Bar Mills Queen City Coal

Started by vinceg, May 19, 2020, 09:07:03 PM

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vinceg

Thanks, Jerry and Dave. By windshield glue I assume you mean that Testor's stuff in the square bottle with the brush applicator that is attached to the cap? I have definitely used that in the past for plastic windows with plastic glazing but I had no idea it would work on wood. I will give that a try. Fortunately, Bar Mills seems to regularly give you a few extra parts with many of the laser-cut details. For example, I need 10 arched windows. They cut out 11. I can do a little playing there to check it out.  Thanks.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Quote from: Opa George on May 23, 2020, 07:21:27 PM
Nice job so far on this, Vince.  It's looking really cool.
On the bracing to the wall bottom, I have run into that same issue with some other Bar Mills builds.  It's like they just forgot that the walls need to fit around the supplied base.   I am always going back and trimming away that bottom 1/8 inch or so.  But I figure if that is my biggest problem with a kit, I'm still ahead of the game.

--Opa George

Thanks, George. I am accepting it as a way of life, now. Even though I am doing much more test fitting and reading ahead for all instructions, I still end up having to take off some bracing. As you said, if that's the biggest heartache in building the model, you win!
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Quote from: JimMooney on May 24, 2020, 12:13:34 PM
How I do the laser cut is as follows
Self stick is really only there to hold things temporarily as an assembly tool. It works really well on shiny smooth surfaces, but is only so-so on rougher ones. works great for the acetate, but wood to wood ...eh? sometimes...(!)
1. Attach sills with the self stick to the bottom of the frame (not a lot of SS here but it is just there to hold it for a bit)(sometimes I run a little ACC along
    bottom of sill to help)
2. Attach the upper panes now to the back of the frame (self Stick)
3. now position the lower panes where you want them. If they are fairly high up , there is really no adhesive,
    so use a little ACC applied on the edges with a toothpick, it'll wick in and hold it together.
4. I now apply the front top trim if there's any.
5. self stick works fairly well on task board , but not so much on basswood (especially clapboard) . But I never really trust it to hold a window on,
   probably work for a few years, but it the building gets handled I see this stuff slide a round. I apply a lot (!) of wood glue all around the window hole,
   especially in the corners. I then press the window in from the front. This pushes any excess glue to the back, but also fills in the edges and glues the
   window together better. If any gets on acetate, wipe off.

Sorry about the bracing your right on part #4.
The roof bracing on parts 6 and 7 was supposed to be to scale on the instructions , It should be about .215" down from top (use cheap digital calipers to mark it....probably not too critical.)

Weird experience when first reading this response. I see the "Sorry about...." and I'm wondering why some forum reader would be saying sorry for an error in the instructions. I then looked and the name and the little LED went on (would have been a light bulb, but those are old school now :) ) This is THE Jim Mooney from Bar Mills. Nice to meet you!

The lack of measurements for the roof bracing is no big deal. I ended up temporarily placing the thickness-doubling parts next to the wall and measuring to get their location. I would want to do that, anyway. Wouldn't trust my ability to measure that right.

Thanks for the tips on ACC. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I need to be a little less single-minded about adhesives. I have gotten really lazy about using Canopy Glue for everything - wood, plastic, metal, filling in window panes. Super handy but not the best solution for everything. Your insight that self-stick is really there as a helping hand is helpful. Even though my buildings won't be bouncing around shows like yours do, it's useful to think about throwing a little ACC at those assemblies once they are in place to solidify the joint.

Thanks. And also thanks for the great engineering on the kits.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Some progress to report. As I mentioned earlier, my plan was to do some preliminary treatment on the walls before building the main structure. That would include doing the brick areas and painting the stucco around the windows and doors so that I would apply the windows and doors before the inside becomes inaccessible. I started with the bricks. Painted them brick red and then decided to use some pastels to represent the mortar. My first try was to use PanPastels because I like them so much. What I found was that for this application, they are a bit too sticky and cover up the bricks. See below:



I tried using the PPs for both brick areas. I didn't like the fact that the pastels covered up so much of the brick (although now that I look at it again, maybe it's a decent weathered look). To get the bricks showing as you see them in this pick, I used a little water and a paper towel to wipe off the tops of the brick faces. This worked OK for the bricks on the right but not as well for the bricks on the left. You can even see that I pulled the task board on some of the brick area.

For round two, I tried just using a more conventional gray pastel stick. The result:



This seemed better behaved so this is what I went with.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Next step was to paint all the bricks in all the walls. Here's a pic. No chalk applied yet.



Notice also that all the arched windows now have their "eyebrows" and sills. You can also see some decorative trim also applied to the top of some of the walls. These details will all get stucco-ed along with the walls.

By the way, when I apply the chalk from a stick, I use a single-edge razor blade to scrape some powder onto the target area. Then use a soft brush to push the powder around into the mortar lines. Finally, I go in with a finger to push it down a bit to keep it in place. So far, I have never used any fixative. Doesn't seem to be a problem.

It is interesting that there are so many missing bricks. I don't know if that is a purposeful detail put in by Bar Mills or if that is just a casualty of using a laser on task board. I suppose I could look through lots of pics in the documentation and see if they match but, fortunately, I'm too lazy. They look fine.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

#50
Getting a little closer, now. Here is the front wall:



I mentioned earlier that I would only be applying the stucco around windows and doors until the wall was attached to the building. However, since this wall has the stenciled sign, I decided to do the whole wall so that I would apply all the stucco so that I could do the stencil.

Two things to notice - first, this is a lighter color than I original thought I would use. This is actually Craft Smart Vanilla. Much whiter than the Ivory I originally intended to use. I switch because my wife dropped by while I was working and said she thought the yellow (Ivory) was too southwest -- a midwest stucco would be whiter. I usually trust her judgment so I went with it. Now that I'm looking at it I'm not 100% sure. But, there is still much weathering to be done so we will see. You can also see that I apparently forgot to apply the pastels to the brick areas here. I will go back and fix that before this wall is glued up.

The other thing is the stenciled sign. Looks a little weak to me. I think that perhaps it's exacerbated by the very white background. For a stucco that looks that pristine the sign shouldn't look that worn. I will still need to play with this a bit -- either using some pastels or paint to fill in the lettering a little more or providing more weathering for the walls in general so that the worn lettering seems to fit in better. Probably some combination of both.

I took advantage of the detailed window assmblies to have a few open windows. I used all of the open windows on the sides of the building that will be visible for my placement of the diorama.

BTW, that window shade in the upper left window is actually the roof support brace. I could have used paper there as I did everywhere else but thought a very high (and crooked) window shade would provide some interesting variety.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Here is the side wall that faces the diorama courtyard:



Here you can see that I applied the paint as I originally intended - enough to allow me to insert the windows and not worry about painting over them later when I paint the rest of the wall. You can see the boundaries of where I painted the stucco. The color actually matches the task board pretty closely.

In the kit ad artwork, the big blank area to the right of the two windows contains a large poster sign -- sort of old-style graphics. There is no such sign in the kit. Instead, there is more modern looking sign that is all letters (no pictures). This would be fine except that the signs included in the kit are optimized for a landscape orientation space. This space is better suited to a portrait style sign (as is the one in the documentation and ads). I haven't measured yet but I think I will have to pull the sign artwork into my computer and shrink it down a bit in order to fit this space. Disappointing quality control on this item. Also, the sign in the ad is black - a nice contrast to the lightly-colored stucco. The actual sign they give you is yellow. Not sure how that will look. I am not going to do this as a painted-on sign. Rather, I will back it with chipboard and put a frame around it so I don't have to worry about it now. We'll look at that in closer detail later.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Here's the back wall of the main office. Won't be seen once the diorama is installed.



Pictures are a wonderful modeling tool. As I'm looking at this I can see that my "stucco" doesn't get close enough to the bricks in the lower right corner. Also, my stucco in general isn't very thick. Not getting much texture above and beyond what you already get from the task board.  Probably not a problem for most of the walls but leaves you wanting for texture a bit for the trim around the windows and doors.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

Last pic for the night. I'm starting to assemble the shell for the main building now. There are three pieces here: Wall 2 that we just saw (facing the courtyard), Wall 5 that is facing backward and to which is attached the other building extensions, and the floor/base:



My first thought was to do an initial gluing of all three of these components at once. I quickly realized that this was going to be too easy to make an error. Much easier was to recognize that I don't need the base to join walls 2 and 5 because they meet at a 90 degree angle. So, I did that first with the help of some squares and then added the floor next. Life will get a little more interesting when I add the front wall next. That will be the long angled side to the right.

The tab on the floor to the right is painted green because it sticks out of the opening for the loading door in the front wall. It will actually serve as part of the frame. Not sure if that was the plan but when I test fit things that looked like the best way to handle it.

That's it for now. When I start adding the other walls, I will create some gaps at the corners that need to be filled. I did some mitering (you can even see it here to the right of wall 2) but I'm sure it won't be good enough. I reckon that getting the rest of this basic shell right will still be a fair amount of effort (for me, at least).

CU soon.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

Mark Dalrymple

Looking good, Vince.

I really appreciate all the effort you are going to to bring us these blow by blow accounts of your progress.  I read it all and study all the photos - as I'm sure many do - so it is never a wasted effort.

I've listened to a couple of pod casts featuring Jason Jenson recently and one thing I have heard him mention at least twice now is that he never uses pure white or pure black on his models.  Its often difficult to judge how white a building is until you put it next to something really white.  I recently did a masonry structure with panels of blue-grey and columns of white.  I was disappointed at how grey the blue-grey was - it didn't really look blue at all.  I masked up the panels and painted the columns in white.  When I removed the masking tape the panels magically changed colour to a very blue grey!

Cheers, Mark.

vinceg

Thanks, Mark - Yeah, Jason is fantastic. I am learning a lot from his YouTube videos.

Interestingly, I have had success with wood buildings in the past that were painted white. As an example, the clapboard in my Rugg build was painted Whitewash - even whiter than the vanilla that I used on Queen City. The difference is that I was able to use the inkahol wash afterward and it toned it down nicely but it still looked white. Perhaps the same will happen here and I just got freaked out when I saw how grey the Ivory (yellowish tint) looked when I put the wash on it. Perhaps that particular paint just happens to react more strongly with the wash.

I know I will tone this building down significantly before the smoke clears. Not sure if that will be a black wash or perhaps a tan wash or chalks or a repaint. Obviously need to do some experimenting.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

PRR Modeler

It all looks fantastic Vince. The color is good and with a little weathering I think you will be happy with it.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

Opa George

The walls look very good, Vince.  Stucco is really difficult to get right, and the paint over this material looks convincing and is probably much less work than Durham's or other material.  I do see what you mean about the worn, light stencil on the "clean" wall.  If you are planning additional weathering to the walls later, that may not be an issue.  I've had instances where I did not initially like an effect, but when returning to it later, found it to be about right.

Thanks for the nice step-by-step pics on this kit.
--Opa George

vinceg

Thanks Curt and George. I think I can see you're right. I engaged in a little gray chalk smudgery and I think I can see that I will like it. I also even like the lighter color after letting it sit a few days. I believe this will help draw some attention to what will be a corner diorama. Items will be a little further from the viewer and the light will be a little less.
Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

vinceg

OK. Lots of progress in the last couple of days - time to get caught up.

First, I finished the rough assembly of the main building. You saw the first two walls earlier. Here is the shell with all five. This is just the rough assembly. The corners need to be dressed, yet. The first pic is the small wall that is just to the left of the main wall



Here is the back:



Note that I didn't do any more painting, yet. That will follow after the corners are cleaned up. I also discovered that there is a sill that should be installed under the rectangular window. I installed that later.

And here is a quartering shot with the front wall and the wall that will eventually contain a large poster sign. Both of these walls will face the courtyard/concrete surface:



By the way, the roof is not yet glued down. I just placed it there to see how well the support braces were located.

More shortly.

Vince

Protolancing the Illinois Central Chicago District from Chicago to Kankakee

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