I bought a selection of four various sized off-cuts from Columbia Timber for £5 which I hope to be able to make all of the walls of the model with.
I did also research whether it would be possible to buy ready cut strips of beech that would be suitable for the model but found, to my slight astonishment, that it's not available in 1mm thickness. I found a selection of lengths and widths but none available in 1mm x 10mm. The closest I've been able to find online are 0.6mm or 2mm x 10mm x 1000mm strips which, considering the scale I've chosen (1:40), would mean I'd still have to do a lot of sanding to get them to the correct thickness. I could alter the scale to suit the materials available but I think that would be a little lazy, however practical. It would also result in a drastic change in the size of the model. If I were to switch scale from 1:40 to 1:20, allowing me to use 2mm thick strips then the final model would be over 1000mm across… a little too large, in my opinion.
A few sources of beech strip:
Instead of changing scale, I've taken to sawing various lengths of 10mm wide strips on the bandsaw. I'm using the bandsaw rather than the circular saw because, although the saw marks are more pronounced, I run little risk of losing the strips on a bandsaw. The circular saw has a gap running alongside the blade that is just the right width for thin strips to fall down as soon as they've been cut off the main block.
I'm sawing the strips between 1.5mm and 2mm thick to allow for discrepancies on the surface - saw blade tooth marks. After sawing the strips I need to remove the saw marks and thin them down to 1mm. This is done by sticking them to a piece of MDF, with double-sided tape, and then putting them on the flat-bed belt sander. After I've removed all the saw marks from one side I turn the strips over and repeat the process. I then remove them from the MDF and measure the thickness. I'm aiming for about 1.2mm thick after the first two sanding runs. This allows me to then hand sand them down to exactly 1mm with three grades of paper. I'm using a coarse (120) and medium (240) grit sandpaper and 400 grit wet and dry (without water). This gives a smooth surface ready for any finishes I might need to add.
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