good day everyone.  painting preiser bicycles today for a bike shop.  tedious little suckers.  but fun nonetheless.  model on!

Good Afternoon Friends,  Had a bit of time this after to work on the bench and get to a few projects, one an HO Scale plastic merchants row kit that we are putting into condensed part of our city.  Been quite a few years since I've done anything plastic, but I am planning on giving it a realistic look to make it blend well with craftsman structures.  The idea is the extreme need of brick in our city so it doesnt look like if General Sherman came through with a match it all went up like Atlanta. 

Im also going to finish up a 1/35 scale figure of a WWII European woman purchasing cheese from a vendor in Narbonne France.  She will be standing on the sidewalk in front of a Fromagerie shop which I have also recently completed with interior.  All part of what will be a full street scene with the Canal De Robine passing along the front of it, a cafe and US Allied vehicles and troops passing through the cobblestone street.  Quite a long project.  LOL.  But taking shape.

The other work today will be some touch up of the FOS Scale Metzger Building that in the process of disassembling the old layout during the building of Brett's new house, became slightly damaged on the rooftop features and the billboard and some of the sidewalk details that inevitably pop off during any removal.  should actually be fun and I might add some further details to jazz it up some more!

Have a great day modeling!

Todd out

Good Morning Modeling friends,
Been a while for me to be here in the forum again.  I was told by Jim Donovan that it has been back in action for some months now with a new makeover and after perusing around, I have to say I am impressed!  It has that good old day feel again that I missed.  It's no longer clunky and someone put some solid work into it.  I'm guessing knowing all you guys (and gals) that it was a collaborative effort as well.

This forum is where both Brett (my son) and I cut our teeth in the social brotherhood of fine scale modeling and met many of our very first friends in the hobby long prior to when we began our weekly podcast.  It is where ideas were born for our layout, for our willingness to constantly challenge ourselves at becoming better modelers and trying new techniques suggested by many of you to do so.  Since then we have branched outward into other modeling as well, like military armor and aircraft, ships, dioramas, fantasy figure and gaming figure modeling.  But our true love is and always will be fine scale structure modeling and without all of your encouragement and support, we would both probably had given up and still be the knuckle-dragging hockey playing doofuses we once were...lol

Anyhow, I plan to get back into the forum here and having some fun with old and new friends, and we will be sure to promote the forum as well as the upcoming Winter Challenge on the podcast during this weeks recording!  Sounds like a blast and I think I might just get crackin on a build for it! 

have a great Sunday, and model on!

Todd Wiley

Next up I braced the walls that will be covered with stucco.  There is a lot of bracing and I imagine this is to support the wall to hold the stucco as it always adds a bit of extra weight to the wall when dry.  I have done stucco before with Liquitex stucco made for canvas painting art and it has turned out spectacular.  this will be my first time to use the Durhams Rock Hard Water Putty that FOS Scale Models puts with the kit in a small plastic baggie.  I bought a box of the stuff a few months ago at Lowe's for less than $3, because I read about it and heard Dave Frary speak of it for roads, but I have yet to work up the nerve to try it until now.  I could very easily just use my Liquitex stuff as I know how it will work.  But how do you learn anything new that way?   Isn't it better to know  of a few techniques?  Did the same contractors and builders do every house in town?  I assure you not!  lol

More to come

After bracing all of the clapboard walls with the stripwood, plenty of which was provided, I distressed the wood with a few strokes of the file card, lifted a few boards, and then spray painted with a light gray primer in a rattle can.  After a night of drying I took a sea sponge and stippled on some Folkart Camel color acrylic craft paint.  then lightly did the same over the Camel with Folkart Mushroom craft paint which gave the lighter camel tone a bit of a dirty look....."Dirty Camel" if you will. 

I like to work all my walls details while laying flat way prior to assembly. this way I can spend as much time as necessary to work over every small nuance that I want to bring out.  So I built the Nash buildboard by gluing the sign onto an exact same size piece of chipboard and then framed it with scale 2x4s which I had painted Hunter green.  Then attached it to the wall as instructed.  The sign itself prior to this I dabbed lightly with another sea sponge and some antique white to take away some of the boldness of the printed sign and give it some age.  I call this dry sponging, just like dry brushing.  same concept.  Take the paint out as much as you can on an paper towel before applying it and less is more. 

The Boxing Mural on the other wall was a paper sign sanded from behind with 400 grit sandpaper to where it is thin but not to where it tares.  The used white glue to place on the wall.  Allowed to sit about 3 or 4 minutes, no longer, and used a burnishing tool to press the sign into each clap board ridge.  When all done, I dry brushed antique white in spots, then mixed up some "Dirty Camel" that we had before, and with a small extremely thin brush lightly painted some of the edges to match the main color with some faux fading look, like the sign was painted on and now fading at spots...  Also do the same on several boards that are inside the signs main body.  Some inside fading. 

I added some painted casting for fire prevention that came with the kit, and painted my windows Americana craft paint in Dark Pine. and drybrushed with antique white again very lightly to show some wear and fade.  The glass is glazed on with gallery glass clear frost, and the blinds are painted on from behind.  any other touchups I will add before assembly..

Ok, since I missed out last year partly due to my own procrastination and part to a live facebook build Brett and I were doing for six weeks, I am going to do this one.  I have always liked this JJ Hollender's Boxing Gym kit by FOS Scale Models, and never pulled the trigger to buy it until it was no longer available... Then it became hard to find.....At the Timonium show there it sat on the table of one vendor who deals in OOP kits and I didn't blink an eye and grabbed it up.  It's been calling my name from the shelf since November as I finished an FSM kit....finally.  This is my first build thread on the forum so here goes nothing....lol.

I will start tonight with some inside the box photos of some or most of all the parts involved.  More to come. 

Wow George this build is turning out fantastic!  Love every bit of it.  The weathering on the livery is great! and all the details!

getting caught up from a few weeks back and WOW you made some progress!  Coming together fantastic!  Love the Bell Tower with the clock and the rust on your roof!

This kit is coming along fantastic George!  You always do killer work!  I love following your build threads!

Looking great Karl, as always!  The tones to the paint and weathering are fabulous.  Not too overdone.  Just enough!  Will be following!

This is turning out great Bob!  Following along and can't wait to see progress! 

Jim, I have more photos of the build if you need reference.  I noticed there are not many photos online to compare with when I was building it and it would have been a big help.  The kit is awesome and I had a ton of fun building it.  The only issues were those you mentioned and a quick call to Jeff Grove who was as perplexed as I was, we figured it out.  Don't get discouraged because your build right now is fantastic!  Keep on modeling!

Jim, I recently had built this Thames Street Shop for our HO Scale Customs Facebook page and posted the pics as I went....I also ran into the issue with the shorter 2nd story brick end wall.  Same size gap of about a 1/4 inch.  I filled this with a wood panel and painted it the same tone as the rear clapboard wall and put a 1/16th inch corner trim piece on the corner to further minimize the fill gap piece and make it look a bit natural.  I also had a short wall on the lower rear brick wall where it meets the clapboard and I did the same sort of fill in.  I am trying to attach pics here to show my makeshift repair.

beautiful work Steve!  Been looking at this firehouse on Ed's site for a while now.  Just beautiful and realistically fits most cities without looking junky.  Hopefully Doug brings this one back.

George this is fantastic!  You captured the aura of busy booming beach towns everywhere on the east coast from Ocean City Md to Long Island, and from Virginia Beach to Myrtle Beach especially during the 50's through the early 90's.  So well thought out and impressive worksmanship!