Stanford's Hardware

[R Edington]

While the site was down, here is one of my first N scale structure I've completed using my laser cutter and 3D printers.

 The printers that I have, are all made by Anycubic. 2 of the original Photon's, a Mono X 6K, and a M3.
 
This is the my 100 watt laser I built with a 18"X36" bed. The bed has a travel of about 10 inches up and down.







 
 I made a basic model in 3D with Sketchup (Pro)









 Then drew up the parts that are 3D printed.
 Note that I use some open windows

[R Edington]

Here is what the etch plate looks like



And cut plate




All the parts just out of the laser
Note the etched lines on roof as a guide to apply shingles

[R Edington]

After making sure the windows and doors fit, I brushed a coat of white paint on them.





While the paint dried, I started assembling the walls







Walls assembled

[R Edington]

After paint and with windows and doors

[R Edington]

With Roof










 I found (with help) some label paper that is only .003 thick and I use it for shingles.
 Took a lot of time to draw these up. Here is the cut plate for them

[R Edington]

Cut sheet of shingles








I took some scrap stryene and made a template to get the correct angle for cutting the shingles at the valley ends.









 


 For coloring the shingles, I used TRANsol powdered wood dye (from Amazon) and mixed it with 91% alcohol to add to the Hunterline stains that I already had. I mixed a verity of colors in these small containers from the dollar store. Each color used very little powder in each bottle. I also mixed up 4 shades of India ink. So far I have about 30 different colors and a few different shades of some of the most used colors.

[R Edington]

Stained shingles





  I started with the roof that doesn't have valleys. I applied a few strips and then trim with scissors, apply a few more strips and trim and so on.










 Added both docks

[R Edington]

Used tar paper for both of the dock roofs.






Finished with a few details
Found this guy leaning up against a light pole on the web. Printed him with the light pole and then cut the pole off.
















And the last piece to go on was the chimney

[deemery]

One suggestion on the shingle staining:  Run the brush vertically across the rows of shingles, rather than horizontally along the shingle runs.  That'll add more variety to the end result, preventing it from looking kinda streaky along the shingle runs.  It's cool to see how you did the combination/layers.  And it looks like you had much more success than I had with SketchUp when I used it to design a structure for my Roman Architecture course a couple years ago...

dave

[Zephyrus52246]

Nice looking structure.  

Jeff

[GPdemayo]

Well done Rodney.....

[R Edington]

  Thanks guys.
This ts the first structure I've completed. Most just get the walls together and then on to the next project.

One suggestion on the shingle staining:  Run the brush vertically across the rows of shingles, rather than horizontally along the shingle runs.  That'll add more variety to the end result, preventing it from looking kinda streaky along the shingle runs.  It's cool to see how you did the combination/layers.  And it looks like you had much more success than I had with SketchUp when I used it to design a structure for my Roman Architecture course a couple years ago...

dave

 The shingles were stained before they went one. Next time, I'll try just one color on the shingles, then add weathering after they are on the structure.
 Been using Sketchup for about 15 years now and it works for me.

[jerryrbeach]

Rodney,

When I pre-stain shingles I run the "wet brush" from the top to the bottom mixing three or four similar colors at random.  I do not continue one color all the way down the sheet, but rather stop and start in a kind of streaky fashion.  After they are dry I cut all the shingle strips from the carrier sheet and shuffle them like cards to get a random mix.  I sometimes cut and start a row from partway along the strip.  This way the roof has a kind of random pattern of weathering.  Once everything is in place and the glue has dried I go back in and dry brush some light color vertically to pick up the edges of the shingles and add some definition (texture) to them.  After that I often go back with some powdered chalks to blend the colors where they look too stark. 

FWIW, if you are not familiar with "wet brush", it was a term coined by Brett gallant I believe.  There is more paint on your brush than when dry brushing, but you unload some of the paint prior to painting the shingles.  This gives you more control with the final look. 

I am very impressed with what you have done, especially considering you did it in N scale.  Designing the structure, laser cutting your walls, and printing your own windows is well beyond my ability.  Also, I need to look into the powdered wood dye.  That seems to me to be another way to get a specific look without buying a large bottle of stain for one model.

Thanks for sharing your work.

[R Edington]

This is the prototype I used for fitment and to learn how to do the shingles, but mirrored form the structure I finished. Also you can see that for the finished design, I centered the dock.

With some encouragement from Dave and Jerry, I went over the shingles with a wash of India ink.

I think it helped a lot.

[deemery]

One more step:  using a relatively stiff brush (i really like bristle fan brushes for this, but they're a bit hard to find), get some off-white paint, and drybrush -from the bottom up- to catch little pieces of white on the tips of the shingles.  If you're not used to drybrushing, practice a bit on a piece of scrap clapboard siding until you know how much (how little) paint to leave on the brush.  

I do that to the Bar Mills or even Campbell paper shingles with great results.

dave