A steam powered flour mill from Keep it Rusty

[nycjeff]

Here's a look at how the barn will fit against the stone walled mill building. I had to trim the metal roof of the mill building to get the barn roof to fit. There will be some flashing where the two roofs meet. Nothing is glued yet.



The upper barn doors have been glued on as well as a wood spar to help hoist the empty flour bags from the deck below to the second story. Some of the stone wall details really stand out in this picture. Those 3D printed stone walls are so nice.



Here's a view of the deck template sheet for the barn loading docks. The strip wood has been grained and stained.



Working right on top of the template helps make the deck construction fairly straight forward. Here the deck joists are being glued in place.



One deck is done and the second is being worked on. The missing boards at the front corner are intentional. This will be a mini-scene where some of the deck boards are in process of being replaced. You can see in the upper right corner of the picture the deck boards for the second deck already cut to the proper length and ready to be glued onto the joists.



That's it for now, more later.

[Keep It Rusty]

More excellent updates.

You may have trimmed slightly too much metal roofing away, but no harm. Once the flashing is in if you have any remaining gaps, fill them with a build of leaves and scatter

[Jerry]

What a beautiful build.

Jerry

[nycjeff]

More excellent updates.

You may have trimmed slightly too much metal roofing away, but no harm. Once the flashing is in if you have any remaining gaps, fill them with a build of leaves and scatter

Hello Craig, thanks for keeping an eye on me during this build, I appreciate the input.

What a beautiful build.

Jerry

Hello Jerry, thank you sir, I'm having a lot of fun and by following the great instructions that come with this kit, it's relatively easy to come to a satisfactory ending.

[nycjeff]

Next up is another building that attaches to the left end of the stone mill building. It is called the Loading dock Addition. This is the point where the grain comes into the mill by truck and/ or rail in Craig's version. This little building is a board-by-board type construction.
Here is the front wall, which will not be very visible. The office addition attaches right in front of this wall. I decided to have a little fun with the board-by-board on this wall. Apparently at some point, the wall was damaged and repairs were made using a few horizontal boards and some plywood.



The walls have all been braced and glued together.  The right hand wall does not get any cladding- this is the wall that attaches to the mill building. The overhead door sitting on this wall in the picture goes into the door opening of the gable end wall.



There is a three sided base for this building. The rear is the 3D printed loading dock, which I have painted with a chalk concrete color after priming with a dark grey rattle can color. The dock will get some further weathering with chalks when things are a little farther along.



The interior floor comes with the kit. I decided to place a horizontal board at the top of the straight portion of the walls. The piece of plywood at the peak area is for something I have planned for later in the build. You can also see the stone wall foundation here.



This is a view of the front wall that will be covered by the elevated office building.

[nycjeff]

The roof for the loading dock addition is the same as the roof on the large mill building- the green colored metal material. In this picture you can see the extra bracing that I installed at the peak lines of the gables for more of a gluing surface.



The roof card is being glued onto the walls. After taking this picture some weight was added to the roof card to help insure that the roof fit the walls perfectly.



The roof material has been glued on. I trimmed the top piece so that I had about equal length of the two panels.



Here's the front view of the roof. Some more weathering will be done later. The peak cap also needs to be glued on.



The roof material is cut even with the rear wall because this is the wall that attaches to the large mill building.



That's it for now, more later.

[nycjeff]

Next up is a little structure called the office. The kit provided three laser cut clapboard walls but I decided to stay with the board-by-board method and make my own walls.



The windows and door have been installed and I've started gluing the walls together.



The office sits on a timber framed platform. Using the template provided I started on the support platform.



Here is the completed platform with the legs and bracing.



The office has been glued onto the platform.

[nycjeff]

The office and it's platform sit right next to the loading dock addition. I had to slice two tabs into the metal roof to fit the office in it's proper place. You can also see here that the overhead door has been installed in the loading dock addition. I dry brushed a white wash color on the walls, I think it helps with the aged look and it also brings out some of the detail on the board-by-board walls.



Here's a look at the other side of the office in it's proper place.



I used the same shingles for the office that I used on the mill barn. The roof fit against the metal roof nicely, I still have to glue on some flashing where the roofs meet. You can also see the ridge cap for the metal roof has been glued into place.



The front view of the office. I still have to make some railings and a stairway for the office platform, but I'm going to wait until things are glued onto a base for that. They'll only get broken if I do them now.



A closer look at the side wall. The board-by-board came out well and I'm happy with it. A covered wood frame will attach to this side of the structure, but once again I will wait until things are glued onto the base before installing it.



That's it for now, more later.

[Pennman]

Jeff,

Moving steadily along, I see, and the construction seems tight on all corners.
I like the coloring on the roof tops, the shingles and the rusty door.
Great modeling.

Rich

[Rick]

Jeff, nice to see all the progress you're making.
Excellent job of painting and weathering.

[nycjeff]

Jeff,

Moving steadily along, I see, and the construction seems tight on all corners.
I like the coloring on the roof tops, the shingles and the rusty door.
Great modeling.

Rich

Hello Rich, thanks for looking in and for the kind words. It's always nice to get some feedback.

Jeff, nice to see all the progress you're making.
Excellent job of painting and weathering.

Hello Rick, I'm just going from one sub-assembly to another with this kit. Soon it will be time to start tying things together. Thanks for looking in.

[nycjeff]

Continuing on...

I added some flashing at the roof joints. I used some brown packing paper which I painted grey for the flashing. Craig suggests using aluminum foil for the flashing, but I wanted to try the packing paper and I'm pleased with how it came out. I also did a little weathering on the metal roof.



Here's a view of the other side of the roof. This is as far as I'm going to go with this little structure for right now. Later when things start getting glued together, I'll do some more detailing and weathering.



Next up is to me the most interesting part of the kit. The steam engine, it's large belt and the boiler and steam piping. Craig supplies a piece of cardboard for the base of the engine shed, but I wanted something bigger that would allow me to put the shed, the pulley tower and the boiler all on one base. I cut a piece of styrene that would allow me to do all of that and painted it a dark grey with a rattle can primer. I then glued the walls of the shed together and glued the shed to the base. The walls were single piece laser cut wood with some nice framing detail.



The idea is that the shed is under construction and I wanted to take that idea a little further along. I used some untreated 2x10 strip wood for vertical siding boards and did the wall that will be near the stone mill building with that material. Since it's supposed to be new construction I didn't stain or color the boards at all.



Next was the steam engine. It comes as eight different 3D printed pieces that you first paint, I used a rattle can grey primer for all the pieces, and then paint before assembling. Everything fit well with almost no flash and I like the look of the finished steam engine. I used a silver color on the outside surfaces of the pulleys, A blue/ grey mixture for the body of the engine and a red for the inside of the pulleys. You can also see that I'm painting the material for the belt with a brownish/ orange color to look like a belt color.



That's it for now, more later.

[ACL1504]

Jeff,

You are doing an excellent job on the kit. Craig sure has designed on fantastic looking kit as well.

It will be a great addition to your layout. Looking forward to when it will be planted.

Tom

[nycjeff]

Hello Tom, thanks for looking in and for the nice comments. I agree with you that Craig did a nice job with the design of this kit, it's been a lot of fun working on it.

[nycjeff]

Next up is the line shaft support platform. This platform houses the other end of the main drive belt from the steam engine. Using the template provided helped greatly while building this little structure. In this picture you can see that one side is drying, while the other side is laying on the template. The 3D printed concrete bases for the legs of the platform have been painted and the guard for the lower part of the belt is partially done



Gluing the two sides of the platform together requires more hands than I have available. I used several tools to help hold things steady so that the glue could dry properly.



The platform has been glued into place. The main drive shaft was fed into the mounting holes of two brackets with a pulley wheel in the middle. I spaced the three parts properly using the template and the super glued them into place on the undersides of the top platform timbers. The drive belt was first glued to the bottom of the big drive pulley on the steam engine and then glued onto the top pulley one end at a time. I'm pleased with the color that I used for the belt. The most tricksie part of all of this was getting the wood guard tray in place. There wasn't a lot of room to work, but I eventually got it where it belonged. One of the reasons that I installed the exterior wall cladding on the back side of the shed was so that I could put some details against the wall on the inside. The castings came with the kit.



There were five complete trusses on the roof when I started. I had a paint bottle balanced on top of the wood platform while the glue was drying, but it fell off and broke two of the trusses. I thought about trying to repair the broken trusses, but then realized that by just cutting them off at the ridge beam it would just look like those two rafters hadn't been installed yet. A happy accident.



I'm very pleased with how this whole thing came out. I'm glad that I decided to use a base piece big enough for all of the pieces. I don't know how I would have gotten them all into place without it. In case you're wondering, the metal drive shaft will go into a hole in the side of the stone wall mill building when all of the sub-assemblies get glued together. The tie straps on top of the corners of the platform were laser cut wood that bent into place when glued- just another little detail that Craig designed into the kit. Amazing.



That's it for now, more later.