Moose, deer, bears, even wolves…but no beavers?

Scenery Saturday 2

‘Why doesn’t anyone make a HO scale beaver?’, I wondered.

I googled… nothing. I found moose, deer, bears, even wolves, but no beavers. The beaver is iconic. A Canadian symbol. The beaver (and it’s pelt) lured the explorers to this land. Hell, the beaver is so important it’s even on the shield of the Canadian Pacific Railway. So… I wondered, ‘Why no HO scale model beaver figures?’

This post isn’t really about beavers; at least not yet. The reason that I was looking for a 1:87 size beaver in the first place is what I want to explore. I wanted to practice my scenery skills and specifically, pouring Envirotex epoxy resin to make a water feature. I had watched the YouTube videos, read the MR articles and seen images on blog posts and now it was time to play. I grabbed a piece of scrap foam board, a bottle of glue and some ground foam and went to town. As you can see the results turned out pretty well. I was happy with my little test project.  But one thing was missing… you guessed it.

So what to do if no one makes a 1:87 size beaver. Happily in this day-and-age of 3D printing almost anything is possible and if you can’t find it – you can make it. And that’s exactly what I did with the help of Autodesk 123D Design‘s free app and Shapeways.com.

P.S. Comment, email, tweet or drop me a line if you’d like some 3D printed HO scale beavers for your layout.