Ben Thresher's Mill

[CVSNE]

We've moved into a temporary apartment until our new house is completed. I managed to claim a corner of the dining area to set up my modeling desk, and brought along several half finished projects that I hope to get completed prior to the early spring. One of these is this mill building. These are the preproduction parts for a kit based on a building commonly called Ben Thresher's Mill, For more details on the prototype, see the Historic American Buildings Survey web site  – (https://www.loc.gov/item/vt0013/) or search You Tube for a PBS documentary made about the mill several decades ago.
I plan to build this onto a diorama base that incorporates the damn, river, etc...that can eventually be incorporated into my new railroad. The one thing I don't think I'm going to include on the diorama are any tracks – simply because I have no idea where to place them.
Incorporating a water-powered mill into a scene is a bit of a chicken/egg process. You have to have some of the building done before starting the scenery, but you can't get too far along on the building since you have to plant it into the scenery. Essentially, the structure is such a part of the landscape that it's essentially a hill or rock or some other scenic feature...hopefully with square walls!
I'd started building this kit longer ago than I care to admit, and made some changes to one of the scenes on my old layout to accommodate the building as shown here with the subwalls taped together:

Last week I dug the parts out of the plastic storage bin and inventoried them – I'd gotten most of the walls painted – actually they were further along than I thought:

I have little experience building wood craftsman kits (frankly, I prefer working with styrene) – but I did try some of the techniques I've seen described here and on other forums. I "lifted" some clapboards, added nail heads, and applied a wash of Hunterline stain before drybrushing the walls (other than the blacksmith shop section, which remained raw wood) with a couple of coats of Yellow Ochre. I can see some areas where the walls don't look great – obviously this is a technique that takes time to master. I was going for a "well worn but not falling apart" look. Not sure how I did, but I'll defer to the judgement of the many, much more experienced wood structure kit builders on this forum –

Then I added a wash of Vallejo dark grey wash. Windows and most of the doors are painted oxide red. There's a lot of windows on this thing – I just finished glazing all of them yesterday.


Marty

[MAP]

You're coming along really well on this build Marty.  Great color choices.  Thanks for the survey web site.  Time has really taken its toll on the original structure.

[CVSNE]

You're coming along really well on this build Marty.  Great color choices.  Thanks for the survey web site.  Time has really taken its toll on the original structure.

Thanks Mark,


The color scheme comes directly from the HABS survey (Yellow Ochre, after "barn red" and "white" was possibly the third most common color for structures in the 19th century).
The mill was certainly falling apart when the HABS survey photos were taken - but it's experienced a series of restorations and renovations over the last decade and a half - see http://www.bensmill.com/


Marty

[rpdylan]

I think things are coming along nicely marty!  as far as the walls go, what about them is bothering you?
    Remember , you can always dry brush with the yellow to tone down the blackened areas, and always lightly bush things down with some weathering powders ,,,maybe a light gray, to blend things.

great work so far! look forward to watching your progress!

[PRR Modeler]

Looking very nice so far. Can you build a scale structure out of cardboard? That might help you make progress on the diorama while you are building the mill structure. 

[Raymo]

This is going to be a neat thread to follow Marty. Ben's Mill is not to far from my camp in Vermont, It's great that they cleaned up the property and painted it but I liked the way the place looked in the PBS film. Here's some photos from a couple years ago.

[ACL1504]

What a great structure. Marty you are doing a wonderful job on the build. The colors are perfect for what you have in mind.

Tom

[ReadingBob]

What a great structure. Marty you are doing a wonderful job on the build. The colors are perfect for what you have in mind.

Tom

I'll second that!  It's going to be one terrific looking structure when you're finished with it. 

[CVSNE]

Thanks for sharing those photos - I don't suppose you have any pictures that show the sluice gate/penstock area (behind that tree in your first photo).
That whole area was overgrown and covered with a collapsed roof in the HABS pictures so the details of that corner of the building don't really show up  - and frankly some details in the line drawing don't make sense.


Thanks again!

[GPdemayo]

Great work so far.....I'll be looking in. 

[CVSNE]

What a great structure. Marty you are doing a wonderful job on the build. The colors are perfect for what you have in mind.

Tom

Thanks Tom!

[Raymo]

Marty, unfortunately the dam is gone and the Mill pond is gone and now there is just a brook running along side the building. If I remember correctly the penstock diverter was at the end of the dam near the building and the pipe came through the wall and was against the river side wall. I wish I had known, I would have gone over last weekend and taken pictures for you before I closed up.

[rpdylan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wY2Z4tnD90

looks like there was a documentary on this....

[Raymo]

This is the PBS documentary that Marty talked about in the first post. This is about an hour long and a great show. You can buy it from the Ben's Mill website for about 20 bucks.

[fsmcollector67]

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...