Pattern Letters
Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2025 2:55 pm
I figured I'd post this up here to give you guys a bit of a chuckle.
Ive been using felt sign letters for a while now to add to patterns, but smallest ones I could get was 1/2" tall. I know you can get the small plastic letters for model railroading stuff, for putting on buildings and such, but they have always been hard to find a supplier that wasnt going to charge an arm and a leg for them.
Well, I was on a model railroading forum looking at a place to find the letters and read something that made me chuckle a bit. The buildings on his layout looked pretty nice with them all painted, and when they asked him where he got the letters, he said he has always used alphabet pasta, lol. I got a bit of a chuckle from it and the next day, we were at the one amish grocery store and they had a bag of them for $1.75, so I grabbed a bag to try it out.
They look alot better in person, but they are just attached with a drop of CA glue, which they tend to be varying thicknesses, so I just took a nail file or popsickle stick with 120 grit sandpaper on it and just filed them to get them all leveled out, then a light sanding to clean them all up and round the edges a tiny bit. They took shellac really nicely, and work pretty well for my purposes, lol. The shellac in the pics was just put on and hadnt started to set up yet, but looks much better as it's started to dry. The rest of the letters are in baby food jars to keep them seperate and keep any worms or anything from getting into them and causing issues. Then the junk/broken ones, Ill just cook and make spaghettios out of them, lol.
I guess that's one way of playing with your food...
Ive been using felt sign letters for a while now to add to patterns, but smallest ones I could get was 1/2" tall. I know you can get the small plastic letters for model railroading stuff, for putting on buildings and such, but they have always been hard to find a supplier that wasnt going to charge an arm and a leg for them.
Well, I was on a model railroading forum looking at a place to find the letters and read something that made me chuckle a bit. The buildings on his layout looked pretty nice with them all painted, and when they asked him where he got the letters, he said he has always used alphabet pasta, lol. I got a bit of a chuckle from it and the next day, we were at the one amish grocery store and they had a bag of them for $1.75, so I grabbed a bag to try it out.
They look alot better in person, but they are just attached with a drop of CA glue, which they tend to be varying thicknesses, so I just took a nail file or popsickle stick with 120 grit sandpaper on it and just filed them to get them all leveled out, then a light sanding to clean them all up and round the edges a tiny bit. They took shellac really nicely, and work pretty well for my purposes, lol. The shellac in the pics was just put on and hadnt started to set up yet, but looks much better as it's started to dry. The rest of the letters are in baby food jars to keep them seperate and keep any worms or anything from getting into them and causing issues. Then the junk/broken ones, Ill just cook and make spaghettios out of them, lol.
I guess that's one way of playing with your food...
