The home of Campbell Scale Models in Santa Ana, California.

LIFE IN A SAWDUST

BIN A visit to Campbell Scale Models to

see just what's involved in turning out those wooden structure kits.

By Denis Dunning

Leo has one of the cleanest plants and nicest looking offices we've ever seen. Unfortunately,

he doesn't get a lot of time to spend here, the various sections of the plant keeping him hopping.

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...

Sitting at your work bench and having a pleasant time putting to­gether that Campbell kit that caught your fancy, did you ever give much thought to just what was involved in produci ng that kit. It's not all that hard, you say? Just cut a few pieces of wood, make a handful of plastic moldings, and draw up a little dia­gram and a few words on how it all goes together. •

If this is what you think, you're wrong. After spending a day with Leo Campbell and his gang of smil­ing helpers-no, it's not quite like Santa's workshop-one comes away with the impression that there must be an easier business to be in. We'll go into details in a minute, but let us say right now that there is a tre­mendous amount of work involved getting those parts finally packaged in a red and black plaid box.

Even before they can start to work in actually producing a model, a great deal of work is involved. A

small "Doctor's Office" is the next kit to be released and they were well along with it when we visited. In fact, that is what Sherry Collins is work­ing on, in the photos accompanying the article. But what got this kit to the drawing board?

First a decision must be made on just what is to be produced. Will it be a station, a house, a factory ... how big ... what era ... what mate­rials ... ? This decision is as much black magic as anything, but in this case the Doctor's Office was the decision. Now a pilot model must be made. Exotic sounding, but what we are actually talking about is mak­ing a few sketches and then sitting down and scratchbuilding a model.

The building process involves more than the average model, as each part must be designed to ease the pro­duction, using ideas that have proven themselves in other kits. However, there are always new problems with any kit, and these must be solved.

This problem solving by Campbell has resu'lted in some materials and methods that are now standards of the industry. Leo's methods and ma­chinery for producing shingles and corrugated metal are excellent. In fact, a majority of the other structure kit manufacturers in the U.S. bUy their slhingles and corrugated metal from Leo, rather than trying to make it themselves. That's quite an indorsement.

But back to that new kit. Once the pilot model is finished it is time to make up the various drawings of the structure, both plan views and vari­ous isometric cut-away drawings to make the construction fairly plain to the modeler. Along with the draw­ings, a list of each individual piece of wood must be compiled. Hopefully they can use sizes that are standard with other kits to a certain extent. Same for the plastic moldings. Is there a window or door already. in use that will be right for this kit, or

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Mike Long concentrates on cutting the legs for a loading dock, cutting twenty legs at a time from a specially

prepared bundle of stripwood. The set-up for each type of cut is very critical and often takes a great deal of thought and effort.

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Much of the design work is done by Sherry Collins, one of the few women doing this type of work in the model railroad

, industry. Here, she is working on the instruction sheet for the new "Doctor's Office" kit, soon to be released.

Cutting roof dormers requires other set-ups, but again stacks

of parts are cut at once to help cut down on time.

The wood starts as these huge planks and are cut down to the various sizes needed for stock, such as those seen in the smaller racks.

must a new plastic die be made? Give this a thought for a minute.

Would you like to go back over that last scratchbuilt model and make a list of every piece of wood and card­stock you used? The size, the length, the shape . . . and how about all those window and door openings you cut? Gives pause for thought, doesn't it?

Now we have the list of parts and drawings. Next comes the task of explaini ng to the potential customer the sequence of building the kit, where all those little pieces go, and any tips that the manufacturer has learned that might help you make a better looking kit. This is a most critical step in the kit construction, and the place where many manufac­turers fail miserably. One reason we chose to visit Campbell Scale Models is their long known reputation for excellent instruction sheets.

Once the fi rst instructions are writ­ten by the designer, Leo takes them, along with the parts, and goes over the instructions step by step. Usually a third person, sometimes his wife Erlene, will check over the instruc­tions with him. If they encounter steps they don't quite understand, the instructions will be revised.

This is probably the hardest part of writing instructions. The builder understands what he (or she) did, but

Ever wondered how they make scribed wood? You place a These shelves hold components plain piece of wood in one end of the machine, it runs over a series of very thin blades, and out the other end comes the scribed wood siding.

of the various kits. When various supplies of parts get

low, they are put on the production schedule and

new parts are then produced.

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Two of the special machines used by Campbell are seen here.

The first is the corrugated metal embosser, while the other

takes strips of craft tape and turns them into the well known

Campbell shingles.

does the customer understand? We're sure you've all encountered a part of an instruction sheet that simply didn't make sense to you. We've even found this in Campbell's instructions (nobody's perfect) but this method keeps them to a minimum.

Once all the sections of the in­struction sheet have been approved they can then be typeset and the final drawing made. This goes to the printer, along with the box labels and any special signs that will accompany the kit.

At the same time, the kit is finally put into actual production with the cutting of parts. And so you have hundreds of parts in each kit and several thousand kits to be made and the thought of all that work can be a bit frighteni ng at times. Espe­cially for Leo!

All of this work leading up to the beginning of production has tak­en two to three months' of work, on the average. The employees don't work for free, and Leo's time is quite valuable. And all this effort has to be figured into the final retail price of the kit.

But now all the preliminaries are completed and it's time to really get to work.

Accompanying the story are photos taken in the plant to give you some idea of the steps involved. From here on out, there is a tremendous amount of handwork involved. Many of the pieces are handled a number of times, even with many time sav­ing devices devised over the years.

The wood in the kits is clear sugar pine and comes in very long 2" x 8" planks. From this huge piece of wood must be cut scale lumber down to sizes like scale HO 1" x 4"s. And because of this, most of this very expensive raw material wood ends up as sawdust. Making the initial cut to make 1/8" square material

(Continued on page 81)

This is how all those bits of wood and plastic get into those plastic bags. Care is essential to insure that each kit has all the right parts . .. in the right bags.

Part of the trick of manufacturing is trying to keep these shelves stocked so you Once the parts are in the can serve your customers, bags, they are fed through this without keeping them so full that heat sealing machine, and all your capital is tied up on from here go into the familiar the shelf. plaid box.

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