Scratchbuild A Backwoods Water Tank
Part I - Introduction

By Dwight Ennis
Milpitas, CA

Over the years, I have found few things in this hobby as satisfying to me personally as scratchbuilding!!  To take a few sticks of wood and perhaps some commercial castings and then build something up according to one's own design, with the end result being a beautiful model - few things can compare with that!!  Fletch's ongoing MasterClass is a perfect example.  What he might call kitbashing, I call scratchbuilding, at least on the level of "bashing" that he's doing in this fine series. 

Many people are afraid of scratchbuilding.  They fear that they don't have the talent, or that it won't turn out right.  Or they simply have no idea where to begin, or how to go about it.  The fear is groundless.  It doesn't take "talent" but rather a working familiarity with the techniques, and if something doesn't turn out right, all one has wasted is a little material and some time.  Just salvage what you can and try again.  The remaining two points, knowing where to begin, and how to go about it, are what I will try to illustrate here.

It is my hope to guide the modeler, step-by-step, through the process of building this rectangular backwoods-style water tank.  I've taken a photo of each step along the way as I constructed mine, and I will do my best to explain each step in enough detail that anyone can do everything necessary to end up with a beautiful model.  The techniques learned in building this structure are applicable to any model, so if you can build this one (and there's no reason anyone can't), you can build just about any other wooden structure.  There's enough variety in this one model to cover the techniques used in building bridges, trestles, warehouses, stations - just about any wooden structure you might want to put your hand to.  Also, this isn't the easiest of models one could start with, but the difference between something easy and something that looks complicated or difficult is only in the number of steps needed to complete things.  Taken one thing at a time, the steps themselves are the same.

Scatchbuilding is, for the most part, the art of "cutting things to fit."  One holds a the material for a needed piece next to the location where the piece is needed, and makes a small notch with a hobby knife indicating the needed length.  I'll be illustrating this technique along the way.  When I built my tank, I didn't even prepare most of the drawings beforehand.  Only where spacing was critical, such as the tank supports and the bent positions were drawings prepared in advance, and even these drawings could have been a lot simpler than I made them (I was a draftsman for 25 years, so I easily get carried away when doing drawings).  My point here is that drawings are often, if not usually, unnecessary when scratchbuilding a project, due to the "cut to fit" nature of the endeavor.  All the same, I've prepared a complete set of drawings for this project.

One last thing before we move on.  Scratchbuilding, like all modeling, is an art form. There are as many ways to approach a project as there are ways to paint a portrait.  Obviously, I'll be illustrating my way of building this project, but there are lots of other ways to achieve the same end.  Don't be afraid to experiment, since my way isn't necessarily the right way - it just happens to be the way I decided to do it.  On the next thing I build, I might do things a little differently as the need arises.  

I hope after building this tank, you'll have the confidence to try other projects of your own creation.

Scale

I model in 1:20.3, and generally build structures to 1:20, which I find makes measurements easier since 0.05" = 1" instead of 0.049" = 1".  Besides, 1:20 is only 1.5% bigger than 1:20.3 - a discrepancy which I doubt even the most serious rivet counter could notice, particularly since there's no definite prototype anyway.  But back to scale, since I built this to 1:20, that's the scale of all drawings and real measurements.  I've tried to give lumber sizes in actual dimensions, so if you're working in a different scale, use appropriate conversions.  Drawings can be printed and reduced on a photocopier.  The following is a conversion table to make it easier.

Next - Needed Tools