Bar Mills H.J. Simpson Feed & Seed

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Great modeling! I have never had a Diet Pepsi- seriously!

Well, we are just going to have to change that....

Hehe

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Fence construction is pretty straightforward.  Just glue the posts onto the back on the laser cut fence and your basically done.  See Photos.

[Bruce Oberleitner]

So now it's time to introduce you to a new tool I've been playing around with on my workbench.  Anyone care to guess what this is used for?  And no Tom, it's not a Diet Pepsi can holder.  Well, wait a minute, maybe your one to something.

Actually, I use this to square up building walls when I glue them together.  It's nothing more than a scrap of 1/4" Masonite with some 1/4" x 1/2" basswood glued along the edges.  A small carpenters square was used to ensure that the basswood parts were truly square on the Masonite.  I used this jig to glue up my two sections of fencing as shown in the photo.  Once the glue dried, I test fitted the building and fence to see how things were shaping up on my model. 

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Great modeling Bob.

Thank you.  Like I said it's good to know that I can still build models after all of my health issues.

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Brucie,
Wonder why my brother-in-law Bruce never got tagged with that moniker? His Size, maybe.?
Regardless, it's great to see you back. Glad there was no loss of limbs/digits and even more glad there was no loss of your sense of humor nor writing flair.
Please keep up the great work and the pictures, as we like pictures.

I was pretty scared for a while back in June when my hand turned purple and I had to go to the ER for surgery.  Kind of puts a new perspective on things.  Glad to hear that you like my dry sense of humor.  It's what keeps me sane these days that's for sure....

[ACL1504]

Cousin Brucie,

Love the squaring jig you made. I bought one of the metal ones from Micro Mark, you know the one with magnets? I never use it.

Build and fence looking good.

Tom

[PRR Modeler]

Great product.

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Cousin Brucie,

Love the squaring jig you made. I bought one of the metal ones from Micro Mark, you know the one with magnets? I never use it.

Build and fence looking good.

Tom

Thanks Tom.  The jig has become pretty handy.  I thought it up back when I rehabbed a structure from the McCosh estate sale.  I find that the small size is handy since it does take up a lot of space on the workbench when I need square up some walls. 

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Great product.

Ya, I think it works pretty good.  I happen to be starring at some scraps around my workbench and was thinking about the metallic Micro Mark jig that they sell for squaring model structure walls.  And Bingo!   Next thing I knew I put one of these together. 

[Blazeman]

I have the Micro Mark metal box.  It is rather large and eats space.  So your custom built job, smaller for your bench area is ideal. I'll keep that in mind and when generating smaller sections of lumber and such, put one together.

Working on my first Bar Mills structure(s) using the Shack Pack in N.  Thus far, happy to see the procedures I've used are in line with the techniques you've detailed. Has to be thrilling that your dexterity is still with you. I'm an all-thumbs guy and often wonder if I'm cut out to what I'd like to accomplish in this hobby.  Glad to report I've noticed the old "practice makes perfect" refrain is in play for me.

[Bruce Oberleitner]

I have the Micro Mark metal box.  It is rather large and eats space.  So your custom built job, smaller for your bench area is ideal. I'll keep that in mind and when generating smaller sections of lumber and such, put one together.

Working on my first Bar Mills structure(s) using the Shack Pack in N.  Thus far, happy to see the procedures I've used are in line with the techniques you've detailed. Has to be thrilling that your dexterity is still with you. I'm an all-thumbs guy and often wonder if I'm cut out to what I'd like to accomplish in this hobby.  Glad to report I've noticed the old "practice makes perfect" refrain is in play for me.

Bar Mills does an outstanding job of making kits.  I got to meet Artie when they had the NMRA national convention out here in Portland Oregon a few years back.    Great Guy and his structure kits are wonderful to put together. 

As for being all thumbs,  I think the first couple of times you do anything new I think most of us are "all thumbs".  The line you quoted "Practice makes perfect" has a lot of true to it.   Another thing that I sort of preach around here is to start with smaller kits and build your way up to bigger kits. 

As yes, learning that the dexterity is still there has been a real blessing.  Thank God for my good fortune!

[Bruce Oberleitner]

At this point in the build it was time to do another small test to see what the final project will look like. 

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Next up was to build the new loading platform around the building.  I decided to "Flip" the orientation of the platform from my original sketch as I felt this made the overall scene look better. So I started by making the two longer sections of the platform.   I drew the plan on to a 3"X5" index card and built them flat on the workbench.  I believe in my case these ended up to be 4'x28'x4' in scale dimensions.  While the glue dried for these first two sections, I went ahead and started building the middle section.

One thing I will mention is that when I built these sections of the loading dock, I just sort of winged the dimension and the placement of those center supports.  Since the deck was going to be covered with wood, I didn't place them at exactly 4' intervals.

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Now that the test fit of the platform around the structure looked good, it was time to add the legs to the platform.  Using a Chopper tool, I quickly was able to produce a number of legs that were 3' scale feet high.  This with the platform and boards brought the entire thing up to 4' high.  I did built this thing upside down as it was easier to do put this together this way then trying to stand the thing up on the legs.  This is where the Fast Grab tacky glue is great because the legs stick to the platform when I put them in place.  From there is was just a matter of waiting about 10 minutes for the Fast grab glue to dry.

[Bruce Oberleitner]

So the next thing to do was to cut a bunch of 4' wide planks to cover the loading dock with on the long ends of the platform.  While I was working on this, I decided to cut the 4 longer boards on the middle end of the platform and glue them in place just to make the entire thing more stable while I was working on its construction.  Not shown in the photos is that once I reached photo #2 I started alternating the placement of the 4' boards. This way if there was an odd gap in my boards it would be in the center on the long sections of the platform.  I find it's easier to fix the placement if I do it this way.  And remember I mentioned that the Fast grab glue takes about ten minutes to setup.  This is really great here in case you need to re-adjust some of the board placement to squeeze one more board into the mix.