We've moved into a temporary apartment until our new house is completed. I managed to claim a corner of the dining area to set up my modeling desk, and brought along several half finished projects that I hope to get completed prior to the early spring. One of these is this mill building. These are the preproduction parts for a kit based on a building commonly called Ben Thresher's Mill, For more details on the prototype, see the Historic American Buildings Survey web site – (https://www.loc.gov/item/vt0013/) or search You Tube for a PBS documentary made about the mill several decades ago.
I plan to build this onto a diorama base that incorporates the damn, river, etc...that can eventually be incorporated into my new railroad. The one thing I don't think I'm going to include on the diorama are any tracks – simply because I have no idea where to place them.
Incorporating a water-powered mill into a scene is a bit of a chicken/egg process. You have to have some of the building done before starting the scenery, but you can't get too far along on the building since you have to plant it into the scenery. Essentially, the structure is such a part of the landscape that it's essentially a hill or rock or some other scenic feature...hopefully with square walls!
I'd started building this kit longer ago than I care to admit, and made some changes to one of the scenes on my old layout to accommodate the building as shown here with the subwalls taped together:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/112-161017101057-25580532.jpeg)
Last week I dug the parts out of the plastic storage bin and inventoried them – I'd gotten most of the walls painted – actually they were further along than I thought:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/112-161017101057-25584275.jpeg)
I have little experience building wood craftsman kits (frankly, I prefer working with styrene) – but I did try some of the techniques I've seen described here and on other forums. I "lifted" some clapboards, added nail heads, and applied a wash of Hunterline stain before drybrushing the walls (other than the blacksmith shop section, which remained raw wood) with a couple of coats of Yellow Ochre. I can see some areas where the walls don't look great – obviously this is a technique that takes time to master. I was going for a "well worn but not falling apart" look. Not sure how I did, but I'll defer to the judgement of the many, much more experienced wood structure kit builders on this forum –
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/112-161017101057-255851553.jpeg)
Then I added a wash of Vallejo dark grey wash. Windows and most of the doors are painted oxide red. There's a lot of windows on this thing – I just finished glazing all of them yesterday.
Marty
You're coming along really well on this build Marty. Great color choices. Thanks for the survey web site. Time has really taken its toll on the original structure.
Quote from: MAP on October 16, 2017, 11:55:48 AM
You're coming along really well on this build Marty. Great color choices. Thanks for the survey web site. Time has really taken its toll on the original structure.
Thanks Mark,
The color scheme comes directly from the HABS survey (Yellow Ochre, after "barn red" and "white" was possibly the third most common color for structures in the 19th century).
The mill was certainly falling apart when the HABS survey photos were taken - but it's experienced a series of restorations and renovations over the last decade and a half - see http://www.bensmill.com/
Marty
I think things are coming along nicely marty! as far as the walls go, what about them is bothering you?
Remember , you can always dry brush with the yellow to tone down the blackened areas, and always lightly bush things down with some weathering powders ,,,maybe a light gray, to blend things.
great work so far! look forward to watching your progress!
Looking very nice so far. Can you build a scale structure out of cardboard? That might help you make progress on the diorama while you are building the mill structure.
This is going to be a neat thread to follow Marty. Ben's Mill is not to far from my camp in Vermont, It's great that they cleaned up the property and painted it but I liked the way the place looked in the PBS film. Here's some photos from a couple years ago.
What a great structure. Marty you are doing a wonderful job on the build. The colors are perfect for what you have in mind.
Tom ;D
Quote from: ACL1504 on October 16, 2017, 06:02:47 PM
What a great structure. Marty you are doing a wonderful job on the build. The colors are perfect for what you have in mind.
Tom ;D
I'll second that! It's going to be one terrific looking structure when you're finished with it. :D
Thanks for sharing those photos - I don't suppose you have any pictures that show the sluice gate/penstock area (behind that tree in your first photo).
That whole area was overgrown and covered with a collapsed roof in the HABS pictures so the details of that corner of the building don't really show up - and frankly some details in the line drawing don't make sense.
Thanks again!
Great work so far.....I'll be looking in. 8)
Quote from: ACL1504 on October 16, 2017, 06:02:47 PM
What a great structure. Marty you are doing a wonderful job on the build. The colors are perfect for what you have in mind.
Tom ;D
Thanks Tom!
Marty, unfortunately the dam is gone and the Mill pond is gone and now there is just a brook running along side the building. If I remember correctly the penstock diverter was at the end of the dam near the building and the pipe came through the wall and was against the river side wall. I wish I had known, I would have gone over last weekend and taken pictures for you before I closed up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wY2Z4tnD90
looks like there was a documentary on this....
This is the PBS documentary that Marty talked about in the first post. This is about an hour long and a great show. You can buy it from the Ben's Mill website for about 20 bucks.
Marty,
Not sure if you can divulge who this is a preproduction kit for, or not. If you can I would sure love to know.
Loren...
Quote from: fsmcollector67 on October 17, 2017, 01:31:53 PM
Marty,
Not sure if you can divulge who this is a preproduction kit for, or not. If you can I would sure love to know.
Loren...
Hi Loren,
I'm not at liberty to say. Sorry.
Marty
I'd heard (and agree) that the walls looked fine but the windows didn't look weathered enough and appeared too new compared with the walls.
So I used a fiberglass eraser to scratch the windows a little more, added a wash of several colors of Hunterline stains, and after that dried I scrubbed some rust tone and gray Bragdon powders into the windows. (https://modelersforum.com/gallery/112-191017211805.jpeg)
Looks great.
Quote from: fsmcollector67 on October 17, 2017, 01:31:53 PM
Marty,
Not sure if you can divulge who this is a preproduction kit for, or not. If you can I would sure love to know.
Loren...
It is from New England Brownstone, well, was and probably will be. I had a few
life interruptions (not going to bore ya'll with that stuff) since I first started working on it, not to mention a couple of construction issues like "the dog ate it". Seriously, my dog ate my first model from off of my work bench. The other was casting the base, which didn't work out as I had planned. I also owe Marty a dam and gate casting. I was torn between a wooden or a stone dam and since I make stone stuff I decided to make one out of stone, which is in progress, just not as fast as I would have liked. Again, life's little interruptions. AS a side note I will have both the stone and a separate concrete dam available soon.
I also moved my pattern-making operations down to a new facility (it's actually old, but new to me, sorta) that has made my model working and any other project(s) I conjure up so much easier to work on and I am now starting to rework some of my old dust collectors. Ben's being one. Setting up the shop has been going slower than I had anticipated, but I have noticed a definite increase in speed when actually doing a project. There's something to be said about working at home and for me it's better if I don't. It's too easy for me to be distracted and honestly, I should have done the move years ago.
I still do the casting at home, but all tooling is done at my new shop where I can be totally focused. In fact, I can go down and work for a few hours and have more done than what I would have done in a week at my house. The only problem is forgetting something at the house or the shop, but seeing they are only 8 mins away from each other it's not that big of a deal. Not to mention, I don't have to cut wood under my carport on an un-even and un-level driveway in the middle of winter. (BTW
,who in the heck would build a carport in New England?) Believe me, if that don't get your procrastination juices curdling, nothing will.Anyways, life is good, now!
Russ,
Thanks so much....looking forward to when you will have this kit into production.....
Loren..
Russ, are you accepting pre-orders? ;D
dave
Thrilled to see Russ outing himself as the manufacturer.
Even more thrilled to see he remembers he owes me a dam for this thing (truth be told, I was planning to scratchbuild a wood one, but if he's going to have a masonry one I'll take it!
I've been working through how to model the finished roof surfaces - this thing has two or three surfaces depending on the era and where you look - the main building and cider press had standing seam roofs and the blacksmith shop had corrugated metal.
I've got, and have used, metal standing seam roofing in the past, but it also looked a little clunky in HO scale. I think I'll use Evergreen instead.
The corrugated metal roofing will be Campbells.
Russ, you planning to be at Altoona? If so would be nice to see you and catch up!
Marty, unfortunately no. Ever since my wife Tina began having seizures going to shows has become a not so much a fun thing to do. There's that not knowing if one will happen during the show, which did happen once before and it pretty much ruined the rest of the show. It wasn't much fun sitting in a distant hospital for 6 hrs only to have them tell us that they couldn't find anything wrong, which is the same prognosis we have gotten over the last few years from the local doctors. Honestly, I'm more worried about her rearranging the table with her face on the way down than the actual seizure.
I went to the last Expo show by myself just as an attendee and it wasn't as much fun since she wasn't there with me and knowing that she could have had one while I was there and she was back home. Damned if I do and damned if I don't. It sucks because that's the time we get to visit with all our vendor friends and customers.
I will be at the Springfield show since that is in my backyard and the hospital here has all her records and such. Try and get them while in another state.
Quote from: NEBrownstone on October 25, 2017, 12:13:02 PM
Marty, unfortunately no. Ever since my wife Tina began having seizures going to shows has become a not so much a fun thing to do. There's that not knowing if one will happen during the show, which did happen once before and it pretty much ruined the rest of the show. It wasn't much fun sitting in a distant hospital for 6 hrs only to have them tell us that they couldn't find anything wrong, which is the same prognosis we have gotten over the last few years from the local doctors. Honestly, I'm more worried about her rearranging the table with her face on the way down than the actual seizure.
I went to the last Expo show by myself just as an attendee and it wasn't as much fun since she wasn't there with me and knowing that she could have had one while I was there and she was back home. Damned if I do and damned if I don't. It sucks because that's the time we get to visit with all our vendor friends and customers.
I will be at the Springfield show since that is in my backyard and the hospital here has all her records and such. Try and get them while in another state.
Hi Russ, sorry to hear Tina is dealing with that - but though will miss seeing you family, of course, always comes first.
Take care,
Okay, so it's been more than a couple of weeks since a new update...
We've been in the new house since early March, but it's been whirlwind of craziness. However in the past month I've been able to start get back into the modeling groove. I even started benchwork for the newest version of the Southern New England.
And I decided to get back into building some models - which lead me straight to the storage tub of half-finished (started?) models I'd had in the apartment. At the very top of that tub was the smaller box containing the parts of Ben's mill.
First thing I did was spent an evening dry fitting the parts to remind myself how this thing is supposed to go together!
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/112-240918114935.jpeg)
This weekend I finally got started on the doors for the front ("street") side of the mill building:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/112-240918115014.jpeg)
Here's a closeup of the large doors - still need to add the rollers and hardware and attach the rails to the front wall of the building. I think the red door may be a little too much - I need to tone it down or paint it more like weathered wood.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/112-240918114859.jpeg)
Marty, I'm going to stop by the mill sometime in the next 2 weekends. If you need some reference photos, let me know.
Dan,
Thanks for the offer.
A few questions:
Did they ever rebuild/recreate any of the penstock structure on the river side of the building? The HAEBS photos show that section in such a dilapidated state to be virtually useless.
Although the HAEBS plans show a steam box assembly on the cider press end of the building, there's only one photo that really doesn't show much - any details on that? (I doubt they've restored it for the building - thought there might be a photo of some such of it in use)
Also, I'm curious about the type of roofing materials used - I know the main building was standing seam metal roofing and the blacksmith shop was corrugated - what about the cider press end?
Thanks!
Marty
Marty, the cider press is complete and is in the building. The penstock has been rebuilt in the cellar, I'll try to get photos of both. About the roofing, do want to know about the former or the latter?
Both former and latter... ;D ??
Thanks, I owe you a beer - you planning to be at Expo?
Marty,
The build is looking really good. Love the weathering.
Tom ;D
Tom,
Thanks - I still want to tweak the weathering a bit - once I add the "metal" components to the door - but basically I'm pleased.
Styrene is soooo much easier to work with than wood!
Marty
Quote from: CVSNE on September 25, 2018, 01:26:05 PM
Both former and latter... ;D ??
Thanks, I owe you a beer - you planning to be at Expo?
yep, I'll be there. Do you want a copy of the DVD which is the full hour documentary?
Quote from: Raymo on September 25, 2018, 03:43:37 PM
Quote from: CVSNE on September 25, 2018, 01:26:05 PM
Both former and latter... ;D ??
Thanks, I owe you a beer - you planning to be at Expo?
yep, I'll be there. Do you want a copy of the DVD which is the full hour documentary?
Sure. I've seen it on YouTube, but having a DVD copy would be nice. Let me know what I owe you for it.
Marty
Marty, they're 20 bucks. I'll grab one while I'm there.
Quote from: Raymo on September 26, 2018, 09:27:29 AM
Marty, they're 20 bucks. I'll grab one while I'm there.
Thanks Dan!
Marty
So I was able to stop by the mill to get some reference photos for Marty. The first photos show the new "Forepen"? which is the area where the water gets directed into the penstock. Because of the collapse of the foundation in this area, it was rebuilt with poured concrete probably for speed and cost. The penstock is behind the plywood and a trash grate would have been installed in front of it
Marty asked about the cider press that was restored in the mill. This is in the left side addition to the building. Behind the double doors on the ground floor is the scale (top photo) where the apples were weighed. They were then dropped down onto the press in the cellar through the chute on the upper right of the second photo. The table spun so the press could be making juice while more apples would drop down. The 3rd photo shows the press. In the background shows the new penstock.
This photo shows the drains and the collection pan
These photos show the pen stock and the turbine.
While in the cellar I took a photo of the 1920's Studebaker engine that was a back up power source. It's original placement was behind me where a newer "Korean War" era generator sits now. I found out that the last 4 years Ben had the mill, he used a belt hooked to a pulley on a John Deere tractor to run the mill.
Here's the photo
Here's a rear side photo of the mill. The generator is behind the wood door
The addition on the right side that is still the weathered wood is where the forge area is. This area is different then Marty's model. I think there was a covered stairwell on the back side here as can be seen by the grey shadowing.
This little door under the forge area reminds me of that little door you might see on a Fine Scale kit. If you go back to the photo of the engine you'll see the back side of this door.
This photo shows the current roof on the building. The building had an older metal roof before this one.
These photos show what's left of the dam and the forepen area.
This is a photo of a photo that was on a bulletin board on the property. It shows a couple other buildings to the left of the mill around mid 20th century.
And the last photo shows the house across the street that was Ben's.
Hope these help Marty...
Dan,
Thanks for all the photos. I'm sure many of us, not just Marty, will reap the benefits of your trip to Ben Thresher's mill.
Marty:
You are doing a great job with this. Thanks for all the great photos. I'm enjoying your build.
Quote from: Raymo on October 02, 2018, 08:31:25 PM
Hope these help Marty...
Dan,
HUGE help - really appreciate it.
I might have to rethink the blacksmith shop river side walls - since there's more detail there that's not really in the pre-production kit.
Is Russ going to be at the Expo? Might give me an incentive to finish this up by then.
Marty
Quote from: postalkarl on October 03, 2018, 08:28:24 AM
Marty:
You are doing a great job with this. Thanks for all the great photos. I'm enjoying your build.
Thanks Karl, means a lot coming from such a talented structure builder!
I have let the model get ahead of the photos on the thread - the roofs are just about done but I haven't glued all the walls together quite yet. As I mentioned in my reply to Dan, his photos have me thinking that I might want to "tweak" the blacksmith shop area slightly.
Marty
Quote from: CVSNE on October 03, 2018, 10:43:03 AM
Quote from: Raymo on October 02, 2018, 08:31:25 PM
Hope these help Marty...
Dan,
HUGE help - really appreciate it.
I might have to rethink the blacksmith shop river side walls - since there's more detail there that's not really in the pre-production kit.
Is Russ going to be at the Expo? Might give me an incentive to finish this up by then.
Marty
Marty, Russ is on the list of Vendors.