Some of you may have seen that in my Monee Rebuild thread, I referenced that I would be starting Queen City Coal. This is the thread that I will use for that build. For reference, here is the finished diorama used by Bar Mills to sell the kit prior to this last Christmas:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-060520235737.jpeg)
And here is the area in which the diorama will be installed (the raised black foam panel):
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-160520195052-442581587.jpeg)
This build will be particularly important to me. A couple of years ago I had the good fortune of meeting Seth Puffer and seeing his beautiful railroad during the layout tours at the National Narrow Gauge Convention in the Twin Cities. Seth and I followed up a couple of times by phone after that and in our discussions he mentioned that he once asked George Sellios how you build a large, museum-quality layout. George's response was "one square foot at a time." (By the way, am I the only guy on the forum that doesn't regularly have discussions with George? I did something wrong somewhere along the way...)
The comment left an impression on me. I have zero scenery now. Anyone who looked at the Monee thread saw that I had a little terrain in place but ended up ripping it up...wasn't any good. I have built a few structures and dioramas, but none are part of my layout. This will be my first "square foot." Time to deal with backdrop horizons, my I-don't-know-how-many-year-old static grass applicator and bags of Sculptamold, and other goodies. Once this diorama is finished and installed, my plan is to continue to build to the south (to the right in this picture) until all of Monee is finished. Along the way I will be able to integrate a couple of the South River kits I have built. There are places in the benchwork waiting for them.
OK, enough. Time to start the build.
More shortly.
THE BOX
Here's the box. This was this year's Christmas present. Almost as exciting as the Red and Yellow Boxes I used to get, but still good.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-160520195053-4427046.jpeg)
I again have to confess that I did some preliminary building before sitting down to work on the thread. I have finished the Yard Office (small green building in the foreground) as I am writing this. Hope to do a better job of posting along the way for the next two buildings.
More shortly.
Open the box and here's what you see.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-160520195053-442711763.jpeg)
A couple of interesting things to note.
As usual, a package of resin and and package of metal detail parts. Also, becoming common with the high-end Bar Mills kits, there are Woodland Scenics figures and vehicles. One of the resin castings is a large solid block that is the first floor of the Yard Office. It's a beautiful casting as you can see in the foreground. Will be nice to not have to work on mating corners of individual walls.
The wood is packaged by building. Convenient to keep the pieces together as you are building. The kit also includes a lot of material for building a large cyclone fence that surrounds the facility.
Finally, if you look in the box, you can see part of a coupon that is included for a discount on GatorFoam. 20% off your purchase. I haven't done that yet but I plan to.
More shortly.
The kit comes with five manuals:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-160520195053-442722091.jpeg)
On the left is "The Book of Photos" - several pages of color pics along with some descriptive text with modeling tips. Right under it is a small pamphlet with some general modeling tips. A small subset of the document you can download from the Bar Mills web site at no charge.
Finally, there are three more manuals - one for each major structure in the kit.
One small bummer - the kit contains a note saying that not all of the resin castings were included because of supplier delays. They hoped to get them out soon. This was before Christmas. I never received anything so I called up Art. He connected me with one of his operations folks who got my info and promised to send the missing pieces out. I decided to take advantage of the situation to buy some additional detail parts from them. The package should have gone out yesterday. With Priority Mail, the package will hopefully arrive before the long Memorial Day modeling weekend.
More shortly.
That is going to be great looking. I'll be following Vince.
Thanks, Curt. I am looking forward to this. Several new things for me modeling-wise.
Ooooh, this is going to be good.
Jumping ahead past some of the mundane steps. Here are the walls, painted and windows installed:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-160520195053-44273895.jpeg)
This is the back wall of the casting - it won't be seen. So, I thought I would experiment a bit and try the technique explained in Sierra West's Morton's Foundry kit. First, the stone casting is primed with Rustoleum Khaki paint from their Camouflage rattle can series. Then, after thoroughly drying, you hit it with the ink/alcohol wash. Once that is dry, each individual stone is color with a wash of chalk and alcohol. For the chalks, scrape some powder off a few different Rembrandt earth tone and gray pastel sticks. I used about six colors and a small palette plate. Then, with a little pool of alcohol, dip a paint brush into the alcohol and then pick up one of the chalk colors. Apply to some random stones. Switch colors and do it again. Don't worry about cleaning the brush. Repeat until all stones are colored. You see the result above. I painted the brick by lightly dry brushing some art store acrylic brick red on.
I think the effect isn't bad but at first it looked a little too rainbowy to me. I later went back over it with more alcohol to blend the colors a little more. You'll see the results shortly. The nice thing about the technique is that it is fairly easy to rework. Because the casting is not porous, the pastel suspension is not soaked in. But, it does stick well. I didn't note anything coming off as I handled the casting. I think this technique is fairly similar to what John Siekirk is doing with his G Wilikers build.
The walls are fairly conventionally treated. After bracing I stained them with a wash of medium gray acrylic paint. For the green, I mixed some Leaf Green acrylic with Hunter Green. The initial result was a little too yellow so I went over it again with a light wash of straight Hunter Green. Sorry I didn't capture any pictures of that interim result. The fading/peeling effect is just painted by hand. The green paint is also thinned with water from time to time to lessen the intensity. In general, I just tried painting things like I used to in third grade. What used to look lousy is now "weathered." Who knew? When the green had dried, I hit it with the inkahol wash. No nail holes this time around. Trim and windows are acrylic white.
The windows are laser cut wood. I am just blown away at the incredibly fine detail they can achieve with laser cutting. Those mullions are really fine but the wood stands up to the laser. Also, Bar Mills supplies laser-cut acetate glazing as well. I'm trying to keep control of my impatience this time and use the glazing rather than just gluing in the panes as I have been lately. They do really look good. The window sashes are peel-and-stick on the back. Pull off the paper backing and apply the glazing. The fit is excellent. Not so easy to get the panes to line up with the glazing when you stick them down, tho. It's not easy to move the "glass" around with those very fine mullions. I never did come up with a sure-fire method. I just ended up trying to be as careful as possible. Worked out mostly OK.
Bar Mills gives you lots of "rafter combs" to simplify the addition of rafters to their roofs. I love them. They look good and really make the job easier. Wish they would brace walls for me, too. But, I made a mistake here - if you follow their bracing diagram exactly, you end up making the bracing on the gabled walls a little too high and the bracing gets in the way of the end two rafters. Perhaps I missed something in the instructions that told me not to do that. But, no matter -- I goofed. I decided the best way to handle this would be to cut the rafter combs short -- cutting off the end two rafter tails. Then, put in the comb and glue in the end two rafters separately. Here's the pic of the interference:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120102-443101646.jpeg)
The photo is a little blurry but you can see the brace directly behind the slot in the wall where the last rafter tail goes. Same thing on the other side and also the wall on the other side that you see the back of.
Here are the four walls glued together and the two modified combs inserted:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120103-443111019.jpeg)
More shortly.
Bar Mills also uses the comb idea for wood decks as well. The comb's fingers serve as joists for the flooring. here are the two main parts for the deck outside the second floor door:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120103-443121260.jpeg)
What % alcohol do you use? I've tried 90+% and it evaporated in seconds. Those stones look fabulous.
I also like how they handle big staircases. This is the thing they did for the back stairs in the Old Dominion kit that I just finished. I neglected to get a picture of it that time but I did capture it here:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120103-44313767.jpeg)
You can see that they give you a spacer, surprisingly labeled "STAIR SPACER" (which made it nearly Vince-proof). You can also see the stringers have a wooden "sprue" under them. You glue those sprues to the spacer and then glue the treads to the stringers. When finished, I used my sprue cutters to trim the finished staircase free. Pretty handy.
I painted the rest of the stone casting. Same technique. Still haven't done any blending and so the coloring still looks a little stark. My overhead shop light is definitely making the picture look more harsh than it is in person, but it does still need to be toned down.
Doors are hand-painted with Vallejo Signal Green and then dry brushed with white.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120104-443142448.jpeg)
More shortly
So, really jumping ahead now. I put on the card stock for the roof and apply the rolled roofing. Bar Mills give you several sheets of self-stick, pre-cut tar paper. I first sprayed it with Rustoleum 2X primer -- it's a darker formula than their other gray primer. After that I just glued it down and apply white, black, gray, and rust colored chalks.
I frequently have trouble with piping coming up out of roofs. Hard to see if they're really perpendicular. So, I use a steel square placed behind the building and then get down to building level and sight the piping against the square in the background. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120634-44315828.jpeg)
Same thing with chimneys. Of course you still have to look at it from a 90-degree rotate position also (front or back). Seems to work OK.
Final pics shortly.
OK. Here are the [mostly] finished pics.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120635-443161333.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120635-443172089.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120635-443181389.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-170520120636-44319393.jpeg)
Here you see I toned down the stone color variable somewhat. I do like the effect better. Weather along the wood edges done with Burnt Umber PanPastels.
Same technique for the chimney here that I used in the Homer kit. Start by spray painting flat white (rattle can). Then, dry brush on brick red. Gray to represent concrete at the top and then lots of black chalk.
There are no outside lamps here. There were none with the kit. I think I have some leftovers somewhere in the basement - I will dig them out and apply them before putting the final diorama in place.
This was a fun little structure. Took just a few days. I like the unique style - probably why Bar Mills made a separate kit offering out of it (The "Tower at Cranberry Yard").
Thursday night I will try to get started on the next building - the main office building. Very interesting building with a stucco finish and a unique footprint. That building as well as the coal bunker need castings that were not originally shipped with the kit. As I said a few messages ago, I am hoping to receive them by the end of this week. I plan to take Friday off to have a long modeling weekend. We'll see.
I'll also try [again] to do a better job of posting progress along the way rather than after the fact this time.
Back soon.
Quote from: Oldguy on May 19, 2020, 11:00:09 PM
Ooooh, this is going to be good.
Thanks, Bob. It is nice to be working on a kit that I haven't see a lot of threads on. Haven't seen any on this kit, in fact.
Quote from: Oldguy on May 19, 2020, 11:28:32 PM
What % alcohol do you use? I've tried 90+% and it evaporated in seconds. Those stones look fabulous.
Thanks, Bob. I use both 70% and 90% (not together....I just have bottles of both). In this particular case, I believe it is 90% (I poured some into a separate little jar a while ago and it's not labelled). I have talked to Brett Gallant from Sierra West on a few occasions on a variety of topics. He has said that he has no real preference for the concentration.
What might make a difference is the ink. Sierra West recommends NON waterproof ink. So, the wash I used on the stones is inkahol using that water soluble ink. When you go back later and apply the chalk suspension with more alcohol, it definitely re-awakens the original wash. I have seen this on wood walls. For stonework, I think I like that property because it helps with blending. However, for walls that I first stain with alcohol, I don't like that because when I put paint on later, it seems to pull up some of the ink and darkens the paint. Depending on the color you're using, that might not be the effect that you want. So, for wood I use a waterproof ink wash. Or, more recently, I actually "prime" the wood with gray acrylic paint washes and then only apply the alcohol on top at the end after the paint is applied.
Maybe none of this matters at all - could just be my inconsistent painting skills. But I do think the water soluble ink does matter when doing non-porous castings such as stonework.
Hey Vince:
Great job on the kit so far. Can't wait to see more.
Karl
As a fan of the Reading Railroad you know I can never get enough of good coal business. ;) I'll be following along. Sure looks like a neat set of structures. :)
Good looking kit and great start Vince.....I'll be looking in.
Beautiful modeling Vince. I love the stone work.
Vince,
Well done !
That structure looks great.
Coloring of the stone work is five stars too.
Tommy
Looking most excellent, Vince.
Your fix on the comb rafter tails worked well. I find if I wiggle a single edged razor blade back and forth on the bracing it cuts off ok without unwanted damage.
Cheers, Mark.
Quote from: mark dalrymple on May 20, 2020, 03:35:36 PM
Looking most excellent, Vince.
Your fix on the comb rafter tails worked well. I find if I wiggle a single edged razor blade back and forth on the bracing it cuts off ok without unwanted damage.
Cheers, Mark.
Thanks Mark. I like that...."unwanted damage." I will give that a try. I have been using a #17 X-Acto blade, making little cuts at 90 degree angles until I'm finally down to the clapboard. Slow but it has worked for me so far.
Thanks Tom, and Curt. I am pretty happy with the stone work results. I think this will be my go-to process for this kind of stone work going forward.
Wish I could do more with the tar paper roof. I really like the effect that Jack Ellis gets with the center of each tar sheet looking very faded and then darker at the edges. Then chalk streaks on top of that. I want to learn to do that. There are a lot of tar paper roofs in our "business." Would be nice to have some variety.
Thanks Karl, Bob, and Greg. I have now started the Main Office building. Large stucco building. Inset windows. More new frontier for me. I will definitely be posting progress along the way this time, not just after the fact. I think I will need to as I am already coming up with some questions and could use some help for the collective wisdom and experience here.
Quote from: Oldguy on May 19, 2020, 11:00:09 PM
Ooooh, this is going to be good.
Vince,
What he said and more. Your planned location seems perfect of this one. I'm all in.
Tom ;D
Thanks, Tom. Glad to have you watching.
OK, on to building 2 - the Main Office and Storage building. Here's the starting point:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520132810-44385212.jpeg)
As mentioned before, there is a separate manual for each of the three buildings. There are also two packages of parts for the building - one for the sheet parts and one for the sticks (bracing and trim). Lots of people separate the sheet parts for different buildings. This is the first time I have seen separating the sticks. Nice touch.
More shortly.
The sheet parts bag has all the laser-cut stuff....walls, floors, windows, glazing, some details. Here are the sheets that contain the main wall parts for the building:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520132810-443861991.jpeg)
This is going to be a stucco building. All of the exterior walls are made out of task board. You can see that they laser-etched in some brick work in a few places to simulate stucco coming off and exposing the previous exterior.
I haven't done much with task board - the gas station from Bandit's roost was my only other experience. For that building, Doug has you do the usual Durham's putty thing. For this building, the task board is already a somewhat rough finish. Bar Mills recommends that the final finish will be done by stippling on acrylic paint, taking advantage of its natural high viscosity.
That sheet in the lower left is wood, not task board. It is there to help form the irregular footprint for part of this building. This piece is not actually a base. Rather, it is attached 3/4" or so off the ground. I haven't sorted this out completely, yet, but it appears that it can also used as a displayable floor if one of the doors is left open. That little tab that you see on the right (near the piece that says "stair spacer" fits into the doorway of the wall you see at the top wall closest to my pallet with the pastel dust in it (that's what I used for the stone walls for the Yard Office). The wall I am talking about is the one with the door in the lower middle and the four windows. The fact that this wooden "base" is off the ground makes the bracing a little more complicated. More on that shortly.
Of course there is also the chipboard sheet that contains the roofs. The piece that matches the wood base is obvious. The other big piece with the two square holes is the other half of the building. Very interesting design on this one.
Please take a peek at the sheet with the slim slices on the lower right (TSK16). We'll talk about those in a bit.
More shortly.
One quick shot of the walls after I have singulated them from the sheets. I used an emery board to file off the nubs where they were cut free. I'm a little afraid of the fragility of the task board.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520132810-443871817.jpeg)
More shortly.
A quick closeup of one of the walls to give you a better look at the etched brickwork:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520132811-443882299.jpeg)
More shortly.
Here's a page from the manual regarding bracing:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520132811-443891301.jpeg)
A couple of things to note here - first, on the bottom, you can see that the lower piece of horizontal bracing performs two functions: (1) brace the wall (at least on the x-axis) and (2) serve as a ledge to hold that wood flooring/base piece you saw earlier. That means this all five walls for that part of the building need to have this brace located at the same place relative to the bottom so that the base glues down nice and straight. To try to do that, I started by bracing wall 5 (on the left). It is relatively easy to site as the top of the brace needs to coincide with the bottom of that tab that you see in the middle. Once that is in, I used a couple of straight edges to hold the bottom of the walls even while guiding the placement of the lower braces. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520143740-443901279.jpeg)
That dirty-looking thing on the bottom is a super-huge paint stirring stick from Home Depot. It's straight enough to keep the bottom of the walls aligned for this job. This is three of the five walls. I had to do two others.
One other major thing to note here. At the top of the page, you see the warning "ROOF BRACING TO ADDED LATER" [sic]. That is because the location of this tarpaper roof has to be very precisely located. Remember those skinny strips of taskboard a few posts ago (sheet TSK16)? Well, those are glued to the inside of the tops of the walls to give them a more credible thickness. So, the bracing for the roof needs to be set at exactly the top edge of the wall, minus the skinny strip for that wall, minus the width of the chipboard roof. The manual suggests that it is tricky to so that after the building is assembled so you are better off doing that while the walls are still separate. After I do a little more test fitting of parts and I am 100% sure of what goes where, I will do that. Shouldn't be too difficult to measure where those braces need to be. But, I'll bet you a doughnut right now that I will forget to make the braces shorter so that there is no interference between adjacent walls. It has been a while since I have built something that didn't require trimming bracing after the fact. We'll see.
More shortly
Still on the subject of bracing those five walls, looked to me as though there is an error on that same page I showed in the previous post. The diagram shows that wall 4 has a brace that goes down to the ground. But, wall 4 is one of the five walls surrounding that wood base (the short wall, obviously). That means it needs the same ledge piece that the other four do. It also means that, if you are going to brace it vertically, you need to leave a little gap for the wood base to slip in. I think the diagram should have appeared as follows:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520143740-443911272.jpeg)
That's the way I built it.
More shortly.
One more note on bracing (at least for now). Here is the previous page of bracing diagrams:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520143741-443921291.jpeg)
Walls 9, 7, and 6 are part of that other shorter extension to the building. This was the part under the roof with the two square skylights. Notice that there is no note here telling you to put that roof bracing on walls 6 and 7 on later. Yet those two walls also have the skinny strips on the top that the other walls do. I think it's the same situation so I think that should be marked. That is, I think those roof support braces need to be in a very specific spot just like the others. I'll be getting into that shortly and will report back.
Trying some color testing. In general, the plan is to have an off-white building with green trim. I don't know if the roof caps are metal or ceramic. I am assuming I will go with a terra cotta sort of color. That also matches the treatment that Bar Mills used in their ad. For the stucco, I am again going to an Ivory paint (I used Ivory for the clapboard for the Old Dominion kit I just finished). It's yellow-ish off-white. For the trim I am going to my favorite standby, Model Air Signal Green. For the caps, I found an old bottle of "Pennsylvania Clay" that my wife had left over from her teaching days. (She was a science and math teacher so I have no idea why she had a stash of acrylic paints but hey, who am I to complain?)
I took some of the scrap task board and stippled on the Ivory. Also painted up some bracing wood with the Pennsylvania Clay. Held them up against each other to see how it looked:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520143741-443932365.jpeg)
The clay was a little bright so I hit it with Hunterline Light Gray stain. You can see I went a little past the clay sample on the wood stick. I liked the end result. The Ivory is pretty subtle in the picture. It's a little more pronounced in person but still subtle. Just a little bright for my taste but not bad. I tried hitting that with the same gray stain and you can see the result there. It dominates the whole look. Maybe I could do a round 2 of light stippling there for a nice effect but I think that I will instead stay away from the alcohol there and look to use some light gray chalks to tone it down. More experimentation coming there. I like the way the green looks.
More shortly.
I wanted to give myself a little break from bracing so I'm working on the window assemblies. These custom arched windows are all laser-cut wood. The self-stick sheet has windows made up of three pieces: a main frame with the upper sash, a separate sash, an outer trim frame. You also get a sheet of pre-cut glazing. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520143741-443942384.jpeg)
I love these windows. The acetate glazing is very well done - fits nicely. The self-stick wood sheet is also very handy. When you make a complete window with the bottom sash closed (all the way down), it makes an excellent looking assembly. There's only one thing I haven't yet figured out how to do (would love to get help for you all). One of the benefits of this sort of assembly is that you can open some of the windows for a little variety and more interest. But, to do that, you need to slide the lower sash up a bit and now it's on top of the upper sash's acetate. There's no adhesive there. If you make the lower sash half open you can still push the window down onto the frame that is part of the top sash but then the lower sash is at an angle - it's not in the same plane as the rest of the window. That is, the bottom of that sash is closer to the viewer than the top of the sash. Shows up in close-up photos (had some of this problem with the Yard Office). If you fully open the lower sash, then there is no self-stick and you need to glue it. I'm sure that's the right answer but I have had trouble doing that without getting glue on visible parts of the glazing. I think if I glue in that lower sash after the rest of the assembly is installed in the wall I might have better luck. Again, I would appreciate hints and tricks from the experience out there.
Here's one more pic of windows in progress. The one at the top is complete. The others will missing the lower pane.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520143817.jpeg)
That's it for now. Back to work and I will post more once I'm a little further along. Getting close to the point where subassemblies need to come together. I predict some expletives in my future. In particular, I need to think about how to install the windows. These windows are set into their openings - they do not sit on the outside as would usually be the case with a clapboard wall. Need to figure out how that is going to work. The manual recommends cutting a hole in that large floor/base piece so that you have room for your fingers to help position the windows as you push them in. I can't imagine how that could work (unless you have E.T.-like fingers). For a clapboard wall you would simply put them in ahead of time after finishing the walls. But here you can't really finish the walls because the stucco needs to be seamless around corners. For me, I think the answer is going to be to do some initial stucco treatment around the windows so that the windows can be installed prior to assembling the walls together. Then, I can finish the stucco once the shell is complete. We'll see.
Ya know, it's funny -- I have been doing a fair amount of building now for the last several months. Figured I would be getting better/quicker at this over time. Not sure what the problem is. Perhaps I'm starting to see things I didn't worry about before. Or perhaps I am just hitting new challenges that naturally take more thinking. Or perhaps my standards are getting higher. Or, maybe I'm just losing my marbles. Please, nobody answer that :)
CU Soon.
You're doing a great job. I really like the windows.
Coming on really well, Vince.
Re the window problem. Could you cut a piece of scrap window material and attach it to a piece of double sided tape. Then cut that into thin strips and glue that to the bottom sides of the inside of the window (double sided tape facing into the building), trimmed to the distance down to the bottom of where you want the bottom sash open. Peel back the tape backing and stick the bottom sash in position. That should stop the bottom sash being on an angle to the window and give you something to stick to. Sounds fiddly, but might be worth a shot. I glue my glazing in with medium viscosity CA. I put the glazing in place and then add 4 drops of CA with a needle, one in each corner. I add the drops to the frame, not the glazing, and the glue works its way down into the corners but doesn't seem to spread onto the visible part of the glazing. Maybe this approach would work for gluing the top of the bottom sash? Experiment first if you can.
Cheers, Mark.
Nice job so far on this, Vince. It's looking really cool.
On the bracing to the wall bottom, I have run into that same issue with some other Bar Mills builds. It's like they just forgot that the walls need to fit around the supplied base. I am always going back and trimming away that bottom 1/8 inch or so. But I figure if that is my biggest problem with a kit, I'm still ahead of the game.
--Opa George
Vince,
It looks great. IMO the issues with the Bar Mills directions are typical of their kits I have built. That said, I really like their kits. Your idea to stucco around the windows and installing the windows prior to assembling the walls sounds like the way to go.
I use Testors clear parts cement for gluing the acetate into both laser cut and plastic windows. It is similar to Canopy glue but seems thinner to me and comes in a bottle with a very fine tip. I put the glue in a puddle and apply small dots of it with a wire. Either of those glues dries clear so if some does get onto the visible surface it looks less objectionable IMO. I have used ACC, but found it can fog the acetate so have gotten away from using it.
I agree with using the Testor's 'windshield' glue for glazing. I apply it the same way.
dave
How I do the laser cut is as follows
Self stick is really only there to hold things temporarily as an assembly tool. It works really well on shiny smooth surfaces, but is only so-so on rougher ones. works great for the acetate, but wood to wood ...eh? sometimes...(!)
1. Attach sills with the self stick to the bottom of the frame (not a lot of SS here but it is just there to hold it for a bit)(sometimes I run a little ACC along
bottom of sill to help)
2. Attach the upper panes now to the back of the frame (self Stick)
3. now position the lower panes where you want them. If they are fairly high up , there is really no adhesive,
so use a little ACC applied on the edges with a toothpick, it'll wick in and hold it together.
4. I now apply the front top trim if there's any.
5. self stick works fairly well on task board , but not so much on basswood (especially clapboard) . But I never really trust it to hold a window on,
probably work for a few years, but it the building gets handled I see this stuff slide a round. I apply a lot (!) of wood glue all around the window hole,
especially in the corners. I then press the window in from the front. This pushes any excess glue to the back, but also fills in the edges and glues the
window together better. If any gets on acetate, wipe off.
Sorry about the bracing your right on part #4.
The roof bracing on parts 6 and 7 was supposed to be to scale on the instructions , It should be about .215" down from top (use cheap digital calipers to mark it....probably not too critical.)
Quote from: PRR Modeler on May 23, 2020, 03:56:59 PM
You're doing a great job. I really like the windows.
Thanks, Curt. I like the windows, too. I am so amazed at how nice they look. Much more work to assemble the components and put in the glazing, but it is really nice. I can see there will come a time when I want to do more with photography in the hobby. The windows with more detail and smooth glazing will be a big part of that (as opposed to the wavy look you get by filling in panes with a glue product of some sort). I know Art Fahie (of Bar Mills Fame) says that -- photos are important to him so he puts in the extra work. I am slowly being won over.
Quote from: mark dalrymple on May 23, 2020, 04:52:47 PM
Coming on really well, Vince.
Re the window problem. Could you cut a piece of scrap window material and attach it to a piece of double sided tape. Then cut that into thin strips and glue that to the bottom sides of the inside of the window (double sided tape facing into the building), trimmed to the distance down to the bottom of where you want the bottom sash open. Peel back the tape backing and stick the bottom sash in position. That should stop the bottom sash being on an angle to the window and give you something to stick to. Sounds fiddly, but might be worth a shot. I glue my glazing in with medium viscosity CA. I put the glazing in place and then add 4 drops of CA with a needle, one in each corner. I add the drops to the frame, not the glazing, and the glue works its way down into the corners but doesn't seem to spread onto the visible part of the glazing. Maybe this approach would work for gluing the top of the bottom sash? Experiment first if you can.
Cheers, Mark.
Thanks, Mark. If I understand you right, I think I have been doing something similar with doors. I frequently get in a situation where a door is either too big for an opening or too small. Either way, I had previously solved the problem by gluing scrap stock to the sides of the door and then gluing that to the inside of the building just behind the doorway. The net result is that the door is now very parallel to the wall and is also recessed which is a look that I like. I never thought of doing the same thing with the window panes.
Also, I need to do more with super glue. I do almost everything with Canopy Glue. Works great for a whole bunch of applications and materials but perhaps a bit too messy for intricate window assemblies. I went to Home Depot yesterday to buy some Gorilla Gel ACC. Time to expand my horizons. Thanks for the idea.
Thanks, Jerry and Dave. By windshield glue I assume you mean that Testor's stuff in the square bottle with the brush applicator that is attached to the cap? I have definitely used that in the past for plastic windows with plastic glazing but I had no idea it would work on wood. I will give that a try. Fortunately, Bar Mills seems to regularly give you a few extra parts with many of the laser-cut details. For example, I need 10 arched windows. They cut out 11. I can do a little playing there to check it out. Thanks.
Quote from: Opa George on May 23, 2020, 07:21:27 PM
Nice job so far on this, Vince. It's looking really cool.
On the bracing to the wall bottom, I have run into that same issue with some other Bar Mills builds. It's like they just forgot that the walls need to fit around the supplied base. I am always going back and trimming away that bottom 1/8 inch or so. But I figure if that is my biggest problem with a kit, I'm still ahead of the game.
--Opa George
Thanks, George. I am accepting it as a way of life, now. Even though I am doing much more test fitting and reading ahead for all instructions, I still end up having to take off some bracing. As you said, if that's the biggest heartache in building the model, you win!
Quote from: JimMooney on May 24, 2020, 12:13:34 PM
How I do the laser cut is as follows
Self stick is really only there to hold things temporarily as an assembly tool. It works really well on shiny smooth surfaces, but is only so-so on rougher ones. works great for the acetate, but wood to wood ...eh? sometimes...(!)
1. Attach sills with the self stick to the bottom of the frame (not a lot of SS here but it is just there to hold it for a bit)(sometimes I run a little ACC along
bottom of sill to help)
2. Attach the upper panes now to the back of the frame (self Stick)
3. now position the lower panes where you want them. If they are fairly high up , there is really no adhesive,
so use a little ACC applied on the edges with a toothpick, it'll wick in and hold it together.
4. I now apply the front top trim if there's any.
5. self stick works fairly well on task board , but not so much on basswood (especially clapboard) . But I never really trust it to hold a window on,
probably work for a few years, but it the building gets handled I see this stuff slide a round. I apply a lot (!) of wood glue all around the window hole,
especially in the corners. I then press the window in from the front. This pushes any excess glue to the back, but also fills in the edges and glues the
window together better. If any gets on acetate, wipe off.
Sorry about the bracing your right on part #4.
The roof bracing on parts 6 and 7 was supposed to be to scale on the instructions , It should be about .215" down from top (use cheap digital calipers to mark it....probably not too critical.)
Weird experience when first reading this response. I see the "Sorry about...." and I'm wondering why some forum reader would be saying sorry for an error in the instructions. I then looked and the name and the little LED went on (would have been a light bulb, but those are old school now :) ) This is THE Jim Mooney from Bar Mills. Nice to meet you!
The lack of measurements for the roof bracing is no big deal. I ended up temporarily placing the thickness-doubling parts next to the wall and measuring to get their location. I would want to do that, anyway. Wouldn't trust my ability to measure that right.
Thanks for the tips on ACC. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I need to be a little less single-minded about adhesives. I have gotten really lazy about using Canopy Glue for everything - wood, plastic, metal, filling in window panes. Super handy but not the best solution for everything. Your insight that self-stick is really there as a helping hand is helpful. Even though my buildings won't be bouncing around shows like yours do, it's useful to think about throwing a little ACC at those assemblies once they are in place to solidify the joint.
Thanks. And also thanks for the great engineering on the kits.
Some progress to report. As I mentioned earlier, my plan was to do some preliminary treatment on the walls before building the main structure. That would include doing the brick areas and painting the stucco around the windows and doors so that I would apply the windows and doors before the inside becomes inaccessible. I started with the bricks. Painted them brick red and then decided to use some pastels to represent the mortar. My first try was to use PanPastels because I like them so much. What I found was that for this application, they are a bit too sticky and cover up the bricks. See below:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-250520221655-44402306.jpeg)
I tried using the PPs for both brick areas. I didn't like the fact that the pastels covered up so much of the brick (although now that I look at it again, maybe it's a decent weathered look). To get the bricks showing as you see them in this pick, I used a little water and a paper towel to wipe off the tops of the brick faces. This worked OK for the bricks on the right but not as well for the bricks on the left. You can even see that I pulled the task board on some of the brick area.
For round two, I tried just using a more conventional gray pastel stick. The result:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-250520221656-44405785.jpeg)
This seemed better behaved so this is what I went with.
Next step was to paint all the bricks in all the walls. Here's a pic. No chalk applied yet.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-250520221656-44406143.jpeg)
Notice also that all the arched windows now have their "eyebrows" and sills. You can also see some decorative trim also applied to the top of some of the walls. These details will all get stucco-ed along with the walls.
By the way, when I apply the chalk from a stick, I use a single-edge razor blade to scrape some powder onto the target area. Then use a soft brush to push the powder around into the mortar lines. Finally, I go in with a finger to push it down a bit to keep it in place. So far, I have never used any fixative. Doesn't seem to be a problem.
It is interesting that there are so many missing bricks. I don't know if that is a purposeful detail put in by Bar Mills or if that is just a casualty of using a laser on task board. I suppose I could look through lots of pics in the documentation and see if they match but, fortunately, I'm too lazy. They look fine.
Getting a little closer, now. Here is the front wall:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-250520221656-444071538.jpeg)
I mentioned earlier that I would only be applying the stucco around windows and doors until the wall was attached to the building. However, since this wall has the stenciled sign, I decided to do the whole wall so that I would apply all the stucco so that I could do the stencil.
Two things to notice - first, this is a lighter color than I original thought I would use. This is actually Craft Smart Vanilla. Much whiter than the Ivory I originally intended to use. I switch because my wife dropped by while I was working and said she thought the yellow (Ivory) was too southwest -- a midwest stucco would be whiter. I usually trust her judgment so I went with it. Now that I'm looking at it I'm not 100% sure. But, there is still much weathering to be done so we will see. You can also see that I apparently forgot to apply the pastels to the brick areas here. I will go back and fix that before this wall is glued up.
The other thing is the stenciled sign. Looks a little weak to me. I think that perhaps it's exacerbated by the very white background. For a stucco that looks that pristine the sign shouldn't look that worn. I will still need to play with this a bit -- either using some pastels or paint to fill in the lettering a little more or providing more weathering for the walls in general so that the worn lettering seems to fit in better. Probably some combination of both.
I took advantage of the detailed window assmblies to have a few open windows. I used all of the open windows on the sides of the building that will be visible for my placement of the diorama.
BTW, that window shade in the upper left window is actually the roof support brace. I could have used paper there as I did everywhere else but thought a very high (and crooked) window shade would provide some interesting variety.
Here is the side wall that faces the diorama courtyard:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-250520221656-444081794.jpeg)
Here you can see that I applied the paint as I originally intended - enough to allow me to insert the windows and not worry about painting over them later when I paint the rest of the wall. You can see the boundaries of where I painted the stucco. The color actually matches the task board pretty closely.
In the kit ad artwork, the big blank area to the right of the two windows contains a large poster sign -- sort of old-style graphics. There is no such sign in the kit. Instead, there is more modern looking sign that is all letters (no pictures). This would be fine except that the signs included in the kit are optimized for a landscape orientation space. This space is better suited to a portrait style sign (as is the one in the documentation and ads). I haven't measured yet but I think I will have to pull the sign artwork into my computer and shrink it down a bit in order to fit this space. Disappointing quality control on this item. Also, the sign in the ad is black - a nice contrast to the lightly-colored stucco. The actual sign they give you is yellow. Not sure how that will look. I am not going to do this as a painted-on sign. Rather, I will back it with chipboard and put a frame around it so I don't have to worry about it now. We'll look at that in closer detail later.
Here's the back wall of the main office. Won't be seen once the diorama is installed.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-250520221732-444091425.jpeg)
Pictures are a wonderful modeling tool. As I'm looking at this I can see that my "stucco" doesn't get close enough to the bricks in the lower right corner. Also, my stucco in general isn't very thick. Not getting much texture above and beyond what you already get from the task board. Probably not a problem for most of the walls but leaves you wanting for texture a bit for the trim around the windows and doors.
Last pic for the night. I'm starting to assemble the shell for the main building now. There are three pieces here: Wall 2 that we just saw (facing the courtyard), Wall 5 that is facing backward and to which is attached the other building extensions, and the floor/base:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-250520221733-44410584.jpeg)
My first thought was to do an initial gluing of all three of these components at once. I quickly realized that this was going to be too easy to make an error. Much easier was to recognize that I don't need the base to join walls 2 and 5 because they meet at a 90 degree angle. So, I did that first with the help of some squares and then added the floor next. Life will get a little more interesting when I add the front wall next. That will be the long angled side to the right.
The tab on the floor to the right is painted green because it sticks out of the opening for the loading door in the front wall. It will actually serve as part of the frame. Not sure if that was the plan but when I test fit things that looked like the best way to handle it.
That's it for now. When I start adding the other walls, I will create some gaps at the corners that need to be filled. I did some mitering (you can even see it here to the right of wall 2) but I'm sure it won't be good enough. I reckon that getting the rest of this basic shell right will still be a fair amount of effort (for me, at least).
CU soon.
Looking good, Vince.
I really appreciate all the effort you are going to to bring us these blow by blow accounts of your progress. I read it all and study all the photos - as I'm sure many do - so it is never a wasted effort.
I've listened to a couple of pod casts featuring Jason Jenson recently and one thing I have heard him mention at least twice now is that he never uses pure white or pure black on his models. Its often difficult to judge how white a building is until you put it next to something really white. I recently did a masonry structure with panels of blue-grey and columns of white. I was disappointed at how grey the blue-grey was - it didn't really look blue at all. I masked up the panels and painted the columns in white. When I removed the masking tape the panels magically changed colour to a very blue grey!
Cheers, Mark.
Thanks, Mark - Yeah, Jason is fantastic. I am learning a lot from his YouTube videos.
Interestingly, I have had success with wood buildings in the past that were painted white. As an example, the clapboard in my Rugg build was painted Whitewash - even whiter than the vanilla that I used on Queen City. The difference is that I was able to use the inkahol wash afterward and it toned it down nicely but it still looked white. Perhaps the same will happen here and I just got freaked out when I saw how grey the Ivory (yellowish tint) looked when I put the wash on it. Perhaps that particular paint just happens to react more strongly with the wash.
I know I will tone this building down significantly before the smoke clears. Not sure if that will be a black wash or perhaps a tan wash or chalks or a repaint. Obviously need to do some experimenting.
It all looks fantastic Vince. The color is good and with a little weathering I think you will be happy with it.
The walls look very good, Vince. Stucco is really difficult to get right, and the paint over this material looks convincing and is probably much less work than Durham's or other material. I do see what you mean about the worn, light stencil on the "clean" wall. If you are planning additional weathering to the walls later, that may not be an issue. I've had instances where I did not initially like an effect, but when returning to it later, found it to be about right.
Thanks for the nice step-by-step pics on this kit.
--Opa George
Thanks Curt and George. I think I can see you're right. I engaged in a little gray chalk smudgery and I think I can see that I will like it. I also even like the lighter color after letting it sit a few days. I believe this will help draw some attention to what will be a corner diorama. Items will be a little further from the viewer and the light will be a little less.
OK. Lots of progress in the last couple of days - time to get caught up.
First, I finished the rough assembly of the main building. You saw the first two walls earlier. Here is the shell with all five. This is just the rough assembly. The corners need to be dressed, yet. The first pic is the small wall that is just to the left of the main wall
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102347-44418114.jpeg)
Here is the back:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102348-44438688.jpeg)
Note that I didn't do any more painting, yet. That will follow after the corners are cleaned up. I also discovered that there is a sill that should be installed under the rectangular window. I installed that later.
And here is a quartering shot with the front wall and the wall that will eventually contain a large poster sign. Both of these walls will face the courtyard/concrete surface:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102348-44440526.jpeg)
By the way, the roof is not yet glued down. I just placed it there to see how well the support braces were located.
More shortly.
I filled the corner gaps with spackle. I like that pink stuff that turns white when it's dry. (Yes, I find that fun....dang those marketing guys).
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102348-444412405.jpeg)
Another shot of the front. Not so obvious from the shot is that I also spackled the wood trim along the top of the wall as well.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102659-444421385.jpeg)
More shortly.
This building has two additions. One is a small addition immediately behind the main structure and is two stories tall. The other is a much larger one that is single story and has a footprint just about as large as the main building. First, the small addition. It is a three-wall addition that connects to the main building via four tabs:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102659-44443778.jpeg)
And a couple of pics of the addition completely installed
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102659-444441592.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102700-444451187.jpeg)
More shortly.
Vince,
I have been following and have a couple thoughts. First, you mentioned the sign shouldn't look that worn on a wall that looks pristine. IMO the wall is not pristine. If it was there would be no bricks showing where the stucco has eroded away. Following up on that, once the walls are weathered I think the sign will look fine.
I have never modeled stucco, and probably never will because the era and location I model lack those types of structures. So, take this with a grain of salt... I think that you might want to try using chalks to weather the wall. That would allow you to add darker patches under the windows, water stains, etc., more easily than trying to manipulate a wash.
I'd "split the difference" - take Jerry's idea to use chalks/pastels/pigments underneath windows, etc, then use a wash to blend everything together.
dave
Now for the big addition. This post will bore most people as I think everyone else already knew this decades ago but it was here that I finally had a huge DUH moment. This kit, more than others, I have found that I am constantly having to trim wood bracing to get things to fit properly. Probably obvious to y'all but I finally understood it here. When you build a clapboard structure, you have two perpendicular walls that don't actually butt up against each other. They both (usually) get glued to a support brace with each wall's end lining up with the the end of the square brace (1/8", or thereabouts). That little L-shaped "hole" that is left is then filled in with the 1/16" corner piece. Simple. No ambiguity. But, with a stucco building, there is no corner piece. The walls butt up against each other so that you have a clean corner after gluing. When I cut horizontal bracing, I usually cut it pretty close to the edge of the piece less the width of the support piece. That's wrong here. Needs to be less the width of the support brace and also the width of the perpendicular wall piece. Again, obvious. Now (to me).
So, what about ambiguity? Well, when you butt the two walls together you have to decide which wall will be longer. That is, one wall will effectively end up being longer by the width of the perpendicular wall.
Here are the first two walls being joined:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520102700-444462195.jpeg)
The wall with the door opening is a side wall and the wall with the two small windows is the back wall. You can see here that I have made the side wall "longer" because I put glue on the edge of the side wall to attach it to the back of the back wall (rather than attach glue to the left side of the back wall to glue it to the back of the side wall (....the chalice from the palace.... anybody get the reference?)). The reason I did this is because the bracing diagram for the side wall calls for putting the support brace at the very edge of the side wall so there is no other way to do it unless you notch out the brace after it's glued in to make room for the back wall to attach the other way. And since the small addition worked in exactly the same way, I didn't think twice about it. (Actually, I might have also considered using a corner piece here -- more on that later.)
After gluing on the other side wall, I'm able to do this test fit:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520103716-444472300.jpeg)
On both sides, the back wall is extending the the length of the side walls. It doesn't look that way from this overhead shot but that is because the back wall is shorter (height) than the side walls so there is a bit of an illusion there.
More shortly.
So as part of the test fit I put in the roof chipboard. Surprise. The roof is too wide. Turns out the chipboard is exactly as wide as the back wall. That means I should have put the bracing on that wall and glued it to the back of the side walls. That would make the overall back wall longer by two times the width of the task board. Also, and now not surprisingly, the roof is too short. The side walls are too long and the design calls for some roof overhang so the rain runoff falls at least a little bit away from the building. Had I checked the roof fit early on, I would have recognized that the bracing diagram wasn't going to get me where I needed to be and I could have adjusted.
Of course, this isn't a big deal. It was easy enough to trim off some of the chipboard to make it fit. As it turns out, that piece of chipboard being cut off serves nicely to extend the length so I edge-glued it. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520103717-444501131.jpeg)
Good to go for this problem. After working through this, I wondered whether I actually should have used a corner piece. Turns out that the task board is pretty close to 1/16" thick. Not quite, but close. In retrospect, I don't think that was the plan. First, the roof would still be too short - the back wall would be in exactly the same place it is now. Second, I would have had to not only sand the corner piece to make it flush with the task board but then also have two seams to fill/hide. I am happy with the way this turned out. Of course, doing it right would have been even happier.
By the way, I will cut those little "wings" off the roof extension I glued on. That is just the original length of the piece I trimmed off the side.
On to the next problem. More shortly.
For this next surprise look again at the test fit for the big addition:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520103716-444472300.jpeg)
You can see the addition is wider than the main building. That's on purpose. I think it adds some nice architectural interest to the structure. But, look at the upper right where the addition mates up with the main building. There is a small piece of task board there that terminates the right wide wall. That piece is glued to the back of the main building. And, the left and right side walls are exactly the same length. So, that means there is a gap on the left side. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520103717-44449484.jpeg)
I didn't notice anything in the instructions on how to deal with this. Could just skew the building a bit -- after all, it's less than 1/16". Or, I could spackle it -- that would let me play with the pink stuff some more (yay). Rather than hide it, I decided to feature it. I put a piece of scale 4x12 in there to make a clear line between the two buildings. Here's a pic.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520103717-444511320.jpeg)
More shortly.
One more thing to resolve. If you recall from earlier in the thread, The walls on the main building will be doubled in thickness. That is, a second piece of task board will be glued to the main wall above the roof. That will make the wall thick enough to support the ceramic capping that will be applied on top. The same thing applies to the large addition. A second piece of task board will be glued inside the each of the two side walls. That means that the left side wall cannot be glued directly to the small, two story addition. Rather, we need to have it spaced out by one task board thickness so that everything works out.
This is an easy problem to solve, of course, I cut a piece of scrap task board from the wall sheets and glued it to the small addition where the large addition will be glued. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520103717-44448302.jpeg)
This will leave exactly enough room for the piece that will be inserted inside the outer wall.
More shortly.
We're caught up at this point. The shell is more or less complete, sans roofs and external gantry crane. Here are a few pics Again, the roof chip board is not glued down. It is there for visualization only. There are still some spots missing some paint at this point. I will post those updates later. This shot of from the back:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520124223-444722333.jpeg)
Quartering shot from the front. I like the way the 4x12 gap filler worked out.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520124223-444731548.jpeg)
Another shot toward the back. You can see that I didn't do a good enough job of sanding the spackle. A couple more coats of paint will fix that I think. Not sure how much effort I will put into it as this will not be visible from the aisle.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520124223-444741921.jpeg)
And finally from the back. BTW, those two rectangular holes are where skylights will go.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520124224-444751035.jpeg)
That's it for now. Not sure where I will go next - detailing walls or doing the roofs. I think the roofs. That big addition in particular is not very sturdy because there is no diagonal bracing. The roof will fix that.
Talk to you soon.
Quote from: jerryrbeach on May 31, 2020, 11:08:54 AM
Vince,
I have been following and have a couple thoughts. First, you mentioned the sign shouldn't look that worn on a wall that looks pristine. IMO the wall is not pristine. If it was there would be no bricks showing where the stucco has eroded away. Following up on that, once the walls are weathered I think the sign will look fine.
I have never modeled stucco, and probably never will because the era and location I model lack those types of structures. So, take this with a grain of salt... I think that you might want to try using chalks to weather the wall. That would allow you to add darker patches under the windows, water stains, etc., more easily than trying to manipulate a wash.
Really good point, Jerry. It's hard to make the case for "pristine" when there are bricks showing. As it sits now, the paint is mostly very clean and that looks out of place with respect to the bricks and the sign. As you said, it needs some weathering which I do intend to do. I was expecting to use chalks almost exclusively. I do like using washes but in the few test patches I tried here, it seems too dark to me -- even with a one tablespoon mix or Hunterline Light Gray. We'll see.
Quote from: deemery on May 31, 2020, 11:36:40 AM
I'd "split the difference" - take Jerry's idea to use chalks/pastels/pigments underneath windows, etc, then use a wash to blend everything together.
dave
I do like the nice overall "dull" the washes can provide but I haven't yet found a wash that isn't too overpowering. I'll keep trying, tho. Maybe the answer is to use a lot of chalks and the wash would then just be straight alcohol that blend the already applied chalks? Need more experiments.
thx.
Coming on great, Vince!
You've made some nice fixes in this installment, however I'm somewhat surprised that there isn't an exploded diagram somewhere in the instructions showing how the walls fit together. This seems to me to be a MAJOR omission.
Cheers, Mark.
Excellent modeling Vince.
Thanks Mark and Curt. I agree, Mark, there should be a few hints as to how those items fit. Toward the end of the instructions, they do have exploded views showing the parts but in general they omit the bracing and show overall location, not the detailed relative fit. I like it, actually. It seems to be most of what an experienced modeler should need. But, I'm pretty sure the bracing diagrams are incorrect here, too (I noted another error earlier on in this thread). Still, had I been more careful with test fitting, I should have been able to work it out. I will go back and pore over the pages to see if I missed something. Would be good to know if I had been careless in reading the instructions.
One last post before I hit the hay. I wanted to get a little taste of what the final product will look like so I wanted to at least place the roof on the large addition. Bar Mills gives you laser-cut, self-stick roofing paper. I wanted to try to get a look that is a little closer to what Jack Ellis did with the model in the photos. Spoiler alert - not so much. But, I did try something different. To treat the paper, I started by painting with Rustoleum rattle can light gray primer. I then tried taking a page out of Zephyr Jeff's book by spattering on other colors with other rattle cans - in particular, black, darker gray, white, Khaki. Then, while the paper was still on the sheet, I used a Q-Tip to rub some black charcoal on the edges of the tar paper. Here's what it looked like before application:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520230810-444761373.jpeg)
I then glued it down to the building and did some dry brushing of white along with some streaking with a few pastels. Then, I glued in those pieced that make the side walls 2X thicker. This is where the ceramic caps attach. Finally, I placed the skylights on top. Here are a couple of picks to wrap up the weekend. The skylights and ceramic caps are not glued down -- they're just there for a quick peek into the future. Other than the roof, nothing is weathered. Lots more work to come.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520230810-444811437.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-310520230810-444821688.jpeg)
I forgot to glue some black construction paper under the skylights. I can still do that later, if needed, There's no floor there as there is in the main building.
Nighty-night.
Looks great Vince. I can't tell from the pictures- Is the weathered roof flat or at a angle?
It's at an angle. Interesting point now that you bring it up. For the main building, the roof is pitched but the tops of the walls are parallel to the ground so the angle is more apparent. For the big addition, the roof is pitched but the tops of the walls are parallel to the roof. Just interesting....two different styles.
Here's an older picture of one of those side walls that shows the angle more clearly.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-230520132811-443882299.jpeg)
Cheers.
Question for the group - those ceramic cap strips are resin castings. When I do apply them to the building, I will need to cut some to size and also miter some corners. What's the best way to do that? My default assumption would be to use a fine-toothed razor saw but I thought I would ask here before I start shattering a few.
Vince,
I agree that a fine tooth saw is the way to go on most castings. I have used an X-Acto to slice through resin castings if they are too delicate (thin cross section) when a saw might tear the casting. You might want to saw most of the way through and finish by slicing if you think it may tear. It depends on the type of resin. I have found the softer the resin, the less chance of tearing or shattering.
If I mess up the cut I either use some Tamiya putty as a filler or will slice out a section of the broken area and ACC a piece of styrene as a patch and file or sand to shape to match the casting.
Quote from: jerryrbeach on June 01, 2020, 10:07:11 AM
Vince,
I agree that a fine tooth saw is the way to go on most castings. I have used an X-Acto to slice through resin castings if they are too delicate (thin cross section) when a saw might tear the casting. You might want to saw most of the way through and finish by slicing if you think it may tear. It depends on the type of resin. I have found the softer the resin, the less chance of tearing or shattering.
If I mess up the cut I either use some Tamiya putty as a filler or will slice out a section of the broken area and ACC a piece of styrene as a patch and file or sand to shape to match the casting.
Thanks, Jerry. You were right. Super easy cut with a razor saw. Those little "ceramic" caps cut cleanly and quickly -- frequently with one swipe.
OK. Lots to catch up on. I am pretty much finished with the main office building. I'll post some pictures tonight (this morning?) and try to finish up later Sunday morning.
First up, I decided to do my first view block. This building will be at about eye level and there are a lot of windows. At least they're at my eye level -- actual adults may will see more of the roof. I didn't want to see through the building. So, I tried the usual approach of making an "X" out of black construction paper. Here are the sheets with slits that are cut halfway through to allow their intersection:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021407-445141896.jpeg)
And here it is installed in the building before I seal it up forever by gluing on the roof:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021407-445161029.jpeg)
More shortly.
Now, I buttoned up the main building by gluing down the roof and putting on the tarpaper. I previously showed that I used a Q-Tip to outline the edges of the tar paper strips with black chalk. This time, I glued down the strips first. That made it a little easier to dry brush some white on the strips without smearing the chalk. Then, I outlined the seams with the Q-Tips after the tar papers was all affixed:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021407-445171920.jpeg)
More shortly
Time for some metal details. For any metal details that are miniatures of metal parts, I first use a blackener on them. Here's the etchant:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021407-445181351.jpeg)
The process is simple - just put the metal parts in a plastic yogurt cup (other vessels may also work :) ). While they are in there, I use a cheap paint brush to brush on the etchant. Some people just soak the parts in a pool but I'm trying to minimize the wasted fluid (and, more importantly, the disposal of it). Also, I find that there are usually a few spots on the castings that won't take the etchant -- I assume because they have some finger oil or other schmutz on them and acts as a mask. By using a paint brush, I am usually able to scrub the etchant on and get the blackening on. Once they've been cooking a while....depends on the size and intricacy of the parts...I took about a minute for these...I pull them out and put them in a water bath to stop the reaction and wash off the etchant. Here are the parts in the water:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021408-445192020.jpeg)
Once washed, I pull them out, dry them off, and buff them with a dry Q-Tip. The result is a metal casting that still has a dull metal sheen and has a black patina that looks good and also makes it more accepting of paint and chalk.
More shortly.
Now that the roof is in place, I can glue in the other task board pieces that doubles the width of the top of the walls. Here's a picture of one piece of that. The rest of the pieces went about the same:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021556-445201800.jpeg)
More shortly.
The building addition has a sliding door. The instructions for the kit call for using a 1/16" square piece of wood for the rail on which the door hangs. That didn't look very good to me. Instead, I used a piece of 1/32" square wood glued to a scale 2x6 to make more of an L-shaped piece. Then, painted it with burnt umber craft paint. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021557-44521522.jpeg)
The resolution of the photo is way too good. You can see the fibers of the task board rather that just the overall texture of the paint. Looks fine to me in person (having old eyes helps!). This already has two thick coats of paint. I suppose a couple more might do the trick but again, I think it looks fine in person so I'm not going to worry about it.
More shortly.
Here's the ceramic (resin) caps in place. Took a bit of time to get things mitered properly. I also wanted to try to line up the little bulges in the capping with the end of walls, where possible. Despite taking care, there are still gaps where two pieces join. I tried to fill those gaps with a little extra paint. The paint used here is an acrylic called "Pennsylvania Clay." Here are a couple of pics:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021557-44522815.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021558-44523896.jpeg)
You can see I worked ahead a little here -- there's stuff on the roof of the main building. We'll zoom in on that shortly.
Here's a shot of the roof of the main building with all of the Roof Stuff. I do love roof stuff.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021558-445242465.jpeg)
A few things to note here:
1. The instructions call for notching the chimneys and have them partially hanging over the wall. I didn't see the point of that. Seems like a lot of error-prone work for little visual interest. Not even sure I like the look of the notched chimneys.
2. The roof access piece is an interesting structure. Those walls are laser-etched, not board-by-board. Notice the knot hole near the bottom back of the structure. I thought about having that structure face the front so that I can see the door - more detail. But, the piece actually has the walls cut to match the pitch of the roof. So, to reverse it 180 degrees, I would have work to do. Again, not worth it to me.
3. That vent that looks like a pagoda is a little mini laser-cut wood structure. Very clever. It also has a base that matches the pitch of the roof. Need to be careful when you glue it down.
4. Here you see the result of the etched metal I mentioned earlier. Believe it or not, I did try to file off the mold parting lines. But, you can still see them. I think I found something I hate more than bracing walls.
5. I'm starting to rethink the whole "put tar around the base of everything you put on the roof" thing. As you can see, I did it around the chimneys. As you can also see, I did a not-so-great job. No matter how hard I try, I can't get what looks like a realistic application of the tar. The variations in the width always look out of scale to me. In some cases where it's a major interface between two surfaces (like a wall resting on an angled roof) I have successfully used a thin, paper folded strip. But short of that, I have a difficult time with getting a good result with apply the glue/black paint mix. I have thought about using a mask but that doesn't work with round vents as you see here. There's probably an opportunity here for a new tool or technique. Or maybe it's just a bunch more practice.....
6. You can see a pretty noticeable gap where the roof meets the raised wall. I don't know if I will at least address this or not. If so, I will use the thin strip of paper (painted with glossy black paint) technique to handle it.
7. The roof is not a light as it appears here. My overhead shop light is pretty harsh and makes it look whiter.
More shortly.
Another roof shot. You can get another view of the back building here, too.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021741-445252117.jpeg)
By the way, I don't know that I mentioned the weathering of the walls. What you see here is just some medium gray chalk. I tilted the building on its side and then used a razor blade to scrape off a fair amount of powder from a stick. It's then scrubbed in with a semi-stiff brush. The natural texture of the wall tends to grab the chalk in a pseudo-random fashion. I didn't try any alcohol wash because it looked too dark to me. Also, alcohol seems to dissolve the artist acrylic paint pretty easily so I didn't want to create any new trouble for myself.
More shortly
Time to do the loading dock on the front wall. The first thing I noticed that the door sill trim seemed like it would be a problem in that it would interfere with the loading dock. Turns out it is. This pic shows one of the support pieces held up against the wall. You can see that it's too high:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021741-445271837.jpeg)
Two choices: (1) cut the legs to lower the dock, (2) remove the strip below the door to eliminate the interference. No brainer - a lower loading dock would look illogical is that you would have to step up to get things into the building. Also, A lower dock would then make the stairs on the side look funny as they would now be a little high.
More shortly.
Here's the loading dock under construction. The instructions do not call for the diagonal cross braces but I put them in. Scale 2x4s.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021742-445281784.jpeg)
I took this pic right after I glued on these pieces. You can see the glue hasn't been dried, yet (nor had I yet scraped away some of the excess).
More shortly.
Here's the loading dock with steps glued in place. I'm happy with the decision to pull off the bottom door trim.
Note that the dock is not centered on the wall. But, you will see later that the loading dock roof *is* centered on that wall. This is by design. I'm not sure why this is. The only thing I can think of is that Bar Mills wanted to be sure you could see the exposed bricks on the right side of the front wall. But, they could have put that brick work higher when they set up the program for the laser. A bit confusing to me but no matter. It will all look good in the end.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021913-44530674.jpeg)
OK. That's it for now -- nearly 3am and time for all good little boys and girls to get some sleep. I'll try to close out this piece of the thread later today.
G'night.
Vince,
Where do I begin? The walls looks great, your chalk application "did the trick". They look great! I like your roofing and the roof details. I would suggest some flat black flashing along the wall, or even using a narrow strip of your roofing to flash the wall. I think the gloss would look out of place and harsh against the roofing. Great job with overcoming the little glitches in the kit like removing the bottom door trim and making the door track look more realistic. Wonderful modeling, it is going to look great on your layout!
Thanks for the kind words, Jerry. Yes, flashing might be good. I also didn't think of using some small piece of wall -- sort of like a shoe moulding in houses. It would flex to be sure to cover any gaps. Very clever - thx! I might still leave it alone as well. You know how it is when you stare at and work on something for a few weeks. Anxious to move on. After I build the last building and before I place things on the diorama I will come back and take a look with fresh eyes and see what grabs my attention.
Beautiful modeling Vince , love the stucco walls with the brick and the signs.
Here's the roof over the loading dock. From the pictures in the kit, I can't tell if this is supposed to be tar paper and board and batten or a ridged steel roof. No matter - I will throw some chalk at it and decide later what it looks like ;). Bar Mills roof like this is pretty convenient. You get a piece of chipboard with laser-scribed lines to show you where the battens go. I forgot to take a picture of that -- sorry. Then they also give you some battens that are super skinny laser-cut strips cut out of thin wood with self adhesive backing. You cut those out, stick them down to the chipboard, and paint. Here's the piece with battens applied and some Rustoleum rattle-can light gray primer:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021742-44529638.jpeg)
And here it is after some chalking. The chalk here is Some medium gray and red oxide PanPastels as well as black charcoal:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021913-445311862.jpeg)
Notice that behind the roof panel is another of the Bar Mills rafter combs on which this roof will be situated. I had quite a scare on this. I cut that comb out of its sheet and hit it with inkahol. All sides to try to minimize warping. That ended up being a lot of fluid. A few minutes after I did that I considered putting the roof panel on top of it with a weight on top of that to keep it straight while it dried. To my surprise the comb had swelled horizontally to the point where it was at least another half "panel" bigger than the roof. That is, at least half the distance between two battens bigger. Imagine my delight. For more fun I held the wood up to the wall to see if the tabs that you see at the back of the comb still fit in the front wall of the main building. Not even close. Fortunately, I realized there was nothing I could do except wait to see what happened when it dried fully. So, I left it out in the air to do whatever it wanted. Happily, the size returned to normal. You can see that it has a little curl to it but gluing it to the building and gluing down the roof on top of it will clear that up. So, for me, the moral of the story is that if I'm going to use inkahol, I should do it while it's on the sheet. I think a better approach in the future will be to use rattle can paint to prime it and then work effects with acrylics. I thought about trying to color it while still on the sheet but when I have done that in the past it hasn't done a good job of staining the sides which is what you see the most of.
More shortly.
I didn't show it explicitly but the only other piece to the loading dock is the support for the roof. That comes as a U-shaped piece to which you need to add some 1/16" diagonal braces. I also weathered that with inkahol and there were no problems. Here are some pictures of the completed loading dock:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021913-44532629.jpeg)
Here's a straight-on shot. This gives you a good view of the asymmetrical support for the roof. Again, this is as-designed. Feels a little wacky to me, but it won't keep me up nights. If it does start to upset me, I can maybe throw a 4x4 diagonal support from the freely-hanging part of the roof to the wall of the main building. Doubt it, tho. I always keep Rule #1 in mind. If it isn't really, really broken, don't fix it. I'm guaranteed to make it worse. I have plenty of experience with that one.
I do like the way the rafter tails align with the battens. Maybe that means it is a tar paper and batten roof.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022203-44535673.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620021914-445332329.jpeg)
More shortly.
There's just one more major detail to deal with. The short wall on the main building has two transformers mounted up near the top of the wall. There are some nice simulated metal tray parts that are laser cut from very thin wood. Then, two angle brackets to hold it up. Those are also wood. Here are the pics:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022442-44542839.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022442-445432368.jpeg)
More shortly.
All righty then. That pretty much covers this part of the build. I finally glued down the sliding door and a side vent. Added some more weathering. Most of what you see along the base is Burnt Sienna PanPastel. That stuff is amazing. The adhesion is terrific. Almost like using paint. Highly recommend it.
The ceramic roof caps are a little bright. Inkahol made them too dark (tried that a while ago and had to repaint) but I may dust it a bit to get it toned down a little. I do like the color contrast, tho, so I don't want to go too far with that.
I wanted to make another shout out to Jerry Beach who, a couple of pages ago, advised me to stay the course with the current white color I was using. He advised that things would look good once weathered. I see what he saw now. Glad I didn't cave to my inner voice to go adobe on this thing. Thanks, Jerry.
OK. Here are the semi-final pics:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022902.jpeg)
Here's the side that will face the courtyard. Note I still have that big empty wall where the sign is supposed to go. I looked more at what Bar Mills included and I don't like it. I do like what they have in their pictures. I decided I will take some time and design one that looks similar but that may take a little while. By the way, to help with my inability to do nice signs, I just bought Affinity Designer. Happens to be on sale right now for $25. It's an Adobe Illustrator alternative. They also have a Photoshop alternative. If any of that sounds interesting, check out serif.com now. The 50% off sale is good for another week or so. Of course, having a nice tool won't make me any more creative. But, at least I should be able to make crappy signs faster.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022841.jpeg)
Here it is from the back. Feels like this could use some signage, too. But, the next part of the kit (and this thread) calls for a gantry crane back here so I won't worry about it.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022942-44544141.jpeg)
Here's the other back. This shot really shows the brightness of the ceramic caps. Needs just a little subtle dulling.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022942-4454712.jpeg)
And finally the birds-eye view. One more question I have is regarding that taller building extension next to the main building. Note that it does not have a roof cap. The instructions don't have you putting caps on (I have enough resin castings left over) but I could swear I saw pictures somewhere where there were caps here. I would have to cut some scrap task board to double the wall width there....or maybe not. Might be worth it. I won't throw out any leftover material until I know for sure.
There's more roof stuff that came with the kit but it would go on the single-story extension and would not be seen from the aisle. I'm going to save it for some other roofs that will see more scrutiny.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-140620022943-44548678.jpeg)
That's it for now. As I mentioned above, the next part of the build is a gantry crane scene that goes in back of this building along the long wall. I expect I will start that today.
Cheer, all.
Quote from: Janbouli on June 14, 2020, 07:42:25 AM
Beautiful modeling Vince , love the stucco walls with the brick and the signs.
Thanks, Jan. I am liking the stucco, too. I was surprised that the illusion of stucco looks pretty decent and is so much simpler and quicker that the water putty construction. You do see the board fibers in close-up photos but honestly, in person, I just don't notice them. And given how far this will be from the aisle, I think it's a non-issue.
Beautiful modeling Vince. Everything looks awesome.
Quote from: vinceg on June 14, 2020, 08:30:20 AM
Quote from: Janbouli on June 14, 2020, 07:42:25 AM
Beautiful modeling Vince , love the stucco walls with the brick and the signs.
You do see the board fibers in close-up photos but honestly, in person, I just don't notice them. And given how far this will be from the aisle, I think it's a non-issue.
Same thing I thought when I saw the close-ups , from a normal view point it doesn't show , photo's show so much more then real.
Hey Vince:
Looks just beautiful. Love your stucco.
Karl
Looks great, Vince!
Re the small second story addition - I would put a capping of some sort along here. This is one of those nasty building techniques that causes leaky house/ building. As the plaster on the cap perishes and cracks the water makes its way in the cracks and down the wall framing where dry rot begins. It need not be the same as your other capping - paper with a thin fold over both sides painted up to look like metal would work. The other thing I would suggest for this extension is a scupper and downpipe allowing water to escape onto the roof below. At the moment if it rained hard you would have a nice little swimming pool.
Really enjoying your in depth thread! Cheers, Mark.
That is a great looking structure.
Everything looks beautiful so far! :)
GREAT job...that weathered stucco is awesome!
John
Wonderful structure. Great stucco and weathering.
Jeff
Vince
Fantastic thread - and great modeling. I really like the weathered stucco, too.
Beautiful job on the walls, stucco, exposed brick and all. That can be a little tricky but yours looks great.
--Opa George
Thanks, everyone, for the encouragement.
Thanks, Mark, for the new vocabulary! I had never heard of a scupper although I sort of guessed what it was from your post. I like the idea - nice detail. I will probably want to wait to see the final orientation of the buildings to make sure it will be seen.
What do people use for the down spouts? My first reaction was to just paint up some 14 gauge wire or something like that but round isn't very realistic. Strip styrene, maybe? Wouldn't have the ridges/fluting but in HO scale at a distance, maybe doesn't matter.
On with the crane. I cleaned off my work area and pulled out the related parts. Here's a pic, including the manual page that shows you what is there and how it is intended to be positioned next to the main office building:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-150620235959-445691939.jpeg)
Not a lot of parts -- hopefully not a complicated build. (Famous last words....the Homer water tower was also not a lot of parts and that was a pain.)
The sheet at the top of the picture with the six things that look a little like trestle bents holds the supports for a horizontal tank....fuel, I guess. That will go elsewhere in the diorama but I will build it here.
Here is a picture from the photo booklet that comes with the kit:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-150620235959-44571137.jpeg)
Even though the gantry crane is a fairly simple structure they created an interesting scene with the scenery and details. That bulldozer is included with the kit. So are lots of piles of junk. Again, this is toward the back of the diorama so I will think hard about how much junk to use here where visibility will be somewhat low. The price you pay for an around-the-walls layout, I reckon.
One note for anyone that cares -- if you're interested in this kit, there is one listed for sale on eBay right now. No, I don't have anything to do with it....I just happened to notice it as I go in there and poke around from time to time.
Quote from: vinceg on June 16, 2020, 12:11:00 AM
What do people use for the down spouts? My first reaction was to just paint up some 14 gauge wire or something like that but round isn't very realistic. Strip styrene, maybe? Wouldn't have the ridges/fluting but in HO scale at a distance, maybe doesn't matter.
Hi Vince,
I have been using wire for downspouts and I think the effect looks good. I model the 1930s (ish) and smooth round downspouts were common I think. Basing that note on old photos, but the forum will let me know if I am mistaken. Regardless, the wire downspouts add a nice detail.
Best regards,
--Opa George
Nice job on the stucco Vince -
I have a kit in my stash that calls for stucco and I've never been a big fan of the Durhams water putty - the acrylic paint looks like the ticket. Great job on tying it all together with the weathering.
Doug
Thanks, Doug. Yeah, the acrylics are pretty thick -- especially some older bottles. Stippling it on seems to make for a pretty decent effect. The task board base helped, though. If you're going to do it on smooth basswood, the effect might look different -- maybe even better. Please post some pics when you do that so that we can see how it works out. I also find the water putty thing to be a lot of work (the one time I used it) and easy to do wrong.
Hey Vince:
Good luck with the crane.
Karl
Looks great so far Vince. I've never seen this kit before.
Vince,
It all looks fantastic. Love the stucco on the walls.
Tom ;D
Thank you Karl, Steve, and Tom. Steve, this kit was Bar Mills' annual super kit last December. I haven't seen any threads or mention of it anywhere, either.
OK, time to get caught up on the build thread.
More shortly.
Here are the parts for the crane. Very simple structure - a few plastic I-beams and some laser-cut wood components. I sprayed the wood with Rustoleum 2X primer - it's the dark gray stuff:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-020720080921-447531637.jpeg)
I didn't do a good job in this picture but there is a metal casting for the crane motor and a small chain that goes with this as well. You can see the teeny zip-lock bag in the upper right of the picture.
Also, at the top of the picture you can see some more laser-cut parts that represent the stand for a freestanding tank. We'll get to that later.
More shortly.
The gantry crane has two rails (I guess any gantry crane does). Those were the two larger I-beams that you saw in the previous post. One of those rails is attached to the main office building, the other is freestanding. Here is the office-mounted rail in place:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-020720080921-44754300.jpeg)
And here is the freestanding rail assembly:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720130122-44782575.jpeg)
More shortly.
At this point, I noticed that when the crane is fully assembled, there won't be much holding it together. There are a couple of horizontal supports between the rails and then the crane assembly itself. I was concerned that the crane would easily snap off when I moved the building around -- too much weight pulling on the cross pieces. So, I decided that it was time to start preparing the diorama base so that I could glue down the main office and finish off the crane.
First, I added some red oxide Pan Pastel chalk to the crane rail and supports attached to the building. Easier to do now before I forget and have to do it when the building is glued down. Here is a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720130123-447831852.jpeg)
More shortly.
First step - I know there will be a significant concrete area as part of the diorama. I started by spray painting the top surface of the diorama with Rustoleum flat white. Then, I put the buildings (and a mockup for the coal bunker) on the dio to get a rough placement and pencil in the placements.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720130123-447841252.jpeg)
Nothing glued in here. Just looking to get a rough idea. I can see that the coal bunker in the back will be partially obscured by the yard office building. But, I can improve that by pushing the yard office back a little bit. Also, I think most of the visual interest in the wrap-around catwalk/stairway on the bunker. That will be easily visible.
Here you can also see the freestanding tank in this picture. Unpainted here. Finally, that bulldozer is part of the kit. Woodland Scenics vehicle. Comes weathered. What you see is straight from the package.
More shortly.
(What's going on with the web site? Has been sluggish all day....)
I decided to use Woodland Scenics Concrete Top Coat. It's a very light tan color:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720130659-44786728.jpeg)
I applied two coats of paint to the dio with a cheap sponge brush ($0.79 at Home Depot). I did most of the surface but skipped areas that I know will be covered with ground and foliage later.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720130658-447851140.jpeg)
It looks shiny here but it is still wet.
More shortly.
I wanted to take one more look at the roughed-in placement of buildings now that it's painted. Here's the birds-eye view:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720130659-44788748.jpeg)
I also wanted to look again at the bridge that will provide access to the facility (the Rix product to the right). Here you can also see the base coat of paint on the freestanding tank. It seems the guy in the bulldozer is wandering around the facility.
More shortly.
Excellent modeling Vince.
For the expansion joints, I decided to try the technique that I learned from the Jason Jensen videos. I just used a fine-lead mechanical pencil to draw cross-hatched lines. Nothing special about the spacing. I just used the width of my clear plastic ruler:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720130659-447891754.jpeg)
The courtyard won't be anywhere near this big, but I wanted to be sure I covered any area that might potentially be exposed.
That concrete paint is thick. Combined with the sponge paint brush, it left a little texture on the surface. Not a bad thing -- in fact, probably a good thing -- but one side effect of that is that the pencil lines also get some texture. Here's a closeup:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720184704-448062233.jpeg)
More shortly.
To help accentuate and weather the cracks a little more as well as help cover up that "texture" that the brush stokes create for the pencil lines, I went back and traced each of the expansion joint lines with Pan Pastels using Raw Umber and a small paint brush. The color of this pic looks a little funky because I did this in our family room while watching TV. This is low-wattage, incandescent lighting rather than the LED, 5000K lights over the railroad and my workbench.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720184704-448081567.jpeg)
More shortly.
I wanted to provide a little more texture to the concrete so I went back and added some more Pan Pastels with two shades of light gray, using a Q-Tip. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720184704-44809764.jpeg)
When this was finished, I wasn't 100% happy with the result. So, I later went back and scraped on some medium gray chalk dust using sticks and a razor blade and then brushed it in long, light strokes using a makeup brush (don't ask me why I have one). It helped blend the whole result. In the end, I'm not sure how much additional value was added with doing the Pan Pastel/Q-Tip thing. And, I'm sure that after the buildings are down I will want to go back and do some more highlighting. We'll see.
More shortly.
Okie-doke. With the concrete more or less "ready," I glued down the main office building and finished the crane. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720184705-44810847.jpeg)
And, I couldn't help myself - I wanted to see it with the yard office again as well. Here's the last pic for this segment of the thread (the yard office is not yet glued down nor is that rascal in the bulldozer):
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-030720184705-448112065.jpeg)
Ready for the coal bunker now. I have actually done a fair bit of work on that so far and have some pics. Will try to bring the thread up to date with that soon.
Cheers.
Thank you, Curt. It's getting a bit more exciting now. Looking forward to getting the coal bunker finished and finally opening that first bag if static grass to start working on the terrain.
In a word - STUNNING! :o
Thanks, Bob. Appreciate the encouragement.
Working on uploading pics for the next piece of thread now....
OK - the last building - the coal bunker. I have made quite a bit of progress in the last few days since I have been off. Lots to catch up on.
As with the other two buildings, it comes with its own manual and separately bagged components:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720153440-448171442.jpeg)
More shortly.
The instructions have you begin by building the base for the tipple. It consists of a tilted platform that sits on three cross beams that sit on rows of posts. The manual gives you a full-size template to work with. I made a photocopy of the template and used it to lightly tack down the timbers. When dry, the assemblies are cut away from the template with a razor blade. Here's the first subassembly:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720153805-44819405.jpeg)
You can see the tilted base of the tipple in the top of the photo. We're looking at the bottom of it -- it faces the ground when assembled. Those cross members on the base are notched to accept the base timbers at the appropriate angle. Once in place, the cross members also serve to help take the torsional warp out of the base. That little square you see in the middle accepts a small enclosure that surrounds the elevator that carries coal to the top of the tipple and into the bin. You have to cut the one cross member to accommodate this opening.
On the right of the picture, you can see the template including the little glue spots where I tacked the timbers to the sheet.
Also on that sheet, notice the cross bracing. These are actually very easy to install. The kit gives you a separate sheet of bracing members that are laser cut. Each bracing "assembly" is a single piece. Here are the base supports with the bracing installed:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720153853-44820694.jpeg)
More shortly.
Time to attached the support beams to the angled platform base. One important note here. The overall bunker enclosure wraps around the outside of the base. It is important to make sure the length of the horizontal timber does not exceed the length of the base. If it does, you will have trouble putting the shell around the base in future steps. To insure I was within spec, I used a couple of weights on either side of the base and made sure that my support beams fit. In a couple of cases, I had some filing to do. Easier to do now than later. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720153946-448212441.jpeg)
More shortly.
After all three cross beam assemblies are installed, you get the angled based ready for the shell. Here is a picture from the front:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720153947-448221401.jpeg)
And from the back:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154212.jpeg)
Noticed that I'm missing concrete footings for two of the supports. The package of resin castings came two pieces light. Will have to build something later. I chose to do this in the back since it won't be seen.
More shortly.
Time to build the shell. Here are the walls with the requisite bracing:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154241.jpeg)
Notice that the big front wall is really two pieces that are edge-glued together.
One really important point for anyone building the kit. There are multiple bracing diagram errors that you will want to avoid. One is huge. Notice at the bottom of the big wall (the one that has the piece numbered "5" at the bottom). You see that I have no piece along the bottom from left to right. But, the instructions tell you to do this:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154300.jpeg)
The problem with that is that that wall #5 directly butts up against the first cross beam support. If you put in that support as the instructions indicate, you will have an interference problem of 5/32" (the width of the bracing member). To better show that, here's a side view with the front wall in place:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154327.jpeg)
As you can see, no room for any wood there. Fortunately, I'm getting a little better at looking ahead and test fitting things. I would have been really pissed off if I had to chip away a 7" piece of glued down bracing.
The other problem is on internal walls 14 and 15. You can see in my bracing pictures above that the braces going left to right do not go all the way to the end of the wall. But, here is the instruction sheet:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154354.jpeg)
I drew circles at the error points. Those ends would interfere with the tall supports on the front and back walls if you run them to the edge. You can see that I drew in some vertical lines on walls 14 and 15 to represent where the other braces will hit. Again, I saw this ahead of time so I did not have to do any whittling later in the build.
More shortly
By the way - one more word about wall preparation. From the bracing diagrams above you can see that much of the bracing runs in one direction only. My experience has been that anything braced this way will frequently warp along the non-braced axis. For that reason, I didn't want to stain the walls ahead of time. Rather, I decided that I would try building the entire structure first and then stain the entire building. My hope was that with the entire structure completed, there would be little, if any chance of warpage because there was support in all directions. So, as I am building the shell here, you will see that it is unfinished.
More shortly
Decision time. The instructions tell you to build the entire shell and then slide it onto the base. That worried me a bit. Keeping things square would be essential. And this building is oddly-shaped on the bottom so I envisioned that being a little difficult. Also, there's a lot of interesting engineering putting the parts together - the internal walls have tabs that go into the slots on the back wall, the front wall, and the base. Also, I knew that the shell has to fit fairly snugly on the base.Given the errors I had already seen in the instructions along with concerns regarding my ability to actually build the shell properly, I decided to build it in pieces on the base rather than all at once as a separate assembly.
So, starting with the base, I added the two internal walls and the back wall. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154423.jpeg)
More shortly
Now adding the front wall:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154508.jpeg)
While we're talking about the front wall, I thought you might like to see some of the detail Bar Mills etched into the wood. It's pretty intricate as they etched in board lines and even nail holes. Really nice effect. Here's a closeup of the front wall:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154445.jpeg)
Also in that pic you can see the two little slots that accept the tabs from the two internal walls.
More shortly
And, finally the side walls and rafter combs:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154801.jpeg)
Another view
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154822.jpeg)
More shortly
The building is now pretty structurally sound - time to stain it. For color, I used Hunterline Driftwood stain. First time I have tried this at this scale. I really like the ending effect.
By the way, I did the same thing for the support members and the base -- just forgot to mention it.
Here are a couple of pics:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154853-44823165.jpeg)
Another view:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154853-448362055.jpeg)
More shortly.
Signs are next. I have started to make it a habit to scan the sign sheets that come with kits and then use printouts of those scans on the model. Then I always have a master if (when) I mess something up. I did that here. There are two deep black banner-style signs that stretch across the tipple. When I scanned them, the deep black didn't replicate well. Fortunately, I was able to go into Affinity Photo and clean the color up easily. The result was a new printout that was as good as the original. Here are some pics with signs on the building. No weathering, yet.
The front:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155003-44837913.jpeg)
The back:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155003-448381852.jpeg)
And finally the south wall (that will be visible from the aisle):
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155004-448391626.jpeg)
More shortly.
Now for the roof. The demo model has a green tar paper roof on the building. I have never done anything in green but wanted to try it. I wasn't sure what to do color-wise so I decided to go to Home Depot and check out what sort of flat greens they had. The Rustoleum Camouflage color of Army Green looks like it might fit the bill. So, I picked up a can and tried it. Bar Mills gives you self-stick tar paper sheets. So, I sprayed one with the paint. Here is a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720154646.jpeg)
More shortly.
While the paint was drying I decided to do a little weathering and detailing on the front. If you remember those two little slots on the front wall (that accept the tabs from the internal walls), you noticed that they are a little unsightly. The kit provides a header that stretches across the entire front and back (there are similar tabs back there, too). to hide those tabs. I decided to add some nut/bolt/washer castings (not included with the kit). Adds a little interest but, more importantly, gives me an excuse to add rust. (And, who doesn't love rust?)
Here is the front wall with that detail.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155045-448401242.jpeg)
And a closeup of a couple of NBWs:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155046-44841602.jpeg)
You might also notice that I'm cheating here -- the roof is actually on at this point. I am presenting in build time line. Photo-taking time line is sometimes different when I forgot to take a few shots at the right time.
More shortly.
Gorgeous modeling Vince.
Finally, the roof is attached and I did a little more weathering. Here is a pic of the front:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155120.jpeg)
That door at the top is not glued in. So far, I'm not loving how I painted it. It's a plastic door -- wood might have been better. I might still play with it a bit to get a better match.
In addition to the roof, you can see the fascia is attached. The rafters are a little long. Might need to trim them a bit but I do like the effect of they sticking out a little past the roof. Also, You can see that they did not accept the stain very well. I would guess that the laser cutting process seals them a bit and makes them a little resistant to the alcohol mix.
I missed the concrete footings, too. Those need some smudgery.
here are a few more pics - still needs some weathering but you can see the roof in a couple of them.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155150.jpeg)
A couple of things to notice in the back here - one, I did not apply the NBW castings since this wall will be facing the backdrop and only be a few inches away. Might live to regret that if I should ever move the dio, but that's a thread I'd like to start for another day.
Also notice that the coal elevator shaft is in place here.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155228.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155259.jpeg)
More shortly.
That brings me up to date with where I am. To finish this building I have still put in the coal dispensing chutes and then the large wrap-around stairway and catwalk leading from the door in front. Then, some final weathering and go back and add the outside lights around the doors (the kit was missing those detail parts - I bought a bunch that just came in recently so that I can go back and add that detail). The instructions suggest that the catwalk will be a little tricky. So, it might take a while. But, I'm looking forward to the detail.
As always, I wanted to place the new building in the diorama to see how the scene was shaping up. Here's the main view as seen from the aisle:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155349-448422277.jpeg)
Visibility of all the buildings is pretty good. Still missing is the freestanding tank but I think I can easily find a spot for that.
By the way, I mentioned that the bulldozer was included with the kit. Also included with the kit is that coal-hauling dump truck.
One other "BTW" - the kit did not come with any coal. Maybe I shouldn't have expected it - my only other experience was Duffy's Coal Yard from FSM and it did include some coal. Not a big deal, just a bit surprising.
And here's an overhead view to see if my original plan for the scene still makes sense:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-050720155349-44847216.jpeg)
I think the layout still works. The coal tipple will need to move a little closer to the Rix bridge to the right because the wrap around stairs will need some room on the left. But, I think there's still room for some backdrop-hiding foliage behind the buildings as well as the cyclone fence to surround the perimeter (included with the kit).
I'll be back when the tipple is finished.
Cheers.
Thank you, Curt. It has been a fun ride.
Vince,
Over 10 years ago I attended a clinic by the late Brian Nolan on how to compose a diorama for the maximum impact. He talked about the artist rule of thirds and many other ways to draw the viewer's eye into the diorama scene. I think about 75% of the clinic went over my head but a few things stuck and I have found what I did learn of value.
With that in mind, I looked at your last two photos. The stucco structure is almost perfectly placed to draw the viewer's eye into the scene toward the coal storage building. Both the wall that aligns with the expansion joints and its transition from two stories to one almost forms a force field to draw the viewer into the scene. One small nit, I would align the dock side of the building along an expansion joint by sliding it forward slightly. It just makes more sense to me that the joint would be next to the foundation of the building.
I feel the placement of the green building could be improved. Not only does its shape and position not draw the viewer into the scene, it almost forbids them to enter. I would rotate the building clockwise forty five degrees or so to align the longer wall with the expansion joints. I believe it would then invite the viewer into the scene as well as display the end of the structure with its second story deck. Again, the transition from two stories to one helps draw the viewer's eye toward the coal storage building.
I think that the coal storage bunker should dominate the scene purely from a size standpoint. Yet, to me it seems overpowered by the stucco building. This may be due to perspective, but I think the the depth of the coal bunker harms its ability to dominate the scene. Also maybe the perspective of the photo is deceiving, but to me it looks like once the chutes are added to the bunkers they will be lower than the sides of the dump box on the coal truck. I would suggest using a piece of 1/2" foam under the base of the storage building. I think that would give the building a more massive look as well as remove any potential issue with the chute height. You could scribe the foam to look like a poured wall with a slab under the bunker complete with expansion joints.
Is there a truck scale or scale house included in this kit? Because a coal yard kinda needs one.
I am wondering if you model a specific era, and if so, what year or years? Seems to me I saw some SD40-2's in a pic you posted some time ago...inquiring minds and all that.
Jerry, WOW - awesome input! (Am I too old to say "awesome?"...probably) I was so interested in what you said I ran back downstairs and moved things around. I didn't have any 1/2" foam lying around but I did have a little slab of 3/4" plywood handy so I used that. If I understood your instructions, here's the result:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-060720004806.jpeg)
Not a finished thought, yet, but there are so many things I like better about this:
- coal chutes were too low as you said - I never even thought about that.
- elevates the rear of the dio - more interest and hides less of the bunker
- lets me see more of the yard office (green building). I do love the stairs and deck
- the stucco building and the yard office now "point" to the bunker. Again, as you said
Now you've made me think about the whole area differently. Ideas running around in my head:
- Move the stone building further back to further frame the tipple
- Move the tipple to the left a little bit - same reason
- With the stone building back, the entrance to the business needs to be in the front (you can see I moved the bridge accordingly)
- Maybe that shouldn't be a bridge at all - maybe Hwy 50 is at that level and there is no retaining wall - just the grade that goes down to the double track mainline below.
- I now have room up front for a weigh scale of some sort - guess I could copy the idea from the FSM Duffy's kit
- Need a place for the freestanding tank (fuel tank?) that doesn't ruin the other effects
I couldn't easily move the stucco building for expansion line alignment - it's glued down so that I could easily build the gantry crane that you see on the left.
To answer your other question regarding era, I'm at about 1990. But, there are many, many egregious anachronisms on the layout (hence the "protolancing" in my signature. I wanted 1990 for the Death Star IC logo. But, by 1990, the Monee Cut was single-tracked and mine is double-tracked. Also, I have zillions of 40 ft. box cars. I like those not only because they were available from the IC historical society but also because I can have more cars for the same length of train. Hoping there will be additional operations capability there. And, of course, by 1990 it is much less likely that you would have small industries such as are represented in craftsman kit dioramas that are actually being served by a Class 1 railroad. I hope to help that out a bit by doing some kit bashing and kit combination later on in the saga. Interestingly, as my tastes continue to develop/mature, more of those red and yellow boxes will be used for urban scenes and placed on streets rather than spurs. We'll see.
Great vision, Jerry. Thanks a bunch. I think you just made a huge difference in where I would have headed with this.
Just one question back to you -- when can you come over and design scenes for the rest of my railroad?
Vince wonderful build and a great scene developing !!
Jerry, I am too old to say it but I'll second the AWESOME on your input. Like Vince, I very much appreciate your insight in explaining things here. I have been thinking and planning lately about scene development, the elements of art and principles of design. You have summed up a lot of these ideas concisely with a practical example using Vince's beautiful modeling. Sure wish I had been there to take in Brian's presentation.
Thanks again to both of you for the information and inspiration !!
--Paul
Vince,
I'm glad you made some changes to your scene. It looks much more appealing to me now. I would suggest a couple more things. First, use some cardboard (chipboard) or dark construction paper to represent where the road crosses the front of the scene. IMO that will help you visualize where to locate the fence and entry gate to the yard. Knowing where the gate goes will help locate the scale. The scale and scale house (should you build one) will impact the sight lines to the tipple. That might lead to repositioning the green office building. Of course, if you are able to locate the scale by the office... I don't remember the tank you still need to construct, it too will come into play with the scene composition. You seem to have a lot of space still available. Maybe you could add some material bins, simple poured concrete walls and use them to store sand or crushed stone. The stucco building has plenty of room to store bagged cement giving them something to take up the summer slack. I'm just "spitballing" here, if I hit on something you like, run with it. If not, just ignore my ramblings. FWIW, I'm flattered that you think I have design skills, I just try to look at a scene as if it were a postcard. Am I drawn into the scene, or do I just want to move on.
Quote from: PaulS on July 06, 2020, 06:53:25 AM
Vince wonderful build and a great scene developing !!
Jerry, I am too old to say it but I'll second the AWESOME on your input. Like Vince, I very much appreciate your insight in explaining things here. I have been thinking and planning lately about scene development, the elements of art and principles of design. You have summed up a lot of these ideas concisely with a practical example using Vince's beautiful modeling. Sure wish I had been there to take in Brian's presentation.
Thanks again to both of you for the information and inspiration !!
--Paul
Paul,
Thank you. I wish I was able to take that clinic a second or even a third time. Brian went into great detail, right down to the placement of castings, what worked and why it worked. I've managed to remember and apply some of his basic concepts.
Hey Vince:
WOW1111 looks just beautiful. Can't wait to see some scenery and other details around the buildings.
Karl
Thank you Karl. Just about to post the final bunker pics. Working the scene is coming up next.
Coal chutes and the stairway are now in. One last set of pics here to show the (more or less) final state of the coal bunker. I do still have to put in the doorway lamps on all buildings, and a little weathering and clean up here and there, but for the most part I'm ready to start working on the actual scenery on the diorama.
Here's the front of the bunker/tipple:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-060720212615-448621717.jpeg)
Note that I decided to leave the extra long rafter tails for now. I'll take a look with fresh eyes a little later once the scene starts to come together more to see what I think then.
Here's the north side of the building:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-060720212616-448632347.jpeg)
Taking pictures is such a great way to find problems. For example, it wasn't until just now when I'm posting this picture that I can see the north wall seems to have a couple of finger prints on it. Will need to take care of those. I also see some residual marks from where the railings were cut away from the laser sheet. Unsightly here but didn't catch my attention when I was looking at the model live.
Here's the back - not much changed from the last picture other than a little more weathering.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-060720212616-44864277.jpeg)
And the south side. Again, largely the same except for some more weathering:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-060720212616-44865424.jpeg)
And, finally a reshoot of the building trio with placement a la Jerry Beach:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-060720212616-448661267.jpeg)
That's about it for the buildings. I still have the freestanding tank to put in but I'll show that a little later once the rest of the diorama starts to take shape.
Overall, this has been a great kit. Other than having to watch out for a few errors in the instructions -- especially with regards to bracing -- it goes together easily. For example, the coal tipple went together in just a few days around the extended July 4 weekend. So, my hat's off to Art, Jack, Jim, and anyone else in the Bar Mills gang for putting together a kit that was fun to build.
I am going to go off and try to work out the scenery, now. First order of business is to get the overall plan in place. Maybe I can do a few things first like the area behind the stucco building. And for the tipple, I was planning to have a fake spur back there for hoppers to dump their coal. Actually, it would be a real spur but inaccessible to my track plan. Would be scenery only with a hopper or two back there for effect. Will think a little more about that. Other than that, I'll be rethinking the whole context of the diorama as Jerry suggested earlier. Have to find the right balance between analysis paralysis and regretting that I moved too quickly.
Will be back as soon as I can. I'll keep the scenery work for this dio in this thread. When it comes time to integrate it into the layout, I'll go back to the Monee rebuild thread that I started a while ago.
Cheers.
Excellent work on all, Vince. I am particularly fond of your weathering on the bunker. Can't wait to see some scenery develop.
Nice work all around.
--Opa George
Very, very nice. It will be a great scene once planted.
Vince,
Great modeling...well done...excellent coloring...another set of neat industrial buildings for your layout...
Tommy
Thanx George, Bob, and Tom. Sorry - it's been too long since I've been updating this thread. I've actually been poking along at a few things, just not taking pictures and keeping the thread up to date.
Time to fix that now. I think it's time to stop working on it. I can think of dozens of more things to do but at some point, I have to reckon with the reality that there's a whole railroad to work on...can't keep tweaking this diorama forever. (Well, I could, but....)
More shortly.
OK - first item. Earlier on this page, Jerry Beach recommended that the coal dealership needed a scale. Nothing is included in the kit so I scratchbuilt one out of some scrap wood from the kit. To do that, I copied the scale used by FSM in the Duffy's Coal Yard. It's essentially a slab consisting of steel slats. One of the wood sheets had enough spare wood on it. I cut out a rectangle and scribed in the slats with the back of an X-Acto knife with a #11 blade. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820163842-45604715.jpeg)
I also framed that piece with 1/16" square wood and painted to represent steel.
More shortly.
Also earlier on this page, you can see a pic of the coal bunker raised by 3/4" on a piece of scrap plywood. For the diorama, I used a piece of 3/4" foam (the same foam as I used for the diorama base). I then spackled the cut edges to give it a smoother finish (using that pink stuff that I like so much). Finally, to give it a little more detail, I scribed in vertical lines and also used L-shaped styrene along the top to represent a ridge. Finally, Painted with some old Polly S Concrete that I still have and hit it with some various chalks. Here's a pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820163842-45607824.jpeg)
More shortly.
Time for some land forming. I added a little terrain around the edges using some 20-year-old Sculptamold (still works). At this point, the main office (stucco building) is the only thing glued down. This also gives you a view of the "scale."
Here are the pics:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820163842-456081656.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820163843-456091127.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820163843-456101418.jpeg)
More shortly.
Unfortunately, those are the only "construction" pics that I took. All I have now is the end result. I'll present them below with some discussion along with the pics.
First, the entrance to the facility:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165728-456112046.jpeg)
Some notes:
1. The kit includes material for the chain link fence. Posts are brass rods that needs to be soldered and then the usual tulle fabric.
2. First coat over the Sculptamold is a tan wash using paints I got from the reject bin at Home Depot. Fifty cents a can for the sample sizes. Quite a good deal and the colors they had almost exactly match my dirt/clay.
3. Once the Sculptamold was painted, all ground covered with dirt sifted through a nylon screen.
4. Then, applied two types of static grass. This was my first static grass experience. I really love it. Pretty simple. Some random ground foam and ground leaves (a la Luke Towan) after that.
By the way, notice that the buildings now include the lamp shades. Painted red to provide a few accents.
More shortly.
A view from the north. Not much going on here other than the basic terrain and the conveyor.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165729-45612286.jpeg)
More shortly.
A close-up of the scale. Pretty simple. I think this part of the scene needs some more blending -- more dirt, a few weeds, etc. But, given how far this diorama is from the aisle, I don't know that it is worth the time. As I said earlier, gotta call it a day at some point.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165729-456131999.jpeg)
More shortly.
Here's a bit more of an overhead view and a closeup of the bunker.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165729-45614216.jpeg)
A few notes:
1. The trees are recycled from some work my daughter and I did 20 years ago (or more). The armatures are Sedum plants. Then, just some green polyfill fiber and some ground foam hair sprayed on. They're not super high fidelity but, again, ....pretty far away from the viewer.
2. The coal truck has a molded insert that represents the coal load. Not very convincing. I might actually fix that -- that is, glue in some loose Woodland Scenics coal on top of it.
3. To the left of the truck, you can see another conveyor. These are all included with the kit.
More shortly.
Here's a close-up of the back.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165729-45615532.jpeg)
Notes:
1. Good closeup of the tank. It doesn't come out well with this picture but I rubbed some powdered graphite on top of the tank to create some sheen so that it looks little more like metal. Actually looks decent but, again, didn't come out here.
2. Those rocks are left over from the rock face in the old Monee that I demolished.
3. The little piles of brown material is the dried leaves ground up in a food processor. I think they're way too big. And I ran the food processor a long time to get them to that size. They seem to work better for Luke. Next time I'll try some sifting. Maybe need a different processor as well.
More shortly.
Similar shot to the last one but a little further back. This shot lets you see the junk pile on the side of the main office building:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165849-456162437.jpeg)
You can see that I tried experimenting with weeds "coming up through the cracks" in the concrete. I think I like the effect. Needs some more.
Also, I didn't mention it last time, but along the concrete wall that supports the bunker riser (Bunker Hill?) there are some tall weed tufts. Those are made of regular twine that is dyed green with Rit dye. I have some of this left over from building my very first FSM kit (Barongould Tannery) some zillion years ago. George's techniques still standing the test of time.
More shortly.
Here's a view from the back. I have to confess that I sort of phoned this one in because it is completely hidden from view. I wanted a track back there because that's how the coal would come in. But, there should be a pit in the tracks where coal dumps out of the bottom of the hopper and hits an underground chute and/or conveyor that carries it to the elevator in the bunker. Probably should be some coal scattered around the area. But, I kept it simple. Mostly an experiment in terrain scenery.
By the way, this track is inaccessible from the layout. It goes from backdrop to backdrop. Scenery only.
Here's the pic:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165850-45617849.jpeg)
More shortly.
Another back view:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165850-45618454.jpeg)
A view from the "other" back. Remember, this diorama is in a corner. Now we're looking at it from behind the other, 90-degree backdrop. You can see lots of cruft on the ground. I need to do a little tidying up.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165850-45619872.jpeg)
More shortly.
Last picture of the diorama while it's on the workbench.
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820165850-456202379.jpeg)
More shortly.
What a beautiful scene Vince , great modeling.
When I started this thread, I mentioned that I was anxious to build this diorama because it would be my "first square foot" of scenery of the railroad. The intent was to build a diorama to get a foothold on which I could then begin adding. So, [too many] months later, I think I'm there. Here are a few pics of the diorama in place:
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820174219-456211402.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820174220-45623805.jpeg)
(https://modelersforum.com/gallery/760-240820174219-456221726.jpeg)
A few final notes:
1. The conveyor by the crane fell over -- vehicles aren't glued down.
2. I still have to think a bit about what sort of horizon scene, if any, I need behind the diorama. The structures and terrain hide quite a bit but I think I at least need a tree and/or some shrubs on the side of the diorama near the gantry crane (on the left).
3. I need to remember to do some clouds on the sky before I glue down this dio.
4. I am a little concerned about how difficult it will be to bring the surrounding terrain up to this edge of this diorama without getting sculptamold all over the chain link fencing. We'll see if I can be careful enough.
My hat is off again to the crew at Bar Mills. This was my first Bar Mills super kit and it was a lot of fun to build. The layout was perfect to get me started - the buildings seemed to fit nicely with my need to have an inside corner scene.
Thanks also to all who gave encouragement and pointers along the build. It's always very helpful.
At this point, I will drop back to the Monee build thread and work on integrating this and other buildings together on the railroad.
Cheers,
Vince
Quote from: Janbouli on August 24, 2020, 05:42:56 PM
What a beautiful scene Vince , great modeling.
Thanks for the kind words, Jan.
Vince
Vince,
I think you did a MARVELOUS job on this kit. It will fit right in on your layout.
Seth P.
Minnesota
Vince top notch modeling.
Great looking diorama. Could use a few more little people, though. :)
Jeff
Vince,
That is one stunning diorama!
Beautiful build Vince - a suggestion when planting the diorama on your layout....I keep a pad of Post It Notes that I use to line the edge of a finished area when adding ground goop to an adjoining unfinished area. The "stickiness" of the Post It is strong enough to hold the temporary barrier in place but doesn't pull anything apart when removing...
Doug
Great looking scene Vince.....wonderful first square foot for your empire. 8)
That is a great looking scene.
That's fantastic Vince! What a great start to the layout. ;D
Quote from: ReadingBob on August 25, 2020, 11:09:44 AM
That's fantastic Vince! What a great start to the layout. ;D
Vince,
Stunning work on the entire diorama. Scenery, structures and supporting items are just wonderful.
Tom ;D
Hey Vince, WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Really nice, Vince.
Your first square foot of many has came up wonderfully well. Might I suggest some track marks for the bulldozer?
Cheers, Mark.
Vince,
Real nice build...
Loren....
Vince,
Excellent diorama ... You're modeling skills are a great example for others!
Tommy
Hey Vince:
Beautiful job on this. All looks just perfect.
Karl
Quote from: pbltrains on August 24, 2020, 07:44:39 PM
Vince,
I think you did a MARVELOUS job on this kit. It will fit right in on your layout.
Seth P.
Minnesota
Seth! Good to hear from you again. My whole focus around getting the "first square foot" finished came from our chats after the NNGC conference back in 2018 (Seth shared a discussion he had with George Sellios where George that advised that large projects were accomplished "one square foot at a time.") Those chats inspired the choice of this kit to build and getting it on the layout. Thanks for the kind words.
Vince
Quote from: Zephyrus52246 on August 24, 2020, 07:58:21 PM
Great looking diorama. Could use a few more little people, though. :)
Jeff
Thanks Jeff -- and, thanks for the reminder about people. The kit actually came with a set of figures and there were also a couple of figures included with the vehicle sets. I completely forgot about those. I need to install at least a few of those.
Quote from: WigWag Workshop on August 25, 2020, 07:22:41 AM
Vince,
That is one stunning diorama!
Thank you, WigWag. 'Preciate it.
Quote from: NKP768 on August 25, 2020, 07:45:25 AM
Beautiful build Vince - a suggestion when planting the diorama on your layout....I keep a pad of Post It Notes that I use to line the edge of a finished area when adding ground goop to an adjoining unfinished area. The "stickiness" of the Post It is strong enough to hold the temporary barrier in place but doesn't pull anything apart when removing...
Doug
That's brilliant, Doug, thanks. I am definitely going to do this. Do you pull the Post Its out right after slopping the Sculptamold up to the edge and then smoothing out the disturbed material or do you let it dry first and then rip them out -- perhaps using some spackle afterward to fill any gaps?
Thanks to Gregory, Bob Dye, Bob Butts, Tom Langford, Steve, and Tom Boyd, Loren, and Karl. I appreciate the encouragement (as well as all the things I learn from watching you guys).
Quote from: mark dalrymple on August 25, 2020, 03:37:51 PM
Really nice, Vince.
Your first square foot of many has came up wonderfully well. Might I suggest some track marks for the bulldozer?
Cheers, Mark.
Great idea, Mark, thanks. Also, sure enough, a few days after I finished, I can no longer stand how "clean" the courtyard is. I guess "good enough" isn't always good enough. I will have to go back in and dirty things up a little bit -- at least put some more dirt around the foundation of buildings and a few more weed in the concrete "cracks." I'll try to figure out how to put in some caterpillar tracks at the same time, too.
Hey Vince:
You are quite welcome.
Karl
Your welcome Vince
I remove the Post It notes while the new material is still wet - pulling the Notes towards the newly added material. I then use a short round end straight edge to kind of tamp down the new material and feather into the existing material. Sounds harder than it looks but it's really easy.
Doug
Quote from: NKP768 on August 31, 2020, 02:04:37 PM
Your welcome Vince
I remove the Post It notes while the new material is still wet - pulling the Notes towards the newly added material. I then use a short round end straight edge to kind of tamp down the new material and feather into the existing material. Sounds harder than it looks but it's really easy.
Doug
Thanks, Doug. That all sounds very logical. I will definitely try that out first thing.