Lamson bash

[deemery]

A bit of work today, but some touchy stuff.  First, I touched up the black, including the one set of window wells I forgot to do.  Then I carefully traced around the half-circle window casting onto thin clear styrene.  I cut that out and carefully sanded it down to fit inside the casting.  When I got that right, I used it as a template to cut and sand the other two window glazing.  Finally, I filled in the small window wells in the one cast-in door, using Testors Canopy Cement.  Hopefully that'll dry clear and look like glass.


add:  24 hours later, the little drops of Testors clear part cement look like glazing


dave

[S&S RR]

Dave

Great looking build! I love building these kits and always end up changing the size or shape to fit my space on the layout. It sure is nice to see a build thread on this build.

[Jerry]

Hey Dave you're din some great work on this building.

Jerry

[deemery]

Small project, big impact:


I mixed 1/3 black, 1/3 neutral grey, 1/3 water (Liquitex Acrylic Gouache), and brushed it over the stonework.  I went back over a couple of times, which cleaned off the top of the stones but put the wash into the mortar lines.  

I'm still contemplating the brick mortar, I'm thinking a mix of neutral grey and red, so the mortar lines do not pop out.  I want the stone mortar to pop, but the brick mortar to be more subtle.

dave

[deemery]

Brick mortar washes.  Most pieces got grey/red/white.  The two on the bottom right got grey/red, and the two above that got just gray.  The idea is make the buildings look slightly different as if they were built at different times.  I'll check back tomorrow and see if I like the net result.


Add:  a test fit of one structure:


dave

[ACL1504]

Dave,

The wall coloring is great, this is coming along nicely. Like you said, "small project - large impact."

Tom 

[deemery]

I could start on window glazing.  Or I could do some wall assembly.  Hard choice (not!)

I sanded the back of the gable piece using sandpaper glued to a stone tile, and the ends of the other piece (and the bottoms of both pieces) using my sandpaper paint paddles.  When I was OK with the fit, I set up the assembly shown. I used the Micro-Mark thin beam square (one of their best products!) and a 1-2-3 block to align the inner corner. 


The wrinkle here is the gable end needs to slightly overhang the side wall (see the bottom right corner here.)  So I had to touch up that exposed bit of gable end before gluing.  After the glue sets, I'll go back and over-paint the red with the stone grey color.

Once this glue is dry, I'll epoxy 1/4" square strip (styrene or wood) to reinforce the corner joint.

Add:  More glue set-up:



As a reminder, the two back panels meet more-or-less flush.  Because they're in the back, that joint won't really be visible, but I do need to get the two parts as tight as possible for gluing/overall strength of the model.

dave

[deemery]

More assembly.  First a test-fit of the two building halves:



I'm happy with the fit.  The top view will not be visible if I go with the current layout of the structures.  But this fit is good enough I could change my mind :-)

Now because I have a couple of butt joints, I wanted more reinforcement.  I copied the SRMW template (which is for the mirror original arrangement), cut it out of plain paper, and then used that as a template to cut out a floor from styrene.  (Top photos show that as a roof, but I decided to use it as a floor, instead.)  Then I cut some bracing from .250 x .312 styrene, laid those on the styrene floor, butted them against the plaster walls, and used Testors Liquid to position those into position.  That gives me maximum contact surface against the plaster walls with zero clearance.
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Then I cut some styrene pieces to cover the butt joints on either side, and epoxied those to the plaster.  Later, once that epoxy is dry, I'll lift the structure off the floor, mix more epoxy onto the floor and bracing, and reset the building to glue it to the floor.  That should result in a sturdy assembly. 

Note the wood piece at the bottom between the two splices, that serves as a clamp and further bracing.

dave

[deemery]

Some more accomplishments today... 

I assembled the boilerhouse (including cutting a blank rear wall from styrene.)  And I cut the smokestack down to size.  For that, I figured out where a 1/8 piece of wood would sit along the chimney to make it sit parallel to the ground when on its side.  I cut the chimney to the desired height, and then squared it off, using the (laser) inscribed bricks to guide.  Then I carefully drilled out about 1/16 deep hole in the top.  I used a Forstner bit in my drill press, the drill press clamp, and a bit of hand-holding finagling to get a roughly centered hole.  When painted black, that looks pretty good as "down the chimney."  

But I really do need to start on glazing for the two buildings I have finished, and then do roofs on them.

dave

[deemery]

Windows on one wall are done.  

3 more walls to do on this building.  I'll tackle its roof next, before moving onto windows on the next building.

dave

[GPdemayo]

Beautiful masonry structure, great work Dave.....

[ACL1504]

Dave,

Well done, looks great. Love the weathering on the brick.

Tom 

[deemery]

A challenge:  Look at my picture and figure out how I screwed up     It's not obvious (thankfully), so I probably won't fix it.

dave

[deemery]

I scanned and printed the roof templates to cardstock, then laminated that to .020 styrene.  That adds stiffness that the kit's cardstock roof doesn't have.  I also cut styrene gables, to use to reinforce the middle of the two pitched roofs. 




There's very little overhang on these roofs, typical mill architecture.  Next step is to attach the shingles.  I'll have to be careful on one roof, the guidelines are slightly skewed to the roof.  (ugh)

dave

[deemery]

Today's project was the roof for the first building.  Here's the bracing for the styrene subroofs:


Now this roof has valleys.  So I dug out some self-stick copper foil to use as flashing.  

I cut strips and attached them to the roof parts.  This also helps hold the two parts of the roof together:


For shingles, I'm using my stash of Northeastern Scale MODELS shingles.  (NESM was spun off from Northeastern Scale Lumber to sell kits.  NESM went out of business, NESL took back the shingle material, and the kit line went to Motrak Models.)  Normally they sold them assembled into sheets about 4x6.  But for my long mill buildings, it's really hard to splice two pre-assembled sheets together, so they let me bulk order unassembled 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of the shingle material. 

I'm using a Glue Stick to attach these to the paper templates previously glued to the styrene subroof.  I run a line of Deluxe Materials Card Stock glue along the underside of the shingles to attach the edges to the subroof.

Tomorrow when everything is dry, I'll trim the roof.

dave