Master Creations Blandings and Gallard Cement Co

[SteveCuster]

Good morning everyone.


I got a little bit further on the kit yesterday.


I finished up a few of the castings. I still have a whole bunch to go. I'm trying to work through them as the different stages of the structures are drying. I still have a ton to get through.


I painted the walls with Apple Barrel Slate Gray. I added some heavy graining to the boards and a few board ends. I tried not to overdo it with the board ends. The walls were first primed with A&I followed by a wash of Mineral Spirits then a coat of the paint before the Mineral Spirits fully dry. After the paint dried for a few minutes I went over all the walls following the direction of the wood panels with a heavy wire brush.

All the walls are colored.

I painted the windows with Vintage White craft paint. I waited to color the doors because I wanted to see how the windows looked against the wall color.

I tried to do a spotty job painting the windows to give a little peeling paint effect. After the white paint dried I washed over the windows with A&I.


The fitment of the doors really left something to be desired. Big gaps on all sides. This was the worst one. My work around to mask this was to glue the doors to pieces of blacked painted chipboard. Should be less noticeable this way.

This is the chipboard in place. I glued the doors directly to it.

The other 2 freight doors are not as bad. I still glued chipboard behind them.

This door has a large gap under it. This is by design because a wood/tire bumper will sit here. I think it looks kinda weird having 2 doors next to each other with one sitting a few scale feet higher than the other.

This door was designed very strangely. The instructions call for framed out the opening with scale 6x6s and setting the door against the back. Following that direction the hinges and door knob would be covered by the framing. I instead chose to glue the door directly in the opening and I'll frame it out with 2x4s on the outside.

I felt like this looked better.

I added the acetate for the windows, dirtied it with some chalks and added some blinds.


I started gluing the walls together. I normally would detail them a bit more before doing this but I really wanted to get a feel for how the building sits when all together.

The front wall is about 1 scale foot lower on the right than on the left. I had a large gap in the top of the siding where the wall meets the corner on the right side. My fix for this was to bring the bottom up a bit to make it less obvious. It'll be easier to mask a gap once I add the foundation and the scenery on the bottom.

The little 3 wall section on the left is suppost to fit in the hole in the siding. It's way off. I have about 6" too much space. It's not glued in place but I'll need to figure out how to hide that.

Some pretty strange inconsistencies in the kit so far. I'll keep working through it and see what I can make of this.

-Steve

[PRR Modeler]

Steve very nice colors and weathering.

[vinceg]

Looks great, Steve. I love the detail you're presenting relating to troubles you're seeing and how you are dealing with them. Good ideas for future use.

[rpdylan]

Steve,
    great work on the painting of the windows and the doors!
     The chip board behind the doors is a trick that I utilize also.  I have also used scale 1x3 for "gap trimming" in the past.
   Was this kit laser cut or hand cut walls? Its funny to think how scratch-building a structure is sometimes easier then building a kit like this!! You're doing a pretty fantastic job given the difficulties!  Makes me appreciate the quality of the FSM kits that I have built!

[NKP768]

Nice work around on the doors Steve - coming along nicely

Doug

[SteveCuster]

Thanks guys.

Bob, the instructions say laser cut. They definitely lack the precision of some of the other kits. I've never had weird gaps or other issues with FSM kits even some of the real old ones.

-Steve

[Mark Dalrymple]

Looking good, Steve.

Nice fixes and improvements. 

With the small door - I wonder whether they meant to frame the door out as you did and then attach the door to the back of the frame (but within it rather than behind it) to achieve a bit of negative detail?  That way the hinges and door handle would still be visible but the door would be set back a scale 4 1/2" or so.  You could still put the 4 by 2" trim on to hide the cladding/ framing seam.

Cheers, Mark.

[Janbouli]

Great start Steve.

[postalkarl]

Hey Steve:

Coming along nicely. I'll be following along.

Karl

[Erieman]

Steve,


Thank you for starting this thread. I have this building. Actually, Tom Langford aka ACL1504 gave it to me. It has resided on my "to do" shelf awaiting for someone to build this monster and let me know all the problems that he or she incurred during the build. I have opened the box.


As you know, i have been quite busy on other projects, including the current steel mill. I know you will do a wonderful job on the build and keep everyone informed on the good and bad problems that you will experience. So, thank you for starting this kit.  I'll be watching closely in between my steel mill project and the 2019 PSR Regional convention her in Arizona in September. We have a great convention planned.


Keep up the great work.


Frank / Erieman

[SteveCuster]

Thanks everyone, glad to have you following along.

Frank, I'll try to do my best at working through and documenting any challenges I come across.

I did discover a mistake I made earlier. I misread the directions about framing out the smaller door on the rear of the structure with 6x6s. They actually call for framing it with 2x6s but still setting the door back into the opening. It makes more sense that way. I'm still going to leave the door the way I had it with the framing on the exterior wall.


This is the issue I had with the smaller building not fitting properly into the opening. I have about a scale 6' gap between the wall and the corner.


If I move it over to fill the gap it opens up on the other side.


This is what the other side looks like now. I'm not sure why they didn't just make the siding run the full length of the wall so you could just butt the little addition to it.

This is the other weird area of the kit. This rear wall is intentionally short at the top and it looks like they want you to build some exposed rafters or a vent of some kind here.

This is the only picture of this area in the instructions. Even if it has some real world prototype I think it looks weird and strange to me.

I got the roof cards cut out so I can map out how everything will fit. The rear wall has a small peaked section that is blocking the card from sitting properly. This is due to the extra bracing I added to the wall. If I had not braced it the card would fit behind the peaked wall.


I cut a little notch out of the card so it fits properly. The dotted lines going towards the front of the vehicle are not for cutting. They are to let you know where not to add roofing so the other roof card fits properly.

They really want you to add a lot of vents and chimneys to this small building. 7 total. They are very specific about placement of these pieces but the roof card has no horizontal lines to help make sure you apply the roofing straight.

I spent some time trying to figure out what to do with this area at the top of the rear wall. This spot will not be visible when the building is installed on the layout so I decided to go with a quick fix. If it was visible I think I would take the wall down and redo it so it runs the full length. I added this cross support bracing so I had something tangible to glue the siding to.

I used a piece of scrap siding to plug the void. This is the bottom wall of the little office that sits on the barge on the old original FSM pile driver. I cut it lengthwise and it fit perfectly in the spot.
It will be hardly noticeable once the roofing is on and not visible at all once the building is installed on the layout.

I spent some time trying to get a feel for the rear overhang area. The roof card doesnt line up correctly with the marking on the main roof. If I match everything up I have about 1/8" on either side of the card overhang. I need to modify this area heavily so that the depth of the building fits my spot. I won't be building the loading dock here, it will not fit.

I got the rolled roofing laid out across the main roof.


I cut out my own roof card for the rear section. I took most of the overhang off the rear and I make it less wide so it matches the width of the main roof.




It took some trial and error but I got all the roofing covered.


First coat of paint on the roof is on. I used Apple Barrel Pavement to color the roof. It's similar to Floquil Weathered Black. I still need another coat and of course quite a bit of weathering.

Next step will be weathering the roof and adding all the rafters. Then on the the loading docks and stone foundation.

-Steve

[Oldguy]

Good grief, that's a lot of fiddling just to get kit pieces to fit together.  But then, I guess that what Master Creation kits are known for. 

But I do have a question - why put the valley roofing on top of the roof roofing?  Shouldn't the valley material go on first, then the roofing material?  It's all about shedding water.

[vinceg]

Good grief, that's a lot of fiddling just to get kit pieces to fit together.  But then, I guess that what Master Creation kits are known for. 

Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing as I was reading this. I bought a Muldoon's Distillery way back when. I love the building design but am a little anxious about what I'll be getting into once I start it. That will be years from now. Hoping my modeling chops will be up to the task by then....

[PRR Modeler]

Steve nice job on the modifications. The building looks good so far.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Looking good, Steve.

You're doing well nutting out ways to fix those problems.  At least with a scratch build when you run into a problem like that you say "woops!  Got that wrong!"  and then come up with a fix.  You don't spend ages trying to work out if there is a reason for the problem you have somehow overlooked.

With the butnoyl roof (which I think is the same as rolled roofing) - I think generally they roll a strip down the valley first and then cut the horizontal strips back a bit from the valley in a nice straight line - parallel with the valley.  However - having lived in a house with a flat butnoyl roof, those seams are pretty good at keeping water out.  It would be more important to get this around the right way with tiles, shingles, corrugated iron etc.  It is the reason I have always hatted patches of corrugated iron slapped on top of an old roof, and with the corrugations running the wrong way!  Any water would run straight down the roof, under the patch, and fall down the hole!  BTW - it is something I have never seen in reality - only on models.

Cheers, Mark.