Monster Modelworks Machine Shop

Started by SteveCuster, March 01, 2021, 10:22:33 AM

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SteveCuster

Hello everyone.

I started a new small kit last night. It's a machine shop from Monster Modelworks. This is my first experience with one of their kits. I have seen lots of the brickwork completed from other modelers and it's always excellent.


Picture from the bag of the completed model.


This are most of the contents of the kit.


I started by bracing and gluing the walls together. So far so good...everything fit together perfectly and the kit came with mostly precut bracing so it went very fast.

That's all I've got done so far. It's a pretty simple kit so I don't think it'll take me more than a few days to complete.

Steve Custer

Pennman

Steve,

Since your builds are such a joy to view, I must say your modeling skills have increased greatly over the past few years.
This looks like an interesting project, and I will follow along with your progress.
I have acquired a lot of the brick sheeting materials from Monster ModelWorks and I will be looking forward to see how you
weather the brick. I have used chalks & Alcohol on these materials with great sucess, but perhaps you may attack it
differently. Nice work.

Rich
PS:  I sent you an email yesterday, perhaps it may be in your spam folder.(Via regular email), not here

Mark Dalrymple

Nice start, Steve.

That's one cool door!

Cheers, Mark.

postalkarl

Hey Steve:

Looking just great so far. I'm following along as usual.

Karl

SteveCuster

I made some more progress on this kit over the last couple days...

I ran into a few snags which I ended up working through and it came out ok.


I added the overlay brick detail for the sides and the corners. It adds some character to an otherwise pretty boring brick rectangle.


The side detail..


I painted the walls with a mix of Reaper Ruddy Brown and Boxcar Red. Everything was going fine then the walls started warping like crazy. These brick overlays are very thin and the way the brick runs horizontal with the grain of the wood just makes it really prone to warping. My initial reaction to something like this is to try to fix it right when it's happening. Experience has taught me I'm better off walking away, letting it dry and then figuring out how much damage is really done. It also gives me a little time to think of a solution.


The next morning I came down and the walls had settled a bit. I used small screwdriver to pull the warped spots up high enough to get some wood glue under the areas that separated. I used some of these tweezers to clamp the raised spots down. I let each section dry and repeated this process for all the warped sections.


The warping is corrected and I wanted to start weathering to walls. My traditional approach to weathering brick would be some really thin washes of tans mixed with gray or black made thin enough to wick into all the mortar joints then I would add some different reddish colors to the brick. At this point I'm not really interested in adding anything wet to the walls if I can help it. You can see in this picture the peaked walls warped at the top even after I adding bracing.


I used some dry rembrandt chalk powder to weather the walls a bit. I used a few different shades of brown and tan and a little bit of a brick red color.


I applied the same chalks to the rest of the structure. This is the first phase of the weathering, I'll be adding some more colors to the brick subtly.


I added the windows and doors. I colored them with a marsh green craft paint applied with a torn makeup sponge followed by some chalk weathering. I also touched up a few bricks with a dark gray to represent some overcooked bricks.


The kit comes with several stencils. This one is on the rear of the structure. The instructions call for coloring the area behind the stencils first with black or gray followed by the lettering in white.
I masked off the area where the black would go first using the stencil as a guide.


The gray is painted on.

The stencil is self adhesive so I stuck it to the wall. I painted the letting by using a stiff brush with a good amount of paint removed applied with a stipple motion.


The off-white is Linen colored craft paint.


The sign has its first bit of weathering to blend it into the wall. I'm going to follow it up with some dry-brushing to fade it a bit I think. This back wall stencil is the practice for the front wall so I'll be trying a few things. This wall will not be visible when the building is installed on the layout.

Lesson learned here..as little wet as possible with these kits especially the thinner pieces. I have a yard tower kit from them as well I plan to build. I'm wondering if priming the walls first would help with the warpage or just make it worse. I've had good luck in the past with brick by priming it a khaki color to represent mortar and almost dry brushing the surface with brick color instead of coloring it brick and adding the mortar with a wash last. Either way I'm going to have to be careful with the next one.

Thanks for following along. Next step is finishing the signs and adding the roof.







Steve Custer

Keep It Rusty

Love the faded look on the stencil. Your choice of colors for the brick work is great, too.

For the warping, a coat of rattle can auto primer (or even a matte sealer) will definitely help, as it will create a membrane between the wood and the water-based paints causing the warpage.

NKP768


Jerry

Steve great save.


Nice coloring on the brick so far.  And the stencil came out beautifully!


Be following along on this one as usual.


Jerry
"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." A. Lincoln

deemery

Stencil looks great!


I think the way to approach kits like this is to spray seal/prime the parts before assembly, while you can still weigh them down as the sealer dries.   I have a Monster flat where the structure is fine, but the wood back has warped badly.  I need to wet and reweigh the warped section, then add more bracing.


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

postalkarl

Hey Steve:

Looks great so far. The painted on sign came out just great.

Karl

GPdemayo

Neat kit Steve.....love the brick and your progress so far, I'll be looking in.  :)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

SteveCuster

Thanks everyone!

I pretty much finished up the kit last night.


I added the black box for the letter to the front. This time I used black instead of dark gray.

Lettering is added and weathered.







Once I got the structure together I started to place it around the layout to get a feel for how it would fit. To me it feels a bit out of scale and it really looks weird next to any of the other kits on my layout. It's not the brick but the overall size of the structure and the size of the windows and doors.


This is the spot I had originally intended to place the building. To me it looks very out of scale especially next to the little office that sort of has the same dimensions this building. It's even overpowering Chippy Hollow and I always felt like that was a pretty large and imposing structure.


This how it feels next to the nearest structure to the left. Maybe it's just me but it feels really big next to both structures on the left and the right.


Here is the structure with a standard HO Preiser figure in front of the door. It's not my imagination...he almost needs to reach over his head to get to the doorknob.

At this point I'm going to leave this one as it is and move on to something else. I think I can bring the scale feel of the structure down by adding some additions and positioning the front door in a way it's not looked at directly head-on.

I have a Monster Modelworks Brick Yard Tower kit that I had intended for the layout as well but I'm concerned it may feel a little large too. Has anyone built one of these? It's in a bag so I don't want to open it to measure and scale up the parts if I intend to resell it.

Steve Custer

Oldguy

Good looking build.  Did you get the S-scale version?  I have only built his warehouse and had no scaling issues.
Bob Dye
Livin large on a pond

SteveCuster

I didn't really think of that Bob. The bag and instructions were for the HO version but maybe it got bagged wrong? It certainly feels like S scale not big enough for O. I'll contact him and see if he can help.
Steve Custer

postalkarl

Hey Steve:

How many HO feet tall is the door. I would think it should be a little over 6 feet tall.

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