Category: Useful Tools
Rexbeti 6″ Digital Caliper
Recently my old 4″ digital caliper threw in the towel, flashing random numbers on screen, turning on and off for no obvious reason, etc. Time to go shopping for a new caliper! One feature I’ve wanted for some time is a thumb roller adjustment wheel for more precise adjustments. I went with the Rexbeti 6″ […]
Proxxon Hot Wire MDF Fence Kit
My Proxxon hot wire foam cutter is one of my favorite tools for making perfectly square cuts in extruded foam, or XPS. A much talked about shortcoming of the Proxxon is its miter fence. I find it has a bit too much play in it when cutting larger pieces of foam. I’ve seen a few […]
DIY Sanding Boards | 3M Super 77 XPS Foam
We started out with a simple DIY sanding board video and once we got to the 3M Super 77 adhesive, we had to keep going and make a little diorama out of XPS foam! I’ve been using this simple idea for a perfectly flat sanding board for years and thought I’d make a few new […]
Mod Podge Hard Coat | XPS Foam
I often put together small little scenes for our own Raildig products on Extruded Polystyrene Foam, or XPS. It’s terrific stuff to work with but it dents and dings easily. I wanted a way to avoid this and while I could put together little fascias from sheet styrene, I wanted to see if I could […]
Basic Airbrushes Video
For the longest time I resisted airbrushes just because I thought they were too complicated for my needs, that is just adding single colors to my N & Z scale building kits. When I finally bought my Paasche H single action brush, I could have kicked myself for putting it off for so long! Sure, […]
Our First Solder Pot For Tinning Wires
A solder pot is one of those little tools I’ve been meaning to purchase to tin the wires we use in our Raildig products, but over time you get pretty fast with a flux pen and regular soldering iron, so I kept putting off this purchase. When we got a couple of new large orders […]
LED Light Modifier | Bad Bayou Halloween Style
It seems every year when I break out this Micro-Trains inspired N scale Halloween shadowbox, I can’t help myself, I have to fiddle with it just a bit! This year I’ve added some overhead lighting to brighten up our Bad Bayou toxic ponds. Not too bright, this is the Bad Bayou after all, but I’ve […]
Touch-N-Flow Solvent Applicator | Welding Styrene
I’ve been using the Touch-N-Flow applicator for years instead of small brushes to apply my solvents and it’s one of my favorite tools when working with styrene. This applicator, in tandem with MEK (Methyl Ethyl Ketone) used as a solvent, makes doing even the most intricate styrene work a heck of a lot easier. Building […]
OLFA Utility Snap-Off Knife | First Impressions
Once I started watching more videos on foam crafting, I began hearing about the OLFA utility knife model with the ratchet wheel. Over the years I’ve had a collection of utility knives but never really gave the quality or features of the knife a lot of thought, if it held a blade it was good […]
Raildig Scratchbuilder’s Calculator
Here’s a tool that can help you establish and maintain scale accuracy when scratchbuilding your next scale building, piece of rolling stock or pine tree. To show you how this calculator works, let’s say you wanted to know how large a 75′ prototypical tree would be in HO scale. Step 1: At the top of […]
