Rugg Manufacturing - SRMW Kit 170

[vinceg]

Curt, Mark, and Karl -- thanx for the support. Thanks also for following along. I started this build thread so that I would have a little extra pressure to make progress on the kit knowing that people were watching. The comments definitely help that cause.

[Dave K.]

Coming along great, Vince, and a top-notch build thread. Continuing to follow your progress.👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[GPdemayo]

Very impressive Vince.....

[ACL1504]

I started this build thread so that I would have a little extra pressure to make progress on the kit knowing that people were watching. The comments definitely help that cause.

Vince,

I agree with your comment 100%. It is the one reason I pay so much attention to the details in my Atlantic and Southern RR build thread. I find the thread and the comments keep me focused on the task.

Supporting and commenting on each others builds is great for the forum as well as the builder that takes the time to document the progress.

Also, if I comment on one thread and don't get any comments in return, I no longer follow that thread.

Well done on your build.

Tom

[vinceg]

Vince,

I agree with your comment 100%. It is the one reason I pay so much attention to the details in my Atlantic and Southern RR build thread. I find the thread and the comments keep me focused on the task.

Supporting and commenting on each others builds is great for the forum as well as the builder that takes the time to document the progress.

Also, if I comment on one thread and don't get any comments in return, I no longer follow that thread.


Well done on your build.

Tom

Thanks, Tom. It is a little weird. I actually feel some guilt if I'm not moving the thread along. Kinda funny.

Bought my cool gray markers from Michaels today. Getting ready to  try some slate shingle work. I'm buying some extra shingles from SRMW for when I mess them up 

[vinceg]

More updates. I am at a point where the effort goes in but there isn't much in terms of visible results. You remember above that I was missing the roof chipboard for the two sheds on the north end of the complex. Of the two, the one on the masonry extension is a little tricky in that it has a little zig-zag in it to allow it to serve two roofs. See below:



That little rectangle in the middle (that the two arrows are pointing to) is supposed to end up vertical. The other two are roof sections. You'll see it in the next pic. I was having trouble getting that piece to be vertical because everything was connected so I made a copy of just that section that you see on the left. In the end, I was able to make it work so I didn't need it. I painted that little vertical "wall" section white and installed it. Here it is in place:



The other shed is straightforward. I glued it in and  put in the rafter tails. Here's where it's at:



Speaking of rafter tails, I mentioned earlier that I was a fan of the fingernail clipper as tool to chop off excess wood trim. I tried it here as well and it was not quite as effective as I remembered. Rather than getting a nice satisfying click when trimming the tail, it took a bit of twisting. Perhaps the clippers are dull or perhaps it was excess Canopy Glue at the joint, but I didn't like it. Instead, I trimmed these tails with my Xuron sprue cutters. Worked very nicely. You can see a few trimmings on the ground there. Clippers are history for me now.

More shortly....

[vinceg]

The freight building has a small clerestory on top. It sits directly on the roof apex (no hole). The position of the windows on both sides make the roof clearly visible. To obscure that view I wanted to put a thin wash of Tamiya Deck Tan on the back of the windows. Because I wasn't sure how the Canopy Glue would react to that, I first hit the windows with some Krylon Matte finish. In fact, I was hoping that the Matte finish might be enough to block the view. But, it wasn't. Here's the window after fogging it:



I also painted the are black to make the roof less visible. Here's the end result.



The clerestory is just sitting there at the moment -- not glued down. Will get to that shortly.

More in a moment....

[vinceg]

There's also an elevator tower atop the Middle Building roof. Nothing noteworthy there....here is it. Again, just sitting there for now, to be glued shortly:



Time to trim the eaves. More shortly.

[vinceg]

The eave treatment is pretty elaborate (for me....have only done a few kits). The kit supplies some strip wood for soffits that get glued under the chipboard and then the eave is faced with a step-edge detail that is a 1x4 on top of a 1x6. My inner lazy guy was leaning toward blowing most of this off. I wasn't sure how visible this would be. Then I remembered that I had previously built another SRMW kit, Ware Knitters, and decided to look at it to see if the same roof detail was there. It is. Here's a look:



You can see just under the tarpaper the profile of the 1x4 glued on top of the 1x6. I like the look so my inner lazy guy loses. The soffit is another question -- especially as I painted the bottom of the chipboard (in effect, the soffit) white -- but, the 1x6 is pretty big. Gluing that to the edge of the chipboard roof wouldn't be as solid as if the edge were thickened with the additional strip wood. Plus, the soffit will help make sure the 1x6, 1x4 assembly lines up nicely. So, that goes in, too.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

So, I wish I could remember how I did those eave assemblies on Ware Knitters -- Looks pretty straight/uniform. But, I left my time machine in my other blue jeans so need a plan. I started by using inkahol and thinned white artist's acrylic (after the inkahol dried) on the individual 1x6 and 1x4 strips. I then notice how hard it is to keep the 1x6 in place when trying to glue down the 1x4. So, I decided to tack down the 1x6 to my glass work surface right next to a straight edge. Here's the pic:



The little white dots are Canopy Glue and I have a significant weight on top of the straight edge to try to keep it stable. If I am going to be doing more of this on future kits, I need to build a jig. This seems kinda belt-and-suspenders to me.

But, it seems to work. After the glue dots dry, I glue down the 1x4 on top like so:



Once that dries, I was able to easily pull up the "assembly" with a single-edge razor blade and a little care. There's another one gluing now as I type this.

After the 1x4 overlay dries, it's ready to apply. Here's the result:



Man, I gotta remember to use some steel wool on the strip wood. Leaving fuzz all over the place as the close-up pics painfully highlight.

BTW, I would LOVE IT if someone out there that knows how to do this much better would weigh in here. This process is tedious and somewhat clumsy. Please offer insights if you have 'em.

More shortly.

[vinceg]

That leaves the soffits. I wanted to experiment with some other, quicker methods. Since the soffits will largely be out of sight, I thought this would be a good opportunity to try spray painting them with flat white primer and then weathering that:



No picture, yet, but after these strips dried, I hit them with inkahol. Interestingly, They didn't seem to fade as nicely as strips painting with acrylic do. Also, in a couple of places where the primer was a little blotchy (I was careless and got some thicker paint build-up on a couple of small spots on a couple of strips), the paint seemed to resist the wash. We'll see how it all looks after everything is dry. Perhaps a little chalk will be needed....or another coat of wash. In any event, I am experimenting with something relatively out of sight so it will be good learning.

That's it for now. Will post again when there's more to say.

[vinceg]

Hi everybody. It has been a lot of weeks since I posted. Finally time to catch up. As of now (Sunday night), I am almost finished with the roofing.

In my last posts, I mentioned the fascia and whether I was going to go through the effort of installing it, given that I thought it would not be very visible. I ultimately decided to install the fascia for three reasons: (1) I think it will be visible when I take close-up pictures, (2) I should be striving to improve my skills and this would help that, and (3) It seemed silly to not do everything possible to make premium kits such as those from SRMW the best they can be.

One exception to this is that, in some cases, the fascia called for is a scale 1x4 to be used instead of the tiered 1x6 / 1x4 combination. In some of those cases (such as the clerestory roofs), the thickness of the chipboard is about the same as the height of the 1x4 so I just chose to paint the edge of the chipboard instead.

I didn't take any specific pictures of the fascia work while I was building it. Instead, I expect there will be a chance to see some of as part of some other picture posting.

OK - first pic. I started with the tarpaper roofing. I wanted to start with something simple so I started with the south shed. Here it is:



I couple of notes. First, these pics are pre-weathering. i am expecting to do a lot more work on the roof surfaces before it's complete. Also, you will notice there are several shiny spots - especially on the south addition (the gabled roof) - that's actually a reflection, not
white paint as it appears in the picture. The shine is actually on purpose. The instructions have you drag a single edge razor blade over the tar paper to give it a bit of a sheen.

Also, I attempted to follow Bob's lead and use some gray tarpaper to represent repairs that were made with a different material. You can see some black substance on the gray tar paper - that's the result of my burnishing the tar paper down and pulling paint from the black paper to the gray paper.  I don't mind the effect but I'll have to see what it looks like after the weathering is complete. I may decide to touch it up.

By the way, for all of the tar paper, I used Elmer's glue sticks for the adhesive. With the big, flat roofing sections here, this would have been a good candidate to use the 3M transfer tape, but I wasn't quite ready to give that a try, yet.

Next up, some experimentation with the corrugated aluminum roofing.

[vinceg]

The last time I did some corrugated metal, I Floquil paints available. Time for new techniques. I read the SRMW instructions and also checked out other Internet resources such as Bar Mills Craftsman Kits 101 document. Here are a couple of sample panels. These are just sitting loosely on the roof, not glued:



The process I used was:

• Cut the roofing material into 3' wide sectdions
• Using painter's tape for a loose holding, spray the panels with Rustoleum gray primer
• Scrub black, brown, and rust colored chalks to taste

Two examples here - one heavily weathered, one medium weathering or so. Bob recommends very light weathering. I think both of these samples are more heavily weathered than the pilot model that is pictured in the instructions and on the kit box. At this point (and even now), I'm now sure how much weathering I want. More on that later when I post some other pictures

Not much more to say at this point. Next up, the slate roof.

[vinceg]

The kit comes with laser-cut shingles. The shingles are cut out a thick, gray paper that has a very nice appearance. The paper is of a uniform color. Instructions have you install the shingles on the roof and then go in with coloring markers to randomly change the color of some of the shingles. Intuitively, this feels wrong. Much easier to do the coloring before you install the shingles. In fact, in newer SRMW kits, that's exactly what Bob has you do. Here's a picture of the shingle sheets after "random" coloring:



I did my coloring with three different Copic Sketch markers that I bought at Michaels:

• C3 Cool Gray
• C5 Cool Gray
• W3 Warm Gray

The warm gray has a bit of a brown tinge to it. Nice contrast if not overdone. You can probably see which ones are W3 in the picture.

Once they're colored, it's time to apply.

More in a bit....

[vinceg]

Time to use the transfer tape. No way did I want to use a glue stick as I am sure I would get glue all over the place - especially with the gap between shingles.

I bought a roll of the 1" stuff. This is the perfect application for it. Here's a pic:



Not too interesting - everyone reading this has already done this hundreds of times. But, it was new for me. It's pretty handy that the adhesive doesn't obscure the guide lines.

Now, apply the shingles:



I like the effect but you can see that I made a lot of errors. This is my first time with this kind of shingle, too. Everything I have done before this has been the good 'ol Campbell strips. One mistake I made is to try to get an extra two shingles on each strip by cutting past the laser cuts when singulating the strips. Truly a rookie mistake. Results in shingles that are too big or too small. Bob gives you plently of shingles. There's no excuse for this kind of silliness. The other mistake was just the basic failure to line things up properly when I have to join two strips in the middle of a course. I did clean some of this up after taking the picture but, in general, I left things along -- Vince rule #1: don't make it a lot worse in the process of trying to make it a little better. I think it's true that the picture is much more brutal than looking at it live. Now that slate roof is finished (you will see that shortly), those small errors tend to "disappear" from view.

One other thing to point out. Notice that notch in the middle of the ridge of the roof. That is for the cupola. The instructions suggest that you apply all of the shingles and then cut out the shingles and notch the ridge to site the cupola. I was pretty sure that I would not be able to do that without ripping up shingles at the cutting site. So, I notched now with the intention of installing the cupola first and then shingling around it. Now that I have completed those steps, I am happy with that decision. I'll post those pics shortly.

Next up, some pictures I just took that show where I'm currently at.