Ben Thresher's Mill

[CVSNE]

Marty,
Not sure if you can divulge who this is a preproduction kit for, or not. If you can I would sure love to know.
Loren...

Hi Loren,
I'm not at liberty to say. Sorry.


Marty

[CVSNE]

I'd heard (and agree) that the walls looked fine but the windows didn't look weathered enough and appeared too new compared with the walls.
So I used a fiberglass eraser to scratch the windows a little more, added a wash of several colors of Hunterline stains, and after that dried I scrubbed some rust tone and gray Bragdon powders into the windows.

[PRR Modeler]

Looks great.

[NEBrownstone]

Marty,
Not sure if you can divulge who this is a preproduction kit for, or not. If you can I would sure love to know.
Loren...

It is from New England Brownstone, well, was and probably will be.  I had a few life interruptions (not going to bore ya'll with that stuff) since I first started working on it, not to mention a couple of construction issues like "the dog ate it".  Seriously, my dog ate my first model from off of my work bench.  The other was casting the base, which didn't work out as I had planned.  I also owe Marty a dam and gate casting.  I was torn between a wooden or a stone dam and since I make stone stuff I decided to make one out of stone, which is in progress, just not as fast as I would have liked.  Again, life's little interruptions.  AS a side note I will have both the stone and a separate concrete dam available soon.


I also moved my pattern-making operations down to a new facility (it's actually old, but new to me, sorta) that has made my model working and any other project(s) I conjure up so much easier to work on and I am now starting to rework some of my old dust collectors.  Ben's being one.  Setting up the shop has been going slower than I had anticipated, but I have noticed a definite increase in speed when actually doing a project.  There's something to be said about working at home and for me it's better if I don't.  It's too easy for me to be distracted and honestly, I should have done the move years ago.


I still do the casting at home, but all tooling is done at my new shop where I can be totally focused.  In fact, I can go down and work for a few hours and have more done than what I would have done in a week at my house.  The only problem is forgetting something at the house or the shop, but seeing they are only 8 mins away from each other it's not that big of a deal.  Not to mention, I don't have to cut wood under my carport on an un-even and un-level driveway in the middle of winter.  (BTW,who in the heck would build a carport in New England?)  Believe me, if that don't get your procrastination juices curdling, nothing will.



Anyways, life is good, now!

[fsmcollector67]

Russ,
Thanks so much....looking forward to when you will have this kit into production.....
Loren..

[deemery]

Russ, are you accepting pre-orders?   


dave

[CVSNE]

Thrilled to see Russ outing himself as the manufacturer.
Even more thrilled to see he remembers he owes me a dam for this thing (truth be told, I was planning to scratchbuild a wood one, but if he's going to have a masonry one I'll take it!
I've been working through how to model the finished roof surfaces - this thing has two or three surfaces depending on the era and where you look - the main building and cider press had standing seam roofs and the blacksmith shop had corrugated metal.
I've got, and have used, metal standing seam roofing in the past, but it also looked a little clunky in HO scale. I think I'll use Evergreen instead.
The corrugated metal roofing will be Campbells.






Russ, you planning to be at Altoona? If so would be nice to see you and catch up!

[NEBrownstone]

Marty, unfortunately no.  Ever since my wife Tina began having seizures going to shows has become a not so much a fun thing to do.  There's that not knowing if one will happen during the show, which did happen once before and it pretty much ruined the rest of the show.  It wasn't much fun sitting in a distant hospital for 6 hrs only to have them tell us that they couldn't find anything wrong, which is the same prognosis we have gotten over the last few years from the local doctors.  Honestly, I'm more worried about her rearranging the table with her face on the way down than the actual seizure.

I went to the last Expo show by myself just as an attendee and it wasn't as much fun since she wasn't there with me and knowing that she could have had one while I was there and she was back home.  Damned if I do and damned if I don't.  It sucks because that's the time we get to visit with all our vendor friends and customers.

I will be at the Springfield show since that is in my backyard and the hospital here has all her records and such.  Try and get them while in another state.

[CVSNE]

Marty, unfortunately no.  Ever since my wife Tina began having seizures going to shows has become a not so much a fun thing to do.  There's that not knowing if one will happen during the show, which did happen once before and it pretty much ruined the rest of the show.  It wasn't much fun sitting in a distant hospital for 6 hrs only to have them tell us that they couldn't find anything wrong, which is the same prognosis we have gotten over the last few years from the local doctors.  Honestly, I'm more worried about her rearranging the table with her face on the way down than the actual seizure.

I went to the last Expo show by myself just as an attendee and it wasn't as much fun since she wasn't there with me and knowing that she could have had one while I was there and she was back home.  Damned if I do and damned if I don't.  It sucks because that's the time we get to visit with all our vendor friends and customers.

I will be at the Springfield show since that is in my backyard and the hospital here has all her records and such.  Try and get them while in another state.

Hi Russ, sorry to hear Tina is dealing with that - but though will miss seeing you family, of course, always comes first.


Take care,

[CVSNE]

Okay, so it's been more than a couple of weeks since a new update...
We've been in the new house since early March, but it's been whirlwind of craziness. However in the past month I've been able to start get back into the modeling groove. I even started benchwork for the newest version of the Southern New England.
And I decided to get back into building some models - which lead me straight to the storage tub of half-finished (started?) models I'd had in the apartment. At the very top of that tub was the smaller box containing the parts of Ben's mill.
First thing I did was spent an evening dry fitting the parts to remind myself how this thing is supposed to go together!


This weekend I finally got started on the doors for the front ("street") side of the mill building:


Here's a closeup of the large doors - still need to add the rollers and hardware and attach the rails to the front wall of the building. I think the red door may be a little too much - I need to tone it down or paint it more like weathered wood.

[Raymo]

Marty, I'm going to stop by the mill sometime in the next 2 weekends. If you need some reference photos, let me know.

[CVSNE]

Dan,



Thanks for the offer.
A few questions:


Did they ever rebuild/recreate any of the penstock structure on the river side of the building? The HAEBS photos show that section in such a dilapidated state to be virtually useless.


Although the HAEBS plans show a steam box assembly on the cider press end of the building, there's only one photo that really doesn't show much - any details on that? (I doubt they've restored it for the building - thought there might be a photo of some such of it in use)


Also, I'm curious about the type of roofing materials used - I know the main building was standing seam metal roofing and the blacksmith shop was corrugated - what about the cider press end?


Thanks!
Marty

[Raymo]

Marty, the cider press is complete and is in the building. The penstock has been rebuilt in the cellar, I'll try to get photos of both. About the roofing, do want to know about the former or the latter?

[CVSNE]

Both former and latter...  ??


Thanks, I owe you a beer - you planning to be at Expo?

[ACL1504]

Marty,

The build is looking really good. Love the weathering.

Tom