Re: Sierra West Foundry Scratchbuild

[Pennman]

Hello all,

My purpose for beginning this thread is to show how I scratchbuilt the Sierra West Morton's Brass & Iron Foundry.

First, a little history. I had no intention to scratchbuild the model, and like a lot of other modelers, I preordered the kit by reserving one. We all know that that dosen't guarantee you get a kit, nor is one shipped until you pay for it. That just puts you into a queue until you are sent an email requesting payment when your kit is ready to be shipped to you. I was informed that I was in the first run. Along about two months later, when a lot of other modelers had already been building their kits, and I was envious of them, was about the time I decided if my kit comes along, ok. But if not, then I am going to have one even if I must build one myself. So, that is how this evolved. We all know Brett is a busy businessman, so we cannot blame him totally, he's just overworked.

Since I decided to scratchbuild the diorama, I settled upon some changes as not to build it exactly as the pilot model. With that in mind, I had a plaster kit from Guts, Gravel, and Glory, Ertner's Feed & Grain in HO scale that would fit the bill. It wasn't exact and I had to slice & dice the kits walls, but I made it work.

I wanted to make my main stone building as close to the building in the kit as possible without making it an exact match. There were some openings in the kits walls, ie: doors, windows, and a couple of freight doors, and I cut up the rest of my walls to glue some together to make them longer. I also had to cut into my walls to make additional window openings where there weren't any and adjust their heights so one finished wall matched the height of the adjacent finished wall around the corner. I wasted nothing. There was a third peaked stone wall, that I used at the back of the front office. More on that later.

We all now know what the prize was that we are after when we build. It's really Brett's fault when you think about it, he makes such dam good looking kits!

Rich

[Rick]

Rich, it will be interesting to see what you've one on this build.

[Pennman]

Hi Rick, and thanks for following me here.
It was interesting last night when I dug it out after not looking at it for seven years.
I was amazed that I could actually find all of the parts I made since it never was displayed
as a full blown diorama. It's time to get this done.

Rich

[Bernd]

Hello all,

My purpose for beginning this thread is to show how I scratchbuilt the Sierra West Morton's Brass & Iron Foundry.

First, a little history. I had no intention to scratchbuild the model, and like a lot of other modelers, I preordered the kit by reserving one. We all know that that dosen't guarantee you get a kit, nor is one shipped until you pay for it. That just puts you into a queue until you are sent an email requesting payment when your kit is ready to be shipped to you. I was informed that I was in the first run. Along about two months later, when a lot of other modelers had already been building their kits, and I was envious of them, was about the time I decided if my kit comes along, ok. But if not, then I am going to have one even if I must build one myself. So, that is how this evolved. We all know Brett is a busy businessman, so we cannot blame him totally, he's just overworked.

Since I decided to scratchbuild the diorama, I settled upon some changes as not to build it exactly as the pilot model. With that in mind, I had a plaster kit from Guts, Gravel, and Glory, Ertner's Feed & Grain in HO scale that would fit the bill. It wasn't exact and I had to slice & dice the kits walls, but I made it work.

I wanted to make my main stone building as close to the building in the kit as possible without making it an exact match. There were some openings in the kits walls, ie: doors, windows, and a couple of freight doors, and I cut up the rest of my walls to glue some together to make them longer. I also had to cut into my walls to make additional window openings where there weren't any and adjust their heights so one finished wall matched the height of the adjacent finished wall around the corner. I wasted nothing. There was a third peaked stone wall, that I used at the back of the front office. More on that later.

We all now know what the prize was that we are after when we build. It's really Brett's fault when you think about it, he makes such dam good looking kits!

Rich

Hey Rich,

I've got my Yuengling beer and a front seat. I'll be following along to watch you do your magic.

Bernd

[GaryMc]

Rich, Looking forward to see what you have done.

[Jerry]

Well look who has shown up with a new build!!

I'll be following along for sure Rich.
I've seen your other builds and there's a lot to be learned in following along with your build.

Jerry

[Larry C]

Rich nice to see you building once again and I'll be following along. Actually the way you're going about the build, to me, seems like it's going to be a lot more fun than just building a kit; IMHO.

[Pennman]

Thanks for following along Gary and Jerry.
I'll look for more pictures as mentioned at the beginning, but will probably spend
another day taking some close-up pictures to explain my method of destruction.

The following (2) pictures show what was in the Guts, Gravel and Glory kit, for walls.
The peaked wall with the round window has a bricked-up door opening, just like the one wall in the Sierra West kit. I used that wall for an end of my building. There were two hydrocal docks, one was a ramp. I cut a piece from the shorter, square-ended one to use for a door stoop at the other end of my building. I also used the long ramp. As you can see in the pictures, there were three (3) peaked walls. One for each end of my new building, and one extra. I cut down the height of the extra wall and used that as the back wall to the new office. So, my new office has three (3) walls that are clapboard and one wall of stone, at the back, and it has a freight door opening.

I'll be updating this again later today. Thanks for your kind comments and for following.

Rich

[Pennman]

Rich nice to see you building once again and I'll be following along. Actually the way you're going about the build, to me, seems like it's going to be a lot more fun than just building a kit; IMHO.

Thank you, Larry, glad to have you along for the ride.
I'm still in awe following you on your sawmill. It is mind-boggling to me
having to hook-up all of those machines with their belting. As I am
not experienced in that part of this hobby.

Rich

[Larry C]

Rich you're welcome; this should be an interesting build. Thanks for the compliment.

[Philip]

Hey Rich ! Following along.

Nice looking plaster castings~

Philip

[Pennman]

Thanks again Larry, get those details painted!

Glad to have ya Phillip. Hope I can keep you interested.

Rich

[Pennman]

Hello fellow modelers,

I mentioned at the beginning that I haven't found many pictures when I began construction. Sorry about that.
Usually I save them to a flash drive when I am building something, but after checking for several days, they
are somewhere in cyberspace. Although most of you already know how to accomplish the feat well, it's still
nice to be able to show that aspect. But, I can't.

Here's the only picture I found that shows my main stone building walls after chomping them up. If you zoom in close,
you will see some cracks in the walls that occurred when I was cutting out the window openings. Not a big
deal, just glued them back together. I use white Elmer's Extreme Glue for that purpose. The Tite Bond wood glues leave a yellow stain in the cracks and the white is more forgiving and hardly shows at all.

After those cracks in my walls were mended, I glued a thin layer of cardstock on the interior of each of the walls. I used 110 LB cardstock for that purpose. I most often now use the cardstock on the interior of all of my plaster walls to give it some extra strength. Usually I put it in before any stripwood is applied before interior studs. Also, because it is already brown in color, I don't have to paint it. The best part is, if you use Cranston paper cardstock, it never shows a cut-edge being white, wherever a cut is made. You make a slice, and the edges are still brown in color. No painting needed to touch up any edges. Less warpage this way.

OK, here's two pictures showing my main stone building after gluing the walls together. In these pictures, they have a light coat of Neutral Grey Extra Dark Pan Pastel chalk (820.2), on them. I wasn't really happy with leaving that to be the final color. Plus the fact that the hydrocal walls were never sealed. There has been much talk on many forums about this subject, so we won't go into detail here about it. If these walls are to be handled a lot before final diorama placement, then I would highly recommend to use a fixative on them, or the chalk will rub off. So far, I haven't done anything to them other than a light coat of acrylic paint. I do plan on going back over these walls with some other shades of light to dark brown colors, (maybe paints, chalks, or a combination of both) and perhaps some grays to enhance the look of good, aged, well-worn stones. What that would be more apt to be found in my locale.
Till the next time...
Thanks for looking.

Rich

[Ensign]

Rich, well it looks like your already off to a great start!
I will also enjoy following along with you on this one.

Greg

[Larry C]

Rich very nice work and the color looks really good. I use 110# paper in my modeling also; it's nice to see others use it as well.