF and styrene. I haven't used the green but I figure it would be good for colour control especially over/under red paint (just like the green tinted concealer makeup for hiding veins & blotchy skin).

I wouldn't go sniffing the stuff tho - it contains toluene and has very interesting warning labels on the tube.

Sandra

Warped roof: I have done some restoration work in the past, this method worked for me. Provided the warp isn't to extreme. Try nailing the roof down to a truly flat surface, so that it is once again "square". If you have a steam iron with a heavy steam output you can apply the steam to the roof. You will want to make sure you really saturate the wood of the roof (you will have to remove any paint or shingles first) with the steam. Leave it nailed down for at least a week or more. You could reapply the steam during that time to help reshape the roof. If you don't have an iron with a good output you could try renting a wallpaper steamer. I had good results using one.

Lloyd Cooper

Lincoln Logs (for Log Cabins): I was in the Toys R Us store this AM and they have oodles of Lincoln Logs in sets for all sizes of buildings.

Elise

TIP using fluid to mask off wood to get marquetry effects

This is American stuff named 'Incredible White Mask', also known as 'Liquid frisket'. It is a form of liquid or white mask (generic terms). Any art supply shop would carry this. It has a shelf life of

3 months and will change composition if it sits in the sun or freezes. It comes in a small container, the size of nail polish.

Deborah wanted me to veneer a table for her with a fancy cardinal points doodad on it. I said I wasn't competent enough to do it. But like a true miniaturist, she knew what she wanted, and had her moment of mini magic. She drew a circle in the middle of the table, masked off the rest of the table with 'Incredible White Mask' (IWM) and inked in the cardinal points symbol. Once dried, she took off the IWM, and IWM'd the symbol, staining the rest of the table. When she removed the IWM from the middle, it had absorbed some of the ink she had used to color the symbol, but this gave it a pleasant weathered look.

The thing that fascinated me was that there was no 'bleeding', of either ink or stain, to the other parts. Therefore one could make a backgammon table, make marquetry patterns on furniture, a chess/checkers board, make a parquetry floor... I once tried to do a real parquetry mini floor with veneer. It looked good, but the cost in blood, sweat and tears doesn't bear the telling.

Helen

Foamcore: Comes in thicknesses from 1/16" to at least 1/2". It is easy to cut with a SHARP Exacto knife. Sheet sizes also vary from 20 by 30" to 4 x 8'.

However, I do not recommend using it for building dollshouses. It warps. It can bend. It's not all that strong. If you don't want to use a wood product, you might try Gator board for a small house. This product can also be cut with a sharp Exacto knife, but it is much stronger than Foamcore and does not warp. However, it will dent under pressure. Gator board is sold via art supply houses and frame shops and mini shops can get it from Dee's.

Beth