Shadowlands and Tellynott

Started by Mark Dalrymple, July 04, 2019, 05:24:25 PM

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madharry

Mark I usually use a kettle of boiling water. Pour it over the part in a bowl and then place it flat on a surface. Usually my wife's granite kitchen top.Then put a plank of wood on the part weighted down. Overnight it should be perfectly flat. I have used this on a ton of M kits to good effect,
Mike

deemery

A suggestion I've tried on warped resin castings is to put them on a flat (stone) tile in a warm (150 degree F) oven, and let them sit there for 20 minutes or so.  The stone holds the heat and provides a flat surface for the casting to relax onto.


dave
Modeling the Northeast in the 1890s - because the little voices told me to

postalkarl

Hey Mark:

It's coming along nicely. Keep the pics coming.

Karl

Mark Dalrymple

Hi guys.

Thanks Mike, Dave and Karl, and thanks for the suggestions Mike and Dave, I'll be sure to try one of them next time I tackle a warped kit.

Today I got the mullions in all the windows.  The instructions suggest gluing the mullions to the window material.  I couldn't see this working very well - but after my solution I might try their suggestion next time.  Firstly - all the windows are not the same size - even the ones that are supposed to be.  Secondly, the distance between very slightly too long and too short is not much!

Photo 1 - I cut myself a rectangular piece of scrap styrene that would fit between the bracing behind the walls and taped lunch paper to one side of it to stop accidentally gluing it to the back of the wall.  I then measured the different windows and cut spacers half the height of each different window - four in all.

Photo 2 - I then used my chopper to cut strips of square styrene slightly longer than the window I was working on.

Using reversible tweezers I held the mullion in position and eyeballed it, and then trimmed it to the right length.  Sometimes it needed a bit more off, sometimes I had to start again.  I was aiming for a nice tight fit, but not so tight the mullion would bend.  I then held the scrap styrene behind the window, put the spacer in place, and then added the mullion, pushing it down hard against the scrap piece of styrene to get the correct depth, and the spacer to get the correct height.  I then carefully removed the styrene and spacer and added CA from the back, pulling it along the mullion a little ways to get a nice hold.  Surplus CA was cleaned up with cotton buds.  I let the glue set, but the lunch paper backing meant I could move a little faster.

Photos 3&4 - show the mullions glued in place.

I looked at pictures on line trying to find information on how others tackled these mullions.  The most common answer was that they didn't.  The majority of pictures I found had no mullions.  I did also find a picture of the original structure this kit was based on which will be a good reference.

Photo 5 - shows Neil's completed Kauri tree.  It stands almost 3 feet tall!

Photo 6 - shows his ingenious transport method - the trunk is wired to the upper hand hold in the car and the tree hung upside down.

More soon, cheers, Mark.

PRR Modeler

Beautiful modeling Mark. Love the tree.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

postalkarl

Hey Mark:

Structure is looking really great. Like the tree also.

Karl

Zephyrus52246


Mark Dalrymple

Hi guys.

Thanks very much Curt, Karl and Jeff.  Yes - Neil's layout is adorned with native trees of that size and quality.

Photo 1 - Well - I got the magnuson kit scrubbed with water and dish washing liquid (being very careful around those delicate mullions), rinsed and dried, and seconds before the rain came, sprayed with a grey primer.

Photo 2 - I had added a small piece of strip styrene to a break in one of the window sills and puttied a couple of large air bubbles in two other window sills.

Photo 3 - these little castings were truly awful!  They were more like parallelograms than squares!  There was a lot of filing to try to make them acceptable.  I tried to pier the best matched top with each bottom and orient them with the best (closest to a right angle) two faces forwards.  They were glued together using 2-part epoxy.

More soon, cheers, Mark.

Mark Dalrymple

Hi again.

Whilst the paint cures I went back to the other small kit-bash.

Photo 1 - I marked and cut a styrene base to fit my kit-bash.  I then went about splicing together scrap offcuts of City Classics side walls to create the right end side and back (these should not be seen).  I then trimmed the base to fit all my walls by holding them in position and marking the back of the wall on the base with a clutch pencil.  Before I do this I always sand the styrene to give it some tooth for better gluing, painting and pencil marking.  After I have done this I use the base as a template and mark a second piece on a scrap piece of styrene for internal floors/ roof.  The edges of the walls were cut and filed to angles to give a better gluing surface.  This photo is taken from above.

Photo 2 - shows the M. T. Arms side wall attached to the shop fronts.  I first glued the left front wall to the base using CA.  I put the pieces on a flat surface covered in lunch paper and held the side wall in position to line up.  I make sure to hold the base flat on the table and the wall hard against the base as the glue cures - about 45 seconds.  I then added the M. T. Arms wall, gluing the bottom of the wall to the base and the side up about the first 2 inches.  Once cured I added a bead of CA to the inside of the meeting angle of the two walls and then held together nice and tight and lined up.  Capillary action takes the glue into the join.  I work up the wall join, about 2 inches at a time.  If I try to tackle too much its easy to get out of alignment.

Photo 3 - shows the fronts.  I glued the second front in position as in photo 2.  There was a bit of extra filing needed here to get a perfect fit.

Photo 4 - shows the right end wall attached to the front.  I worked as in photo 2, gluing the wall to the base and then joining the sides.  I often find as i work around the base that the walls need a little more material off before gluing.  This is due to the compounding of slight errors in marking.  Depending on how much this is I tackle with either a sharp builders knife or a file.

Photo 5 - shows the back walls and the right end wall.  The back wall is a trapezium when looking down from above, and so needs to be slid into position from above.  It is just sitting in position in these photos.  I'll need access to the interior for floors, roof, shop front doors, glazing, blinds etc.  I will paint these two pieces separately and then join together.  The parapet wall between the two structures will be added to the roof.

More soon, cheers, Mark.

Dennis Bourey

Dennis Bourey
dpbourey@comcast.net

Lake's Region RR
(Happy Modeling)

Keep It Rusty

Agree with Dennis.

Love the staggered design and can't wait to see it painted and weathered.

postalkarl

Hey Mark:

It's coming along just great.

Karl

Mark Dalrymple

Hi guys.

Thanks very much Dennis, Rusty and Karl - very much appreciated.

A bit more progress today.  For whatever reason, I found the top of the front two walls were leaning inwards.  Typically I would cut a roof piece and place it in position forcing the walls out to the correct position.  I tried this and it worked, except because of the change in height the roof piece needed to sit across the right side buildings windows when at the correct height for a flat roof on the left hand side front.  I thought about this for a while and came up with the solution I will show in pictures below.

Photo 1 - shows the view from above.  You can see I put a floor in place, at the floor height of the left building front.  The cutouts are around windows.

Photo 2 - shows the angled piece I glued in place with a slope on it so that it was not across any windows.  This holds the two front walls at the same angle as the base and the bottom floor.

Photo 3 - shows the central wall.  This wall has been cut to fit hard down of the bottom floor piece.  I have spliced some scrap styrene to a City Classics side wall, and checked out so it will sit on top of the left buildings back wall and around the angled front piece.

Photo 4 shows the vertical wall half way into position.

Photo 5 - shows the wall in position.

Photo 6 - shows the view from above.

The only incident was that I accidentally broke a window mullion while test fitting against the pressure of the walls.  Fortunately I've been practicing mullion gluing!

More soon, cheers, Mark.

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

Mark Dalrymple

Hi guys.

Thanks for following along and your many comments, Curt.

Next up was the roof pieces.  I started by doctoring the side of the back by taking a slither more material off one of the edges of the back wall.  Because of the way the central wall is checked over the back wall, the trapezium shaped back wall will need to slide in from below once the roof pieces are glued in place, and my back wall was a tad out of parallel.

Photo 1 - shows the back wall half slid into place from below.  We are a bit further on here with the roof pieces glued in place.

I assembled the structure (main piece, central wall and back wall) and marked the inside central floor with a pencil.  I then removed the back wall and glued the central division wall into place.  I then measured down from the top and marked the thickness of my plastic roofs (1.5mm) lower than the finished roof heights and then glued some square stock timber to the front and side walls of the two buildings.  I slid the back wall back into position before gluing the roof pieces on to make sure the fit was good.  Marking the base template on a spare piece of stock styrene previously came in handy here, and I only needed to cut out a 3mm section for the parapet wall and tweak slightly.

Photo 2 - shows a view from the top showing the left building's roof supports.

Photo 3 - shows the two roofs glued in position.  I will likely add a piece of strip styrene on top of the back wall and add scuppers and downpipes - although I'm considering other options.

It was then on to the front shop doors.  This was the only wall left over from a previous kit-bash and I believe I used both doors on the last one, along with turning a window into a door on this kit-bash, so the two entrance ways had to be fabricated.  I decided that the City Classics art deco left over bottom story pieces had doors that wood look good in this DPM build.  Using a saw I cut the door sections out vertically and then sanded them down taking of any remaining brickwork/ columns.  I then spliced together some 1mm and .75mm strip styrene and spliced these to the edge of the door (this gave me the same thickness as the door jambs).  I added some .4mm strip styrene on top of this, going over the door jambs.  Once this was done I added some .75mmx4.8mm strip on its edge at the same width as the opening in the structure.  The top was trimmed and sanded and then a roof/ ceiling piece added.  I then cut some 1mmx4.8mm strip and added two steps to the bottom of the doorway - thus lifting the interior floor of the structure by a scale 7".  I gave the steps the correct tread so that the original shop floor will be the same tread width as the other two steps.

Photo 4 - shows the two door sections cut out and one of them being assembled.

Photo 5 - shows the entrance way completed.

Photo 6 - shows the entrance way glued into position.  One more still to do.  Its amazing how much work there is in these little features - and of course you have to nut it out as well as build it.

More soon, cheers, Mark.

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