Hi All,
After an extended time away from modeling and a recent blood clot in my left handed that threatened the loss of three of my fingers, I wasn't sure if I could still build anything. So the decision was made to find a small basic kit to build and see what happens. So I decided to build the H.J. Simpson Feed & Seed kit from Bar Mills. As with most of my projects, there maybe a change or two to the design using my modelers license where I see fit. So lets get started.
My projects usually start with the kit and my sketchbook. I find that if I can visualize what I am going to build then I have a pretty good chance of hitting the mark. So here is a photo of the kit I am going to build and the design sketches for the finished model.
Here are a couple photos of whats in the kit.
Before I get to far into the build I would like to talk about my workbench. As you can see it's nothing more that a small tray built out of Masonite and 1X2 on a folding table in my living room. The point here is that you don't need a large workbench to get started as most of my kit building happens in this small space. And since this is portable, I can take it upstairs and watch my Seahawk football games while I put together something for my railroad.
And of course, it's now time to introduce you to the most valuable modeling tool ever created. Those of you who are veterans of the forum will recognize the significance of adding this to your model building toolbox.
Great to see you back at it!
Will be following along.
I will be following.
Quote from: Bruce Oberleitner on September 30, 2018, 01:43:31 PM
And of course, it's now time to introduce you to the most valuable modeling tool ever created. Those of you who are veterans of the forum will recognize the significance of adding this to your model building toolbox.
Cousin Brucie,
Amen brother to the libatious drink of choice.
And, I'll happily follow along on this adventure. Great to see you back in the saddle for this one.
Tom ;D
I'm certainly glad to see you back at it Bruce! :D I'll be following along.
I like your setup. I have limited space as well and I am quite fortunate that my wife allows me to keep a rolling workbench in the living room. ;) I only have to wheel it into a spare room whenever we're expecting company. :P
Hot dog.....Bruce is back.....I'll be watching. 8)
I'm along for the ride, too, Bruce.
Bruce,
I can relate all too well. A few short years ago I was hit by a tree while skidding logs out of the woods. I broke my arm and my wrist. I had pins in my wrist and thumb and required two surgeries on my upper arm to repair the damage. Each surgery exacerbated the nerve damage to the point where the surgeon was sure I had lost the use of my thumb. I am happy to say that is not the case, but I struggled for a long time. I worked to regain my lost fine motor skills by building several smaller kits. One of the kits just happened to be Simpson's Feed & Seed.
Thank all of you for your friendship and support. I can't tell you how happy you've made me to know that I have so many wonderful friends around the country. It's a bit strange coming back as this is my first thread on this forum. All the other threads were on that other forum of which we no longer speak of....
Quote from: Dave K. on September 30, 2018, 02:16:11 PM
Great to see you back at it!
Thanks Dave! It's good to be back at the workbench again. It's also amazing how much it's decreased my blood pressure and stress levels.
Quote from: Janbouli on September 30, 2018, 03:02:43 PM
Will be following along.
Thanks. I hope you find a tip or two that you can include in your model building along the way.
Quote from: PRR Modeler on September 30, 2018, 03:59:26 PM
I will be following.
Glad to have you on board. Cheapest train ride ticket ever.
Quote from: ACL1504 on October 01, 2018, 01:16:47 PM
Quote from: Bruce Oberleitner on September 30, 2018, 01:43:31 PM
And of course, it's now time to introduce you to the most valuable modeling tool ever created. Those of you who are veterans of the forum will recognize the significance of adding this to your model building toolbox.
Cousin Brucie,
Amen brother to the libatious drink of choice.
And, I'll happily follow along on this adventure. Great to see you back in the saddle for this one.
Tom ;D
Thank you Tom. And thank you for all your support and your amazing model building threads. I've already
stolen borrowed many ideas from you and written them down in my model building notebooks. I loved your recently tip about using a mailing envelop sticky top for roof caps. And as for the drink, Let the Diet Pepsi flow!
Quote from: ReadingBob on October 01, 2018, 02:29:00 PM
I'm certainly glad to see you back at it Bruce! :D I'll be following along.
I like your setup. I have limited space as well and I am quite fortunate that my wife allows me to keep a rolling workbench in the living room. ;) I only have to wheel it into a spare room whenever we're expecting company. :P
Hi Ya Bob!
Glad to hear that you like the workbench. I've included a couple more photos of it here so you can get a better idea of how it's built. The surface is 1/4 Masonite that about 30" long by 24" wide. I surrounded the edges with 1"x2" pine and along the back I made a large slot like space to store my favorite Apple Barrel paints from Micheal's. One thing that's neat about this idea is that it's cheap to build and you can build a couple of them to do specific chores. I have one that's designed to work on freight cars and has slots to hold packages of Kadee couplers. You could even build one to do electric work on (IE soldering) or maybe track building with fast track jigs. The sky is kind of the limit here.
Quote from: GPdemayo on October 01, 2018, 02:36:32 PM
Hot dog.....Bruce is back.....I'll be watching. 8)
Thanks! it really feels good to be back. Hard to believe its been years since my last thread. Where does the time go?
Quote from: Opa George on October 01, 2018, 04:41:58 PM
I'm along for the ride, too, Bruce.
Opa George,
Glad to see another happy ticket holder! I've been having a lot of fun with this little structure so it just goes to show you that you don't always have to build something big to have a great time.
Quote from: jerryrbeach on October 03, 2018, 08:36:24 AM
Bruce,
I can relate all too well. A few short years ago I was hit by a tree while skidding logs out of the woods. I broke my arm and my wrist. I had pins in my wrist and thumb and required two surgeries on my upper arm to repair the damage. Each surgery exacerbated the nerve damage to the point where the surgeon was sure I had lost the use of my thumb. I am happy to say that is not the case, but I struggled for a long time. I worked to regain my lost fine motor skills by building several smaller kits. One of the kits just happened to be Simpson's Feed & Seed.
Jerry,
I am so glad to hear that your where able to re-gain your modeling building skills. I think for me the hardest part was just getting to the workbench, sitting down and start building something because my fear was pretty great. I was scared and the last thing I wanted to find out was that I couldn't do any model building any more. So I think I avoided the bench just because of that reason. I am glad to say that my hand has re-gained all functionally and I only lost some feeling in the tips of my fingers which I can deal with.
Your version of the structure is very, very nicely done. As it turns out, I've built this guy before but it was pretty heavily modified the last time I built it. I will have to go downstairs and take a few picture of that model and include it in this thread.
So first up is to brace all of the structure walls with 1/8" square basswood. This is stronger stuff than balsa wood and you can usually find it next to the balsa at your local hobby shop. There are two good ways to cut basswood. One is to use a single edged razor blade where you lightly press it into the wood, then turn it 90 degrees, press it into the word again and repeat this until the basswood is cut all the way thru the wood. Another is to use a Northwest Chopper tool. Either way works great. I find this easier than using an Xacto knife for this task. As you can see from the photos I cut the wood long and trim it after the glue has dried. I tend to add extra bracing so I may have used some extra 1/8" basswood that wasn't included in the kit.
Something to note on bracing. If you look at the side wall sections of the structure, the bracing is recessed back 1/8" from the edge of the wall. This is to allow the structure to be put together when you glue all the walls together. A quick test fit with a rubber band ensures that everything is going to fit together later on in the structure build.
For years there has been a major debate in our hobby about what type of glue to use to build structures with. I use Aleens Fast Grab tacky glue. This stuff is a bit thicker then the regular Aleens glue and dries in about 10 minutes giving you time to adjust your model parts as needed. Over the years I've found that this stuff will glue lot of different materials together like wood to metal, plastic to wood. I can do this without resorting to CA glue which I always seem to make a mess out of. Just remember to look for the purple bottle and you can usually find this at your local Micheal's store.
Now that the bracing is finished it's time to prep the model for painting. For this model I chose to use Art Fahie's method and I just spray painted it with gray primer paint out of a rattle can. My paint booth is an old pizza box and I just tape the part down to the box with blue painters tape and have at it in the backyard. This is a great project to do during half time of your favorite football game as the paint takes about 30 minutes to dry. Here's what the model looked like after the spray painting.
At this point, I did a little project while I was waiting for the primer paint to dry. I had written down in my model building notebook another stolen borrowed idea this time from John Seikirk. I remembered seeing a painting caddy that he had build using some simple scraps of wood. So this is my version. It's nothing more that a 1"x4" pine board with 1/4" x 1/2" basswood glued around the back of the board to hold the paints in. Sort of works like the back row of my workbench. See photos.
Another thing that I find helpful to do is to make up a paint reference card for each of my models. This way if I ever need to fix the model because I dropped it or if I would like to paint another model in the same colors, I don't have to try to recall this information from memory. That's a good thing since I sometimes think my memory has more holes in it than swiss cheese!
And with that, it's time for a Diet Pepsi break.
Painting
For this structure I chose the following paint colors.
Walls Apple Barrel #20528 Leaf Green
Trim Apple Barrel #20756 English Ivy Green
Wood Folk Art #942 Honeycomb
Door PP Antique Mum
Here's what it looked like after painting.
I then painted the window and door castings. Note that I spray painted them with the primer paint at the same time I did the walls. Here's what some of the windows looked like.
At this point I proceeded to work on putting the signs on the walls. I used George Sellios technique here in that I cut out the paper signs with a sharp Xacto #11 blade. Then I lightly sand the front and back of the sign with an Emory board. Why sand the front you say? Well, that gives the sign a faded look to it. I then glue the signs to the walls with the fast grab tacky glue and then rub the sign with my finger to set the sign into the clapboard siding. I prefer to do this while I can still lay each wall flat on the workbench. Once each side is done with signs, I use pastel chalks to weather the structure by streaking the chalk from the top of the walls down the side of the building using a paint brush. When this was finished, I glued the four walls together and you can see the structure in the following photo.
Time for yet another Diet Pepsi break. Is this really a building thread or is it just a giant ad for Diet Pepsi? Even I don't know....
Bruce,
Looks great! Neat, clean construction, nice color choices, looks like you were never away from the modeling bench. I like the index card idea. I may steal, er, borrow it.
Given how detailed this thread is and the constant references to diet Pepsi I am wondering... Are you really Bruce or is this Tom in disguise???
Cousin Brucie and I are the first and only members in good standing of the Diet Pepsi Brotherhood.
Tom ;D
Really nicely done Bruce.
Quote from: jerryrbeach on October 04, 2018, 08:40:49 AM
Bruce,
Looks great! Neat, clean construction, nice color choices, looks like you were never away from the modeling bench. I like the index card idea. I may steal, er, borrow it.
Given how detailed this thread is and the constant references to diet Pepsi I am wondering... Are you really Bruce or is this Tom in disguise???
Borrowing is always a good thing.
And no, I am not Tom and he is not me. But we don seem to think alike on lots of things. We've been friends since we were both posting threads on that other forum that we no longer talk about.
Quote from: ACL1504 on October 04, 2018, 09:47:37 AM
Cousin Brucie and I are the first and only members in good standing of the Diet Pepsi Brotherhood.
Tom ;D
Long live the Brotherhood!
Quote from: PRR Modeler on October 04, 2018, 10:07:45 AM
Really nicely done Bruce.
Thank you!
One of the things that surprised me was how easy it was to do once I got started again. I just seem to be falling into the old groove. Now if only I can meet my deadline of October 27,2018. That's when our local NMRA is having it's next model building meet.
BTW, here are some pictures of that other build I did of this structure. I added a loading dock for hay bales to this project.
More photos
Diet Pepsi Brotherhood... ! ! ! !
Huh ! ! ! !
I wouldn't be a part of any organization that would have me as a member.
see ya
Bob
Great modeling Bob.
Quote from: bparrish on October 08, 2018, 08:40:41 PM
Diet Pepsi Brotherhood... ! ! ! !
Huh ! ! ! !
I wouldn't be a part of any organization that would have me as a member.
see ya
Bob
Just you wait. Tom and I will sign you up with the Brotherhood. Care to guess what's involved for initiation?
Guzzle, Guzzle, Guzzle
;D ;D 8)
Brucie,
Wonder why my brother-in-law Bruce never got tagged with that moniker? His Size, maybe.?
Regardless, it's great to see you back. Glad there was no loss of limbs/digits and even more glad there was no loss of your sense of humor nor writing flair.
Please keep up the great work and the pictures, as we like pictures.
So I am back after a small Diet Pepsi break
;D ;D ;D
Great modeling! I have never had a Diet Pepsi- seriously!
So at this point I put the card stock roof on the building and she looked like this.
I decided to let the glue dry on the main structure and I turned my attention to the back yard fence. This is a wonderful product also made by Bar-Mills called "Insta Fence" which is available on their website. The kit includes four section of fencing, fence post, signs and instructions as shown in the photos.
Quote from: rpdylan on October 14, 2018, 11:39:27 AM
Great modeling! I have never had a Diet Pepsi- seriously!
Well, we are just going to have to change that....
Hehe
;D ;D ;D
Fence construction is pretty straightforward. Just glue the posts onto the back on the laser cut fence and your basically done. See Photos.
So now it's time to introduce you to a new tool I've been playing around with on my workbench. Anyone care to guess what this is used for? And no Tom, it's not a Diet Pepsi can holder. Well, wait a minute, maybe your one to something.
Actually, I use this to square up building walls when I glue them together. It's nothing more than a scrap of 1/4" Masonite with some 1/4" x 1/2" basswood glued along the edges. A small carpenters square was used to ensure that the basswood parts were truly square on the Masonite. I used this jig to glue up my two sections of fencing as shown in the photo. Once the glue dried, I test fitted the building and fence to see how things were shaping up on my model.
Quote from: PRR Modeler on October 08, 2018, 08:42:57 PM
Great modeling Bob.
Thank you. Like I said it's good to know that I can still build models after all of my health issues.
Quote from: BandOGuy on October 09, 2018, 07:47:08 AM
Brucie,
Wonder why my brother-in-law Bruce never got tagged with that moniker? His Size, maybe.?
Regardless, it's great to see you back. Glad there was no loss of limbs/digits and even more glad there was no loss of your sense of humor nor writing flair.
Please keep up the great work and the pictures, as we like pictures.
I was pretty scared for a while back in June when my hand turned purple and I had to go to the ER for surgery. Kind of puts a new perspective on things. Glad to hear that you like my dry sense of humor. It's what keeps me sane these days that's for sure....
Cousin Brucie,
Love the squaring jig you made. I bought one of the metal ones from Micro Mark, you know the one with magnets? I never use it.
Build and fence looking good.
Tom ;D
Great product.
Quote from: ACL1504 on October 14, 2018, 02:29:46 PM
Cousin Brucie,
Love the squaring jig you made. I bought one of the metal ones from Micro Mark, you know the one with magnets? I never use it.
Build and fence looking good.
Tom ;D
Thanks Tom. The jig has become pretty handy. I thought it up back when I rehabbed a structure from the McCosh estate sale. I find that the small size is handy since it does take up a lot of space on the workbench when I need square up some walls.
Quote from: PRR Modeler on October 14, 2018, 02:43:31 PM
Great product.
Ya, I think it works pretty good. I happen to be starring at some scraps around my workbench and was thinking about the metallic Micro Mark jig that they sell for squaring model structure walls. And Bingo! Next thing I knew I put one of these together.
I have the Micro Mark metal box. It is rather large and eats space. So your custom built job, smaller for your bench area is ideal. I'll keep that in mind and when generating smaller sections of lumber and such, put one together.
Working on my first Bar Mills structure(s) using the Shack Pack in N. Thus far, happy to see the procedures I've used are in line with the techniques you've detailed. Has to be thrilling that your dexterity is still with you. I'm an all-thumbs guy and often wonder if I'm cut out to what I'd like to accomplish in this hobby. Glad to report I've noticed the old "practice makes perfect" refrain is in play for me.
Quote from: Blazeman on October 19, 2018, 08:51:28 AM
I have the Micro Mark metal box. It is rather large and eats space. So your custom built job, smaller for your bench area is ideal. I'll keep that in mind and when generating smaller sections of lumber and such, put one together.
Working on my first Bar Mills structure(s) using the Shack Pack in N. Thus far, happy to see the procedures I've used are in line with the techniques you've detailed. Has to be thrilling that your dexterity is still with you. I'm an all-thumbs guy and often wonder if I'm cut out to what I'd like to accomplish in this hobby. Glad to report I've noticed the old "practice makes perfect" refrain is in play for me.
Bar Mills does an outstanding job of making kits. I got to meet Artie when they had the NMRA national convention out here in Portland Oregon a few years back. Great Guy and his structure kits are wonderful to put together.
As for being all thumbs, I think the first couple of times you do anything new I think most of us are "all thumbs". The line you quoted "Practice makes perfect" has a lot of true to it. Another thing that I sort of preach around here is to start with smaller kits and build your way up to bigger kits.
As yes, learning that the dexterity is still there has been a real blessing. Thank God for my good fortune!
At this point in the build it was time to do another small test to see what the final project will look like.
Next up was to build the new loading platform around the building. I decided to "Flip" the orientation of the platform from my original sketch as I felt this made the overall scene look better. So I started by making the two longer sections of the platform. I drew the plan on to a 3"X5" index card and built them flat on the workbench. I believe in my case these ended up to be 4'x28'x4' in scale dimensions. While the glue dried for these first two sections, I went ahead and started building the middle section.
One thing I will mention is that when I built these sections of the loading dock, I just sort of winged the dimension and the placement of those center supports. Since the deck was going to be covered with wood, I didn't place them at exactly 4' intervals.
Now that the test fit of the platform around the structure looked good, it was time to add the legs to the platform. Using a Chopper tool, I quickly was able to produce a number of legs that were 3' scale feet high. This with the platform and boards brought the entire thing up to 4' high. I did built this thing upside down as it was easier to do put this together this way then trying to stand the thing up on the legs. This is where the Fast Grab tacky glue is great because the legs stick to the platform when I put them in place. From there is was just a matter of waiting about 10 minutes for the Fast grab glue to dry.
So the next thing to do was to cut a bunch of 4' wide planks to cover the loading dock with on the long ends of the platform. While I was working on this, I decided to cut the 4 longer boards on the middle end of the platform and glue them in place just to make the entire thing more stable while I was working on its construction. Not shown in the photos is that once I reached photo #2 I started alternating the placement of the 4' boards. This way if there was an odd gap in my boards it would be in the center on the long sections of the platform. I find it's easier to fix the placement if I do it this way. And remember I mentioned that the Fast grab glue takes about ten minutes to setup. This is really great here in case you need to re-adjust some of the board placement to squeeze one more board into the mix.
At this point, I just had to play with the thing a bit. I dusted the platform with some brown weather chalks and added some Woodland scenic figures from the "Workers with Forklift Set A1911". I didn't use the entire set as I just wanted a few folks around the building to make it look alive.
Really nice modeling Bruce.
Lovely small structure Bruce , thanks for sharing.
Well done Bruce..... 8)
You're making a nice scene out of a nice little kit.
Thank you all. I've been a bit slowed down here due to side effects to medication but should be back to posting again real soon.
What I find interesting about how this is coming together is that the overall base is only 10"Lx6"W X 3/16"H. Goes to show you that you can make something cool in a small space for around $50.00 even with today's pricing. The funny part is that I think the two vehicles cost more that the structure kit!
Bruce,
Well done on the Simpson Feed build. I like the wrap around loading dock.
Tom ;D
Thanks for the build thread Bruce. I learn something every time I read one. I like making small buildings, which is good since given the size of my layout that is all there is going to be.
While I use the Micro-Mark magnetic tray I use square blocks of hard wood to brace against walls. Oh well metal tray was a good idea.
Look forward to your next adventure in building.
Jim D
Quote from: ACL1504 on October 30, 2018, 08:49:51 AM
Bruce,
Well done on the Simpson Feed build. I like the wrap around loading dock.
Tom ;D
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the complement. The wrap around loading dock was an extension of one of my concept drawing where I was originally thinking about building this kit into an oil dealer. When I started looking at my scene, I realized that if I put the dock on the right side of the building it would interfere with the parking lot too much. So I relocated the platform to the other side of the building. Then it sort of hit me to go ahead an wrap it around to the track side and make it an on-line structure. It's funny sometimes how one thing leads to another.
Which of course leads me to cracking open an ice cold diet pepsi.
;D ;D ;D
Quote from: Jim Donovan on October 30, 2018, 09:51:04 AM
Thanks for the build thread Bruce. I learn something every time I read one. I like making small buildings, which is good since given the size of my layout that is all there is going to be.
While I use the Micro-Mark magnetic tray I use square blocks of hard wood to brace against walls. Oh well metal tray was a good idea.
Look forward to your next adventure in building.
Jim D
Hi Jim,
I like building small structure as well. One thing that's great about these kits is that you can finish them in a couple of weekends. And I mean finish them. No long 6-8 month builds were my enthusiasm goes south on a large kit. Besides, you can try out a new technique on a small kit and see if it works without a large investment in time or money.
Bruce,
Lookin' real good! I admire your perseverance in getting back to it. I feel ya - health issues really take it out of you, physically and mentally. I'm fighting with Diverticulitis and an upcoming Colectomy and it's tough with the recovery and meds to get much of anything done. However, your inspiration, along with everyone's fellowship and encouragement really get my mind back on modeling and trains! So, thanks for doing what you do and keep going, sir! As we said in the Navy, "Bravo Zulu"!
R/,
Norm
So at this point I did a little test to see how my scene was coming along. Everything looks pretty good to me.
My friend Dirk Dunham was kind enough to help me cut a 3/16" piece of birch plywood for the structure base. Once this was done, I painted it with Folk Art Mushroom brown as a base scenery color. I then painted the edges black and added a 9" long piece of sectional track that I glued to the base. While not show in the photos, I did scratch build a track bumper at the end of the 9" track. And No, it's not that tree you see in the photos!
Quote from: ndwolf68 on November 17, 2018, 11:46:10 AM
Bruce,
Lookin' real good! I admire your perseverance in getting back to it. I feel ya - health issues really take it out of you, physically and mentally. I'm fighting with Diverticulitis and an upcoming Colectomy and it's tough with the recovery and meds to get much of anything done. However, your inspiration, along with everyone's fellowship and encouragement really get my mind back on modeling and trains! So, thanks for doing what you do and keep going, sir! As we said in the Navy, "Bravo Zulu"!
R/,
Norm
Hi Norm!
Boy I hear you. In addition to the blood clot that I mentioned I have been fighting three other new medical problems this year and one of those is incurable. What I found is that getting back to my workbench has helped my mood and returned a little bit of sanity back into my life. So I encourage you to do the same. Maybe you should build something small like a Norm Wolf's gas station kit that Jimmy D offers. I can't imagine who he named that kit after....
;D ;D :o