I've been thinking about fishing a rope through the pulley.  I did drill out the hole so I could do that.  But then I'd have the typical modeler problem of how to make a piece of thread look like a rope.  

The shingles are Bar Mills, slightly worked over.  I described that a couple pages back.  

dave

The Mezquita mosque in Cordoba, Spain.  The columns are recycled from Roman structures.
This is one of those buildings where photos just don't do it justice.  After the Reconquesta where the Christians retook Spain from the Muslims, they built a small church in the middle.  Even Charles V was unimpressed by that.  

On elephants:  A friend was named to run a part of our program that I thought was particularly messed up.  I told him, "Congratulations on being named 'Commander of the Lower Deck of the Ark'.  " 

Another open day today, we'll see if I build up steam to work on the scenery.  My Woodland Scenics barbed wire fence arrived yesterday, those look pretty good.

dave

It's a little detail, but the pulley will explain that door 'hanging in midair' on the terrain.


dave

Quote from: elwoodblues on March 24, 2026, 10:51:00 AMA member of the modular group gave me a 5mm planetary stepper motor with gearbox and asked me to come up with a way to sketch to use them to control turnouts using an Arduino. 

Does your friend have a source for those at a good price?  I've looked at them, but they were a lot more expensive than conventional servos.

dave

I had a 4Runner as a rental car once, I hated it.  So to each his/her own...

Today's photo is a Roman bridge in Provence:

And an extant monument dating to 1st century AD.


It's sunny here with puffy clouds.  The dusting of snow we got last night should melt quickly.  I need to go to the store today, otherwise an open day.  So I might tackle some scenery.

dave

Well, mixed results on the honey-do items.  The kitchen sink drain is plumbed differently than the bedroom drains, so I could not remove and clean the trap.  But I did run a brush down as far as I could into the trap, and the drain does seem to be running better.

In the basement, since the GFCI was tripping even after we replaced the pump, I talked to the plumber.  He agreed next thing to try is replace the GFCI, which I did.  I think there's one more component in that system, so if the new GFCI starts tripping, that'll have to get replaced too.  

Now on the positive side:  Today, in what might be the first time, I went into my boxes of detail parts and found what I was looking for -in the first box-.  That's the pulley on-a-bracket set from BESTTrains castings.  I cleaned that up and primed it.  I'll finish painting it tomorrow (paint the pulley dark grey), add 'rope' and install it on the barn.

dave

Quote from: Bernd on March 23, 2026, 02:11:27 PMYou're welcome Dave.

Here are two very close up's of the bass wood and balsa. You can decide for yourself of the quality.





Personal opinion. I think for the price of the tool it is well worth the money. Just buy one less of those fancy DCC locomotives and you can get this tool and make future work much easier for you.

Bernd

I'll watch for a sale...  If I got it for less, it would be worth it just for cutting styrene.

dave

Quote from: ACL1504 on March 23, 2026, 04:04:40 PMI can understand your friends problem. I have a friend whose driveway slopes down to the garage door. Every time it rains, the garage floor get wet.

We had that problem on our first house in NH.  What was worse was when the water froze, and the garage door was frozen to the floor.

Good luck bringing the walls back into plumb!

dave

Thanks for the comprehensive test.  On the wood pieces, is there compression on the one edge of the wood?  It kinda looks that way in your photos, but I wasn't sure.  

The cuts in styrene are nice, that makes this tempting for me....  Mebbe I should subscribe for Grizzly's sales.  (I have 2 different Grizzly dust collectors, one a cyclone and the other an overhead finer filter unit.)

dave

Jeff, I bet your supervisor is enjoying access to the yard.  I know my dogs were really happy when they could get back out on the grass.  Just be careful, you don't want to end up on the wrong side of the examination table...

It's a rather dreary day, temperature right at freezing, with chance of rain or snow showers.  Should be nicer, tomorrow.

dave

Rick's off doing a long hike today, so we'll see the results tomorrow.

A little bit off the beaten track, Eisenach Germany, Bach's home town:






Not sure how much time I'll get in the train room today, I have some honey-do house maintenance tasks to tackle once I'm back from German class.

dave

Well, when I last posted on the barn construction, I had discovered I installed some parts of the barn foundation upside down.  Over the last week, I corrected that.  Sorry I didn't take photos of the entire process. 

First I cut a brace the width (between the corner bracing) of the foundation wall.  I wanted a tight fit, to hold the wall into alignment after the one piece is cut out of the foundation.  Then I used a razor saw to cut the piece that will be visible, cutting close to the corner braces and being careful to cut perpendicular to the ground.  (A razor saw gave me the smallest kerf.)  I flipped that over, test-fit, and then glued the wall segment, right side up, to the piece of bracing and to the rest of the foundation.  I used yellow glue for the original joint, and then went back with 30 minute epoxy to lock things into position.  The next day, I filled in the (vertical) cracks and re-carved mortar joints.  I used (Deluxe Materials) acrylic putty.  In the past, I've used plaster to fill plaster joints, but the plaster doesn't bond as well to a painted surface.  Here's a look at the reassembled foundation from the bottom.


Then I reprimed and painted the rock foundation to match the farmhouse foundation.  I added the missing window castings on the right (visible) side, and filled in the window holes on the other side using scribed siding.


Now the last problem was the lower doors in the foundation.  The parts for that warped badly in ways I couldn't fix, so I had to recreate the door framing.  For the larger right side door,  I measured and noted the distance from the foundation casting to the front of the wall (clapboard) was a bit more than 1/8".  For the top beam, I cut 1/8" square, painted to match, and glued into position on the foundation.  Then I positioned the structure to make sure the top of the beam was tight against the bottom of the structure.  I added 1/8" x 1/32" posts on either side.  Then I glued the laser-cut scribed siding door to the foundation casting (between the posts.)  Turns out there were gaps on either side, so I filled those gaps with 1/32" x 1/16" pieces. I did a different process on the left side door.  There I glued the scribed siding piece, which was larger than the actual door opening, into position.  Then I added 1/16" square pieces for framing, glued to the wood scribed siding piece. 

Finally, I filled a small gap at the bottom of the wall against the foundation with a 1/32" x 1/16" piece of stripwood, and then sanded that down to get a tight fit between the wall and the foundation casting.  Here's the result:

I do need to go back and lightly sand down the top of the window castings, to get a tight fit on that wall and foundation. 

Somewhere I know I have a casting of a pulley on an arm that I'll add to the eave of the barn.  That's to haul the hay bales through that small square door in the middle of the gable wall.

dave

p.s.  I'm guessing those two doors slide towards the center of the structure on a vertical hanger, i.e. they are "barn doors" in the structural sense.  BEST includes prototype photos, and there's no visible hinges or dividing line for those doors to swing into the structure. 

Bob, consider an ink pen to do that mustache....

dave

That fits nicely!  The canal makes it clear why a short lift bridge is appropriate in that location.

dave

Guimaraes, Portugal: 

This is a university town north of Porto.  That's a student in academic robes sitting there, there was a big university event going on when we visited.   And a view from the other side of the wall:


We're getting mixed rain and snow today, typical March weather.  

dave