When Dan first posted his thread for the Challenge, I signed up, though I mentioned my start would be delayed while I worked to finish up some rolling stock that I was building. The boxcars are not done, but I decided to set them aside while I make a start on the Challenge.
Normal start to a build thread, photos of the kit contents. You can see that Ken encloses some general tips as well as a specific instruction sheet and an additional sheet showing the bracing pattern.
Jerry,
I'll be following along. This is a neat kit. I'll be starting two of KC's kits later next week.
Tom ;D
Thanks for joining the challenge. KC's Workshop is now represented...
Jerry
Welcome to the challenge - I will be following along.
Tom, Dan, and John,
I haven't done a build thread in way too long. Thanks for following along.
This kit has a sheet of general suggestions regarding tools, painting tips, weathering, etc. There are several pages of kit specific instructions, along with several color photos. All the strip wood is color coded with a key supplied, something I find a time saver. There is also a diagram showing where the bracing is located.
The instruction sheet indicates the bracing is 1/8" square. My kit had 5/32 square bracing. Thinking bigger is better, I jumped right in and started bracing the sides with the 5/32" square pieces according to the diagram.
I should have checked further before I went crazy with the glue and clamps. The window in wall A2 next to the front doors is only 7/32" from the edge of the wall. So, even with 1/8" bracing, the two pieces where the corner comes together add up to 1/4" (8/32") so things don't fit. What I should have done was planned ahead and used one piece of 1/8" bracing and a piece of 3/32" bracing. You can see from the photo how I used some short pieces of bracing to "fix" my "bull in a china shop" approach.
When looking at the photo, remember that the bracing pattern is shown as if the wall is transparent, while the inside of the actual wall is shown.
One other change I made to the initial bracing is I used a piece of 3/32" square bracing between the man door and the garage doors. The instructions call for 1/16" square, but since I had already managed to clumsily break the small wall section clean off, I thought some heavier bracing was a good idea when gluing the broken piece in place.
Once I finished up the bracing, things got easier and more fun.
Next up was prepping the windows and walls prior to adding some color. I removed the windows from the sprues using my trusty sprue cutter. Once that was done, I touched up the edges with an emery board and stuck them to a piece of masking tape on an old flattened cereal box. The windows were sprayed with a rattle can of Valspar Hunter green flat.
With the windows done and set aside to dry, I moved on to the walls. I used the wire brush shown in the last post to lightly scratch the walls. I wanted to add a little texture to the walls without making them look like the building was on its last legs.
I followed this with a coat of Dr. Ben's Driftwood stain. Once this dried, I added a coat of my light (one teaspoon per bottle) A/I mix.
Ken has a nice selection of Dr. Ben's stains as well as some of Rusty Rail Rick's castings available through his website. Usual disclaimer required by the "other forum", I have no interest of any kind in KC's, just a satisfied customer.
Coming along fine Jerry , thanks for sharing.
That's a very nice color Jerry.
Following along Jerry. Thinking of doing this structure myself, but in O scale.
Quote from: Janbouli on January 23, 2018, 08:08:00 AM
Coming along fine Jerry , thanks for sharing.
Jan,
Thanks for following along,
Quote from: PRR Modeler on January 23, 2018, 09:28:19 AM
That's a very nice color Jerry.
Curt,
I bought the Dr. Ben's to replace the old Floquil Driftwood. I use it as a base coat, and in this case, as the final color. It seems to be alcohol based, at least that is what I use to thin it for different effects, and it seems to work OK.
Quote from: Donato on January 23, 2018, 01:53:22 PM
Following along Jerry. Thinking of doing this structure myself, but in O scale.
Donato,
Pretty basic stuff so far, some tips on changes I made to the basic kit coming up. Great structure, lots of possibilities, build it, you'll like it!
One of the issues I have with doing a build thread is not documenting each step with a photo. That happened with this thread, so I went back and recreated the missing photos.
The kit includes some beautiful laser cut garage doors. I have used similar doors in the past, but these doors really make me think of a later time frame than the 1920 period I model. I decided to save the kit doors for another structure, and fabricate some simple doors for this building.
Here's a shot of the kit doors.
I have a plastic shoebox full of leftover sheet wood from kits, as well as pieces left from scratch building projects. I dug through the box and found some scribed siding that looked like it would fit the bill. If I am going to build a pair of closed doors I use 1/16 thick sheet wood, open doors get thinner 1/32 stock. I built a set from each thickness for this structure.
First, I cut the sheet to size, being careful to have a groove where the center of the doors would be.
Next, I use a permanent marker to color this groove black. This will look like a shadow where the doors meet, and helps me to know exact center without measuring again.
I have a box of left over strip wood, too, and dug through it to find some pieces 2x6 material. Using 1" thick strip wood would be more to scale, but I used the two inch to make the boards stand out and give them a little more depth.
The digital caliper is priceless when sizing odd pieces of strip wood. It is one of my most used tools.
Sorry. I meant to post the photo of the sheet wood door material as part of the previous post.
Moving on. I save the gloss finish junk mail cards and cut them into smaller squares. I use them to hold dabs of glue or paint. I placed a small blob of white glue on the card and then used the dowel with the brass wire to apply glue to the strip wood while holding each piece by the corner with my tweezers.
The top and bottom boards go on first across the width of the doors to hold the individual boards represented by the sheet wood together.
Next I add the vertical boards, then the center boards. I find the doors look better if the center boards are actually slightly below the center.
At this point, the doors are complete. If I had used the 1/32 sheet for two separate doors, now would be when I would cut them apart and dress the edges with an emery board. Since these are meant to model a pair of closed doors, they are almost done. I say almost because I ended up with a wider gap in the center than I had intended. So, I added what I would call a "weather board" that covers the gap between the doors to keep out the weather. I used a 1x6 from my spare strip wood box. This board would attach to one of the doors, so would be offset slightly between the doors. The board I used just happened to have bees stained gray for another project.
The second photo shows the doors I just built along with the doors for this structure.
So, now this thread should be caught up to where it left off before I realized I had missed some steps.
That's a a cool scratch built door tutorial with leftover materials. I'll have to give that a try.....
Thanks!
Jerry,
Great thread and really a nice freight door. I've always found a use for spare pieces of wood from kits. Very good tutorial on how and why as well.
Thanks for sharing.
Tom ;D
Bobby & Tom,
Thanks for your nice comments regarding how I build doors. Obviously, the sky's the limit when building these simple doors. It is easy to add diagonal bracing, "X" bracing, small windows, etc.
I've posted a photo of a pair of Railroad Kits garages that I changed the doors on, overhead doors not exactly fitting for my era and locale. The two bay garage with the sliding door had a spare piece of clapboard glued into one door opening. The vertical seam is hidden by the door stop on the left, the covered track hides the top seam.
OK. Now that I think I have covered the steps I failed to photograph when I was working on them, I'll try to move on, and keep everything in order.
After I stained the walls with the Dr. Ben's driftwood stain, I marked them every scale 2 feet and used my Dr. Ben's nail hole tool to add the holes/heads. I do this step later than most modelers because the impressions from this tool, which is actually a very fine saw blade with a handle, will swell from the stain, and thus disappear.
The second shot is one of the walls using my flash to show there actually are impressions in the walls.
The dark green I sprayed the windows seemed too dark against the walls, and looked unrealistic to me. I drybrushed the window frames with some Delta Ceramcoat Mudstone. I have found this is a very close match to the driftwood stain.
Once that was done, I cut the acetate window "glass" to size and glued it in place using Testors Clear Parts Cement. The Testors has a very small nozzle and I can apply it directly to the window casting. I didn't take any photos of the windows prior to gluing them into the walls.
Jerry
I'm getting caught up on all the other build threads going on tonight. Amazing how much is going on. Your build is coming along real nice. Love the door.
John,
Thanks for following along and your nice comment.
I decided to use this structure as a farm machinery dealer, so I searched the internet for some suitable signs. I saved the ones I chose, re-sized them to fit onto the structure and printed them out on regular printer paper. I cut them from the sheet somewhat oversize and then used some 180 grit sandpaper to carefully thin the paper. The trick to this is to pull the paper toward you while holding the far side of the paper securely with the fingers of your other hand. Turn the paper every few strokes to keep from sanding through in one spot. Once I thought the paper was thin enough to easily mold to the clapboards, I cut the signs to size. I used a new sharp scalpel blade to avoid tearing the paper. The next step is to use a gray marker to color the edges of the signs. Slide the side of the marker tip along the edge of the sign working from the back of the sign. Try to do this in one swipe if possible, otherwise the paper fibers wick up too much ink from the marker and it bleeds into the front edges of the sign.
I use roughly a 50:50 mix of white glue and water brushed onto the back of the sign. I lay the sign on a sheet of glass face down and work carefully to avoid getting glue on the face of the sign. Once I have the sign located on the wall, I very carefully use the flat end of the burnishing tool pictured to push the sign into the clapboard. By using the tool I can better see what is happening with the sign, thus making sure it stays straight and does not move on the wall. Once I have it positioned and fitting against the grooves in the siding, I switch to using a thumbnail to really get it to lay down. Should one corner not adhere completely, I lift it carefully with the scalpel blade and then use the wire in a dowel pictured earlier in the thread to apply a very small amount of glue.
The small tractor sign is not pressed into the clapboard since I wanted it to be an metal sign. I dulled it with some gray chalk, but did not rust it as it is modeled as a new sign.
After the glue holding the signs was dry, I glued the windows and plastic door casting into the wall openings using Aleene's tacky Glue. I like to use it for this because it is thicker than similar glues and works well if the windows fit loosely in the openings.
Looks good Jerry.
Curt,
Thank you for your nice comment.
Time to assemble the walls. The instructions give the sequence for this assembly. If you do it that way, it comes out nice and square.
Once the walls were together I checked out the roof. Ken provides two pieces for the roof, both cut from .020 chipboard. The instructions simply tell you to glue it in place. I was worried about getting a solid structure at the peak simply gluing the two pieces together. I can be somewhat ham-fisted and I doubted I could apply the roofing without breaking the glue joint along the peak. I decided to add two large pieces of bracing, one on each side of the peak to support the roof. With the bracing in place, I test fit the two roof cards. I found the one that covers the addition had a wider overhang along the gable than the overhang on the other roof gables. That offended my sense of order, so I trimmed that roof card to have a uniform gable overhang on the entire roof.
Once that was done, I drew some lines across the roof cards to help me get the asphalt roll roofing on straight. Then I glued the roof cards to the building, holding them in place with a couple bags of ballast.
Included in the kit is some black material to use for asphalt roll roofing. I grabbed my straight edge and a scalpel and cut it into 3 foot width strips. I applied transfer tape to the roofs, cutting the tape oversize and trimming to length by laying the building upside down on my cutting pad and going along the gable edge with the scalpel. Next up, expose the adhesive of the transfer tape and apply the roofing, overlapping slightly at the seams. Doug Foscale lets his roofing overlap slightly on the eaves and gable ends of his display models. I like that look, so copied it on this structure.
Jerry
Your build is coming along very nice. I like the colors and I have a special place in my heart for John Deere. I started my Engineering career working for them - great company.
Quote from: S&S RR on February 06, 2018, 09:31:35 PM
Jerry
Your build is coming along very nice. I like the colors and I have a special place in my heart for John Deere. I started my Engineering career working for them - great company.
John,
Thanks for your nice comment. FWIW, I have John Deere moldboard plows. They turn a better furrow and pull easier than any others I have used. Looking forward to spring when I can put them to good use.
Great start Jerry, but I'm a little late to the game.....I'll be watching. :)
Quote from: GPdemayo on February 07, 2018, 08:29:12 AM
Great start Jerry, but I'm a little late to the game.....I'll be watching. :)
Greg,
Welcome. Glad to have you looking on.
Hi Jerry:
It's coming aong quite nicely. great signs.
Karl
Karl,
Thanks for the compliment. I learned a lot about using signs from following your threads.
Jerry,
Looks like you are doing a jack up job on the Jack Em Up Tire build. ;D ;D
Well done.
Tom ;D
Quote from: ACL1504 on February 09, 2018, 09:34:53 AM
Jerry,
Looks like you are doing a jack up job on the Jack Em Up Tire build. ;D ;D
Well done.
Tom ;D
Tom,
Thanks for your nice comment.
This build has taken a back seat to the layout, but I did make a little more progress. The rafter tails and gable fly rafters are done. The underside of the roof card is painted, even though the lighting makes it look like it is not.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I took a break from this build to work on my layout. Once I had the track down, I placed some structures on the layout to get a sense of how my village scene might come together. I had originally planned to have a couple stores along the road that crossed the tracks.
However, after switching some out a few of the structures, I was struck by the idea of a "wrong side of the tracks" concept. I began to envision the somewhat less desirable commercial enterprises on the other side of the tracks from the stores and residences. Once that idea fell into place, I realized that a machinery dealer, livery, and so forth would be ideal business on the wrong side of the tracks. This structure fit perfectly next to the junction of two roads with its doors on two walls of the building. The only problem was that I had originally intended to use a small shadowbox inside one pair of doors that were barely cracked open. The building was now going to be located along the front edge of the layout, so I needed to rethink the interior. I had already used some heavy strip wood to brace the walls, and now was faced with how to if not hide the bracing, at least draw the viewer's attention away from it.
I started by building a large storage cabinet tha would cover two of the braces along the rear wall. I followed that with a smaller cabinet that would be placed over a workbench. The workbench was shortened on both ends to fit the available space. I felt that the bracing was still to prominent, so I added a "bench" of sorts along the wall to the right of the doors. I believe both benches are Rusty Rail Rick resin castings. I painted some wood grain onto the cabinets using a dry brush, and used appropriate colors to paint the individual tools, cans, books, etc., on the benches well enough for them to be apparent, but not as well as if they were to be viewed closely. As you can see, I then attached the details to the inside walls.
Hi Jerry, I'm new here so just catching up on all the neat projects on the go. Your build is coming along nicely , I've been there before with the bracing hicup. ;D
Hi Jerry:
Thanks. Yeah I'm a sign freak. I have a sing collection that is probably larger than most people have. I still collect new ones if I can fine them.
Anyway thanks again.
Karl
Quote from: Lynnb on March 19, 2018, 01:50:32 PM
Hi Jerry, I'm new here so just catching up on all the neat projects on the go. Your build is coming along nicely , I've been there before with the bracing hicup. ;D
Lynn,
Thanks for stopping by and your nice comment. I hope to have fewer issues in the future with bracing causing issues with my interiors now that I have started a layout. In the past I built structures without knowing where they would ultimately end up being sited.
Quote from: postalkarl on March 19, 2018, 03:18:41 PM
Hi Jerry:
Thanks. Yeah I'm a sign freak. I have a sing collection that is probably larger than most people have. I still collect new ones if I can fine them.
Anyway thanks again.
Karl
Karl,
I learned a great deal about signs from following your threads. Here is one I used on this structure, and one I decided didn't quite convey the image I wanted for the building.
If there is one thing I am good at it is forgetting to take photos of all the steps in a build thread. So, there are no photos of the roofing when it was finished, nor are there any pics of it being dry-brushed or weathered further with chalks. I also forgot to take any pics of the chimney being painted and installed.
I did take a photo of the floor with the Woodland Scenics tractor that lurks inside the open doors. This tractor is about 8 years too new for my 1920 layout date, i bought a few of these tractors when they were pretty much the only option anywhere clost to my modeling era other than a Jordan or Wheel Works Fordson. Since Athearn came out with their series of Waterloo Boy tractors, I decided to hide this JD model A tractor inside the building. If you look closely, you will see that I have substituted a Tichy brake wheel for the original steering wheel. This model took a floor fall within minutes of its completion courtesy of my (late) cat Monster and the steering wheel was never found.
As you can see clearly, I'm a low tech kind of guy, especially where lighting is concerned. The light is provided by one of a string of battery powered LED Christmas lights. The lens is coated with Tamiya clear yellow acrylic. My thanks to Tom (ACL1504) for the tip about the paint I saw on his thread.
If you look closely you can see the cabinets and benches that were installed in the interior. Unfortunately, my camera is autofocus only, so the interior is pretty blurry.
Final photos wraps up this thread.
Those that look closely will see that after I took these photos, I re-positioned the right hand door and opened it more to allow a better view of the interior.
Excellent work Jerry..... 8)
Jerry,
I agree with my northern brother Greg, well done.
Tom ;D
Looks good, for the roofing did you paint the felt ? I once did a roof using masking tape and painted it with a thinned down Box Car red and then finished with some weathering powders and it looked similar to your roof.
Love what ya did with the ole' place !
Quote from: GPdemayo on March 20, 2018, 08:36:49 AM
Excellent work Jerry..... 8)
Greg,
Thank you. Compliments are always welcome!
Quote from: ACL1504 on March 20, 2018, 08:41:15 AM
Jerry,
I agree with my northern brother Greg, well done.
Tom ;D
Tom,
Thanks for stopping in. I appreciate your kind words.
Nice work.
Jeff
Quote from: Lynnb on March 20, 2018, 04:59:37 PM
Looks good, for the roofing did you paint the felt ? I once did a roof using masking tape and painted it with a thinned down Box Car red and then finished with some weathering powders and it looked similar to your roof.
Lynn,
I used the roofing that Ken included in the kit. Once I had it in place, I followed my usual technique of dry brushing with a lighter color to make the edges stand out. Once that is done, I use multiple chalks. IIRC, this roof got a couple grays as well as a dark brown.
Quote from: Amagic41 on March 20, 2018, 05:18:58 PM
Love what ya did with the ole' place !
Ken,
Thanks for looking in.
I enjoyed this kit, it is well designed, the parts fit perfectly, it was a pleasure to build. It has so many possibilities for various commercial uses. The icing on the cake is the budget friendly price.
Quote from: Zephyrus52246 on March 23, 2018, 09:00:05 AM
Nice work.
Jeff
Thanks, Jeff. Always nice to have someone appreciate my efforts.