A steam powered flour mill from Keep it Rusty

[nycjeff]

Jeff,

The General Store building turned out really nice and I'm sure this next
structure will as well. I'm liking the colors you used for the stonework,
especially the orange/brown effects which will make it stand out more.

With the kit sold out, I wish Craig would reconsider making a few of the stone walls for sale.

Rich

Hello Rich, I'm glad that you like the color scheme for the mill building. I can't take credit for it, I just followed Craig's suggestions from the instructions and I'm glad I did. I'm pleased with the result so far.
You are one of several to comment on wishing for Craig to make the stone walls available. We can only hope that he is following along and will read about the interest in them.

Jeff nice coloring on those stone walls!

Jerry

Hello Jerry, I'm very pleased with how the stone walls came out and it was an easy process. Just sponged on the colors after priming them. I think that the deatil texture of the 3D printed walls helps quite a bit with the finished look.

Jeff, I think you nailed the colors on those walls.

Hello Rick, thank you for the nice comment and for looking in.

I agree, nice coloring on the walls.  It would be nice if Craig would offer this as a separate kit.

Mark

Hello Mark, thank you for the feed back, it's appreciated. Yes it would be nice if the walls were made available. Maybe Craig will notice the interest expressed by several forum members.

[nycjeff]

A short weekend post for the project here...

Here are the colors that I used for the mill building stone walls. I first used a rattle can flat grey primer on the walls. The first color that I sponged on was the brick red and this was the color that I used the most of. I tried to use the orange and gold colors sparingly and then I used the dark brown to tone things down a little. I'm thinking about using a thinned black wash to help age the look of the walls. Haven't decided on that as of yet.



Next up is the roof for the mill building. The notch on the left side of the picture is for the location of the barn when it is attached to the mill. The oval hole is for a large roof stack that will be added later. I then painted the undersides of the roof cards with a dark brown where they will be visible and made sure to paint the edges of the roof cards as they will definitely be visible. I've made that mistake before and learned a lesson.



I took the roof material for the mill building and sprayed it with a silver rattle can color. When dry, I misted a flat red primer over them.



After the paint dried overnight, I dry brushed on some olive drab color. There will be some more rust effects added later after the roof has been glued onto the building.



That's it for now, more later.

[friscomike]

Howdy Jeff, the roof is looking good and promises to complement the structure.  Persist!  Have fun, mike

[Mark Dalrymple]

You're making great progress, Jeff.

Coming on very nicely.  You're great thread is sure to entice many more to join the next challenge!

Cheers, Mark.

[Larry C]

Jeff great job on the Store and love all the nice details; very well done.
The Flour Mill certainly is a big'n; should be a fun project.

[nycjeff]

Howdy Jeff, the roof is looking good and promises to complement the structure.  Persist!  Have fun, mike

Hello Mike, this roof is a little different than any I've done before. I'm interested in seeing how it comes out. And I am having fun.

You're making great progress, Jeff.

Coming on very nicely.  You're great thread is sure to entice many more to join the next challenge!

Cheers, Mark.

Hello Mark, I'm just treating this very large kit as many small kits and doing them one step at a time. If I look at it all at once, it's kind of overwhelming. I sure hope that a lot of modelers join in on the next challenge, if there is one. With such high quality prizes such as Craig's kits it's a no brainer.

Jeff great job on the Store and love all the nice details; very well done.
The Flour Mill certainly is a big'n; should be a fun project.

Hello Larry, thanks for looking in and for the encouragement. The flour mill is a big one indeed. The main building with the stone walls has a total of three attached big sub-assemblies and three more big ones that are not attached but adjacent. And then there's the under construction steam engine enclosure with it's various sub-assemblies. A big'n indeed.

[nycjeff]

Continuing on...

The roof pieces have been cut to fit and notched. The instructions call for gluing the large pieces on in one piece and not many smaller pieces as most metal roofs have. Here's what the roof will look like on the stone mill building. I haven't glued the roof on yet. Per Craig's instructions I used a pointy file to make nail marks along the bottom edge of the roof panels.



Next up is the Mill Barn, a major sub-assembly that attaches to the front of the mill building. The large blank spot in the front stone wall and the notched roof are where it will fit. Here are the four walls for the mill barn. The rear wall will not be finished. I have installed the bracing for the walls. The two horizontal pieces on the front and rear wall are to accommodate the kit bashing elements of this piece of the kit.



The laser cut clapboard pieces have been attached to the fiberboard back pieces. The two sides have a man door in one and a window in the other. The front wall has a large double barn door and another smaller second level door above. The instructions call for all of the doors to be modeled in a closed position. With such a large opening, I just couldn't do that. I have decided to add not one, but two interior floors and to model some sort of interior on both levels.



The walls have been stained with my A&I solution. I also dry brushed an undercoat brown color on the walls for an old wood look.



I decided to follow Craig's original build lead and use a blue color as the wall base color. Here I've dry brushed the blue on. A little blue goes a long way and I was afraid to overdo it.



That's it for now, more later.

[Larry C]

Jeff very nice coloring on the walls and I like your idea of adding in floors and interiors; that'll take it to the next level. Enjoy.

[Keep It Rusty]

I'm just now seeing and catching up on this build thread... and what a joy it is!

You've made absolutely fantastic progress so far and I am really enjoying the small changes you've made. The barn and store switch around is fabulous. Your colouring is great and I can already see how it's all going to look.

Really looking forward to more progress as and when.

As a note, the greyboard backers for the clapboard are in place of stripwood bracing, so therefore do not require bracing in themselves.

Great work, Jeff!

[nycjeff]

Jeff very nice coloring on the walls and I like your idea of adding in floors and interiors; that'll take it to the next level. Enjoy.

Hello Larry, thanks for looking in and for the feedback and encouragement.

I'm just now seeing and catching up on this build thread... and what a joy it is!

You've made absolutely fantastic progress so far and I am really enjoying the small changes you've made. The barn and store switch around is fabulous. Your colouring is great and I can already see how it's all going to look.

Really looking forward to more progress as and when.

As a note, the greyboard backers for the clapboard are in place of stripwood bracing, so therefore do not require bracing in themselves.

Great work, Jeff!

Hello Craig, thank you so much for the kind words. While building your kit, I want to tell you how much I appreciate all the work that you put into the design and the very detailed instruction manual. It's making the build process much easier and less daunting. All of the 3D printed details and the large stone walls are a wonder in themselves.
Thank you so much for offering up such a great kit as a prize in the recent Winter Challenge. I just hope that I can do it justice. I'm trying to make the build my own. I couldn't hope to do as good a job as you did on the original build.
As for the bracing. One thing that I've learned on this forum is that you can never have too much bracing. Also, you can never have too many details and that is not a problem with this kit. You have supplied more than enough with the kit.
Again, thank you.

[Jerry]

Jeff great coloring on those walls.  Would have never thought of using blue.

Jerry

[nycjeff]

Continuing on...

The instructions next called for the installation of the cornice trim at the top of the front wall of the barn. I followed the instructions and glued on the wood pieces. They went on easily and looked good and I was happy. Until, I was not. More on this to come.



Next I worked on the barn doors. The 3D printed hinges and door handles are great.



Next came the interior that I wanted to add. I looked at literally hundreds of pictures of flour mill interior photos online, until I found the perfect one. This was just what I was looking for. A simple scene that made sense.



Here's what I came up with. Using strip wood from my stash I built a wood frame and a wood ramp with a flour bag at it's base.



After gluing a wood floor that I made from 1/16 plywood in place, I glued the small bag loading frame into place. I'm very pleased with how this came out. When looking inside the barn you get the impression that something is happening that makes sense. Luckily I had a figure of a man sitting on a stool that I could place in the scene.

[nycjeff]

Jeff great coloring on those walls.  Would have never thought of using blue.

Jerry

Hello Jerry, thanks for looking in. I can't take credit for the idea of using blue. Craig suggested it in the instructions. I was at first hesitant, but I think that it came out well.

[nycjeff]

Here are a few more pictures of the assembled barn with the interior in place.









The window and man door went in easily and I also glued the wood trim around the two door openings in the front wall. I'm really pleased with how the interior came out. I didn't just want to add a few pieces of random details inside. My online research paid off and I learned something about how a rural flour mill actually works as a bonus.
That's it for now, more later.

[nycjeff]

Next up is the roof for the barn. This is the sheet of slate shingles that comes with the kit. There are more than enough here to do the job.



I first sprayed the sheet of shingles with a rattle can dark grey primer to get a base slate color look. After the paint dried, I dry brushed on some additional color to get the streaky slate look.



I usually attach shingles on the roof card on the bench, but this time with the many folds of the gambrel barn roof I decided to glue the cards in place and then glue the shingles on. Getting the strip of shingles to lay flat at the fold of the roof was challenging.



In this picture you can see that the front wall upper cornice trim is missing. I found out that when it was time to glue the roof card onto the walls that it wouldn't lay flat at the front. The rear wall was no problem. So I took off the cornice pieces and then the roof card fit perfectly. When I first glued on the cornice it was definitely even with the top of the wall. I still don't understand what happened, but no big deal, I'll just glue the cornice pieces back on after the roof is done.



The shingles are all on and the cornice is also back on. You can see into the second floor of the barn here. After the first floor interior was finished, I glued a second floor into the barn using the same technique. I wanted this to be the place where the empty flour bags were stored. I cut some bag shaped pieces from some packing paper and then piled them up with one draped out of the opening.



The upper and lower barn doors still have to be glued on and then some loading dock/ decks need to be made. There's always a next step to this kit.