Fine Scale Miniatures Jewel Series #10 Avram's Bakery for the S&S RR

[ReadingBob]

I'll be following along with great interest.

Thanks Lynn!  Glad to have you on board.      Like all of the other FSM kits I've built (I lost track of how many that is) this one promises to be a lot of fun. 

[madharry]

I am looking forward to the build Bob. A few years ago a friend got in trouble with this kit and I swopped his half finished one for a new SRMW kit. I had to de-construct it and start all over again. Here is a picture. It is not perfect by any means but it was the best I could do in the circumstances.
Mike

[ReadingBob]

I am looking forward to the build Bob. A few years ago a friend got in trouble with this kit and I swopped his half finished one for a new SRMW kit. I had to de-construct it and start all over again. Here is a picture. It is not perfect by any means but it was the best I could do in the circumstances.
Mike

Thanks Mike and thanks for sharing the picture and story of your build.  It looks great!   

I've currently got the detail castings spread out on my workbench and I'm starting to paint them.  I used to paint them as I needed them but somewhere along the way morphed into painting (almost) all of them up front so they'd be ready when I need them. 

[Zephyrus52246]

Painting the castings first is a great idea!  Usually by late in the process, when I'm painting them,  I'm tired of looking at that particular kit build and am anxious to get on to the next project.  Thanks for the tip, I'm trying that next time.


Jeff

[postalkarl]

Hey Bob:

thanks for letting me post A pic of mine.

Karl

[ReadingBob]

Okay.  It's been awhile since I've posted anything but I have been working on stuff.     For this one I painted almost all of the detail castings first so I'd have them ready when needed.  I don't rush this process.  I never really talk much about painting the castings and, from a picture standpoint, it's not exactly exciting to see.  But I'll talk about the process a little bit and show a few of my favorite tools.  I spread the part out on my workbench and kind of organize them by the primary color I want to paint them.  There are some, like the garbage cans full of trash, the shelves full of stuff, etc. that require many colors.  When I open a color I paint the parts I intended to paint that color first and then start scanning those things that require more than one color to see if there's something that can be painted the color I'm currently working with.

One thing I found handy to keep on the workbench is this jar opener.  It's great for those lids that get stuck on the bottle.


Another thing I really like is my electric paint mixer.  Beats shaking the bottle and I seem to end up with not nearly as many lids stuck on bottles because it helps keep the tops clean.  Just remember to turn it off before extracting from the bottle.   


I use all kinds of paints when I'm painting the castings. Floquil, PollyScale, AK Interactive, Model Masters, etc.  Which ever color I'm looking for.


I just keep painting and painting.  When I declare one part finished I move it towards the back of the workbench and keep the parts that still need work towards the front.  After everything has been painted I apply either A&I to tone them down or AK Interactive Neutral Gray wash.


After the detail castings have been painted it's time to move on to the strip wood.  The larger sizes (except the bracing) I give some texture to by running over them two or three times with this welders brush I found at Home Depot.


After the strip wood has been roughed up a bit I give it a bath in some Hunterline Light Gray Weathering mix.  The strip wood has it's own little bath tub.    I don't throw it all in at once.  Maybe ten or twenty pieces depending on the size.  I do each size separately to keep them organized.  I let it soak for a few minutes and then pull it out with tweezers.


More in a moment...

[ReadingBob]

I have an old cardboard box I stand the wet strip wood in until it the stain dries.


Now, I'm going to work a little out of sequence with the instructions on this build.  I jumped ahead to a step where the back of the false front on wall needs to be scribed to appear like the front.  I used the back of an X-Acto knife to scribe lines in it.


Then I moved on to bracing the walls.  The instructions call for the walls to stained, painted, textured, etc. prior to bracing but I prefer to brace first.  Some bracing along the top and bottom of a few of the walls has to be cut short to provide clearance for the bracing on the connecting walls.  I put two pieces of the bracing side by side and then butted a piece up against it and put the wall on top so I could mark where to cut it.


That gives me piece that will provide the necessary clearance at each end.


When I glued the bracing in place I had one piece of strip wood at one end and used a small angle iron to align the bracing with the edge of the wall.


Then I weighed it down with a couple blocks of marble (scavenged from some old bowling trophies I no longer cared about).


More in a moment...

[ReadingBob]

My bracing is probably neater than it needs to be given it'll never be seen but I can't help myself.     After the bracing was completed, by the way this is the main building not the smaller coffee shop, I painted the inside of the walls with a cheap craft store acrylic.


Next up I stained the front of the walls with the same weathering mix I used for the strip wood.


I happened to still have a bottle of Floquil Foundation which is what George used on the pilot model so I painted the walls with that.


Then I added the nail holes using the templates as guide for where to place them and a square to keep them, well, square.   


Next up was a wash of A&I.  This swells the wood around the nail holes and makes them much smaller.  The A&I dried a little too dark but the instructions mentioned that it would.  George said he then went over the walls with a Q-Tip dipped in plain rubbing alcohol and pressed done on it with his finger to scrub the wall.  He ended up with a nice yellowish finish with a hint of green.  I didn't.  More on that later.


Time to add the corner trim and trim out the larger door openings.  For the opening I put the strip wood over the opening and mark, with a single edge razor blade, where to cut it.  I'm not cutting it here.  Just marking it.  I'll put it on the cutting mat to cut it.


More in a moment...

[ReadingBob]

If I cut the piece a hair too long an it doesn't fit no biggie.  I can shave off a little until it does fit.  If I cut it too short however...well...you know.   


Shaving off just a hair.


A little glue to hold it in place.  I wipe off any excess that may ooze out the front.  Try not to use too much.


I mentioned before my walls came out darker than I had intended and didn't have that nice yellow/green tint to them like George's did after scrubbing them with Alcohol.  Along the way I had a happy accident.  There was a little crumb of glue on the front of one of the walls, picked up off of my workbench, and when I rubbed it off with my finger tip the spot where I rubbed turned the exact color I was shooting for.  So I went over all of the visible portion of the walls with my finger tip and things were good again.   


The corner trim I simply glue on longer than need be and then trim to fit after the glue has set a few minutes.


That's all there is for now folks.  Thanks for following along!   

[Janbouli]

Thanks once again for outstanding photo's Bob . I might be able to give you a little tip , when I use the paint stirrer I enclose the paint jar in an empty toilet-paper roll , that way when I take the stirrer out I can leave it spinning much longer so it doesn't have a half bottle of paint still on it , most of the paint will spin off inside the jar if you pull it out slow , and the roll will keep the paint from splattering all over.

[PRR Modeler]

Great progress Bob, and great modeling shirt.

[S&S RR]

Great progress Bob - it looks great!  I agree with bracing the walls first before any coloring begins.  I learned that one the hard way.

[Steve25m]

I built one some 3 years ago now , I will post some pictures if I figure out how to resize my photos that does not take a  near life time to do!
Please somebody change that about this site, pretty please!

[vinceg]

Another crazy good step-by-step, Bob. Thanks.

[Opa George]

Great step-by-step, Bob. I can attribute much of the improvement in my own modeling efforts to a regular following of your very instructive build threads. You also mentioned the welder's brush in a previous post. I went to Home Depot last month and found one, and it is indeed a very useful tool.
Did I mention this is looking very good, by the way?
--George