Rugg Manufacturing - SRMW Kit 170

[sdrees]

Hi Vince,

If I may make a suggestion on the use of the alcohol and pastels, don't use so much alcohol on your brush.  Blot some of it off on a paper towel, then dip the tip of the brush in some of the powdered pastel and blot or brush on the metal panels.  What I do is work off a piece of glass and have a pile of pastel dust on the glass.  I have the alcohol in a small container nearby where I dip my brush and then blot some of the alcohol off and them dip the tip of the brush in the pile of pastel dust and then apply it to the metal panels by blotting or brushing.

[vinceg]

Thanks, Steve. I will definitely try that out. Same thing with the fan brush technique in the note Mark referenced. The roofing is such a significant aspect of any model. I want to make sure I get practice on the weathering methods of all the different materials.

Becomes second nature at some point, I expect (hope).

[S&S RR]

Vince


I have this problem - I can't drive by a barn without taking a picture. I'm sure the doctors have a name for this problem - I just tell people I'm a model railroader.  I thought you might like a couple pictures of rusted roofing to use as a model.  The thing to remember is that you will usually have old and new panels on the same roof. The older rust is very dark. Anyway here are the pictures. Yes - there are a lot more where these came from.

[S&S RR]

[S&S RR]

[S&S RR]

This is a very special, very old barn with a relatively new roof.  It was built by my Great, Great Grandfather around 1850.

[vinceg]

Nice - thanks, John.

[vinceg]

Some minor updates. First, the dormer on the north side of the main building is on:



Also added a little more weathering to the slate roofing tiles. Doing it a little at a time so that I don't overdo it. Just a little rust chalk coming down from the roof ridge cap and a little white chalk coming down from the dormer.

You an also see that I have capstones on top of the brick side walls fo the brick extension. The instructions called for painting some strip wood a black color. I wanted a little more contrast and decided to go with a limestone look. The color you see there is Tamiya Deck Tan - the same color I use for aged concrete. Needs a little weathering but I think it looks pretty good in person. Those pieces are painted card stock cut from leftover kit scrap. They're not glued down, yet. I just wanted to see how they look.

You can also see casting W7 is in place on the left of the brick extension (as we're looking at the picture. There's also a small card stock roof section on top. This isn't glued yet, either, but I wanted to test fit how this would all work out. That casting eventually has a fairly tall steel stack coming out of it. It will need to be vertical, of course, but the roof is slanted. Not sure how best to drill a hole into this hydrocal casting to hold that stack. Would appreciate help/suggestions. BTW, I don't have a drill press.

Not shown are a couple of tarpaper sheds that I cut out of the card stock and glued the roof on. These are small, three-sided structures that attach to the main complex in a couple of places. I'll post pics of those once I tar them up and have them in place.

Notice that I still haven't glued in the big brick smoke stack. I am waiting as long as possible to do that. There's still a lot going on in the kit and I just know I'll accidentally hit it with my arm as I'm working and break something. A man's gotta know his limitations.....

Next up, a major wooden deck structure.

[vinceg]

Here's the site for the wood Deck:



The deck goes in and fills the cubby hole surrounded on three sides by structures. It also comes out to the door you see on the right (bottom right of the picture) and also extends to the left in front of that double door and another door that is mostly cut off by this picture (to the left fo the double door).

I am realizing now that I could have spent less time preparing the brick foundation in these areas. Would still prime it but no need to paint individual bricks and fuss with mortar. It will all be hidden. I'll be a bit more efficient on the next one of these I build 

[vinceg]

Here's the card template for the wood deck. The instructions call for putting the template under a piece of glass or plastic and then assembling the deck on top of that. That seemed problematic to me. My glass top is very thick - more than 1/4". The parallax problem is significant for something that thick. I decided instead to use the technique George called for in the couple of Fine Scale Miniatures kits I built, namely, lightly tack gluing the structure to the card template and then cutting it off when you're finished. Before doing that, I scanned the card and printed a fresh copy on regular letter paper:



The card is on the left, the copy is on the right. I held them up to the light with the copy on top of the card to make sure the copy was properly scaled. It was. My plan is to build my deck on top of the copy, leaving the original card intact.

[postalkarl]

Hi Vince:

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so far. Love it.

Karl

[vinceg]

A fear I have had since starting this kit is that the dimensions of the cubby hole would not match the dimensions of the template. There was another template that is glued down to the base that guided my original placement of the foundation castings, but I didn't expect that to work out right. (In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to cut out a copy of the footprint of the deck when first placing the castings to make sure they are situated properly. Not sure if that would have caused other fit problems or not.)

So, I started with a test fit of the beam (4" x 8" lumber) that goes all the way into the cubby hole (up against the middle building). It turned out that this beam needed to be notably shorter than called for by the template. See the following pic:



The beam I am talking about is the topmost of the four horizontal beams on the paper (the shortest one in the middle of the page). Look closely and you can see that it is cut shorter than specified - Almost half the width between the two joists. I didn't take any pictures of it, but I also test fit that same beam at the "mouth" of the cubby hole - basically just above the long beam you see below it. It fit well there, too. So, the space is narrower than expected but it is square, not trapezoidal. That will make my overall framing a little easier.

I'm a lot less worried about the rest of the deck - the left side and front (closest to you as you view the picture) do not abut anything. Dimensions not critical

By the way, the beams here are tacked to the paper. Just 2-4 dots (depending on the length of the beam) of Canopy glue holding them down on the paper.

[vinceg]

Here is the deck with all of the joists attached.



Notice the cubby area is narrower. That caused my to have to make some joist spacing adjustments. I did that by eye. I don't expect that to be a problem once it's planked. We'll see.

[vinceg]

Once the glue sets on all of the joists, I cut the deck off the paper template with a single-edge razor blade:



Need to be a little careful - despite all that wood work, it's still not that strong an assembly.

[vinceg]

The moment of truth - test fit the frame back into the diorama:



it fits! Still not out of the woods (wait "woods" .... wood deck .... is that funny? probably not). Need to make sure that it still fits after the planks are installed.

Here you can also see that I needed to touch up the ends of the joists that face you - they're "bright" wood color, not gray. My wife even noticed this. I have taught her to be very picky and point out flaws.

(great)

Something else to note here. Notice that even though there is no planking, yet, you can see that the deck will be significantly below the level of the doors. The overall structure will need to be propped up when it is complete. I am assuming some collection of scale 4x4 short posts will do the trick. Will fret over that when I get there.