Freight Car Siding (0,50 x 0,50)

Half a millimeter on both figures

This item is interesting in that the thickness and the spacing have the same value, five tenths of a millimeter. It produces the densest boarding the brand offers in the freight car pattern, and at the same time the thinnest carrier sheet. The material can be held up to the light and flexes noticeably in the hand, which is both an advantage and a risk for the work.

Cutting with scissors and the fight against warping

Ordinary paper scissors still manage half a millimeter of thickness, and with thin strips they are even faster than a knife. There is one catch. The blades compress the material before cutting through it, so the edge along the cut bows into a wave and the lines there are deformed. That is why you cut with a margin of at least a millimeter from the final edge and sand the rest. The second property of a thin sheet is its tendency to warp once glue is applied, because the solvent softens only the side it landed on. The answer is structural: the part is glued onto a ribbed frame or onto a thicker backing sheet and weighted down until it has cooled. A freestanding wall of such thin material will bow sooner or later.

Which scales it is for

A spacing of half a millimeter corresponds in 1:87 scale to a board roughly four and a half centimeters wide, and in 1:160 scale to eight. The pattern therefore aims at small railroad scales and at interior panels on larger models. A thin sheet is also easily worked in under overhanging parts, where a thicker sheet would make a step. It is worth keeping the offcuts, because even a narrow strip will do for the cladding of a small door.