Junction Farm (BESTTrains kits)

[deemery]

Here's a mock-up.  The back 3 walls are assembled, and with that I can make sure the foundation is sized correctly and glue that together (tomorrow's project.)


That block of wood to the left is a bit of a stand-in for the house.

dave

[VagelK]

Great work, so far, Dave.

[deemery]

Now I really want the barn to sit properly on the foundation.  That means it should be either flush, or even better the walls should overhang the foundation a bit.  Given the location, i could get away with just fudging it to make sure the front and one side are OK. 

Three of the wood walls are assembled, the fourth is held in place with the clamps.  The foundation pieces are arranged with squares inside and outside to hold them square and in position.



The front looks pretty good.

Here's the visible side:

You can see there's some overhang at the back.  The question is whether I can redo the foundation to remove that.

Here's a look at the back.


And a look down the front.

Another concern I had was whether there'd be spacing between the foundation and the wall that dips down in front to add some bracing.  There's some warp on the wood siding piece, and I really should get bracing all the way down in front.  Good news is there's space there for bracing. 

So it looks like I need to remove about 1/16 from each side wall.  The walls have a flush edge against the front piece, and a dado on the back where the back wall fits.  I'll need to carefully remove that 1/16 from the edge here:

I'll need to do this on both side pieces.   I'll do that with my framing sander, I think. 

dave

[deemery]

Much better!


I'll need to add some filler in the back.  That's not a problem.  First I'll glue a spacer to align the back and sides.  Then after the 4 walls are assembled, I'll go back, fill the gap with plaster, and re carve the rocks.


Here's the framing sander, this is used for sanding the corners of picture frames.  It wasn't cheap, but it does a good job.   It's hand-powered.

If you ever see a framing shop going out of business, see if they have one you can get at a good price. 

This is it for today, I'll glue up the foundation tomorrow.

dave

[Larry C]

Dave great work getting things correct. Should be a nice addition to your layout when finished; have fun.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Coming on nicely Dave.

I agree, the weatherboard should be slightly proud of the stonework.  I assume a barn like this would have 6x2 or 8x2 framing.  It looks like there will be quite a bit of material to remove.

Cheers, Mark.

[friscomike]

Howdy Dave,

The barn is looking good.  I like the way you are mounting the wood on the stone.  I've seen a lot of similar barns on my travels up north.  Is the stone base going to be shades of grey?

Have fun,
mike

[deemery]

Howdy Dave,

The barn is looking good.  I like the way you are mounting the wood on the stone.  I've seen a lot of similar barns on my travels up north.  Is the stone base going to be shades of grey?

Have fun,
mike

Yeah, consistent with the other stonework on the layout (more-or-less granite....)

dave

[jbvb]

I had to do similar adjustments to Sylvan's resin "Barn With SIlos" kit.  I recall using sandpaper glued to a marble off-cut as a leveling tool.

[Pennman]

Dave,

I was unaware that this kit had a cast hydrocal foundation. It looks like a really nice kit and
your method of handling each segment looks great to me. It will be nice to see this in it final
location.

Rich

[PRR Modeler]

A lot of great modeling going on here.

[deemery]

I measured and sanded the foundation pieces to be slightly smaller than the structure.  Then I glued the foundation pieces together, face down (so where the wood fits should be flat.)

As my brother the carpenter said, "You can't be too rich, too strong, or have too many clamps."   Because the various bearing surfaces on the plaster pieces aren't perfectly square, the structure has a tendency to skew.  Hence the clamps and blocks to hold the beastie square all around.

The other thing I noticed last night was that a piece of trim (that sits at the top of the wood part of the front of the barn) was NOT parallel.  It was slightly tapered.  Of course, that means something wouldn't sit right.  So I cut a new piece, painted it, and glued it to the front clapboard siding.  (That's sitting under weights and clamps just off the bottom left of the photo.)  Later today I should be able to glue the front to the rest of the wood piece.  Then I'll have to be a bit careful, since the front hangs down.  Tomorrow, I'll remove the clamps and then epoxy 1/4" corner reinforcements to the 4 plaster foundation pieces.  I'll flip those over and sand the base flat on a full size piece of sandpaper glued to a tile. 

Making progress!

dave

[elwoodblues]

Dave,

That is a lot of progress.      While the plaster foundation was a lot of work to get it right it was worth it in the end as the barn sitting on it will look right.  

[deemery]

Here's the underside of the foundation.  I epoxied those 1/4" square corner blocks, then after the epoxy set, I ran this over a piece of sandpaper glued to a (stone) tile.  That makes sure the bottom is flush. 

I also glued the wood front to the rest of the structure.  So 2 steps with one photo.


Here's the alignment of the front wood on the foundation.  I'm expecting to do a bit of shimming to fit.  Once the front glue is set up, I'll remove the clamp and get a better perspective on the fit.


While this sets up, I think I'll add glazing to the styrene windows.  Then I'll address the door frames (2 doors) on the front.  I'll need to fill in the cracks on the plaster foundation, too.

I also wanted to check that the top of the foundation was flush.  So I used the old carpenter trick of adding pencil marks:

And then carefully/lightly sanding on the tile.  High spots lose the pencil marks, low spots retain the marks.  I don't want to remove too much since that will throw off the window openings, etc.  


Overall, this wasn't quite as flush as I expected, but it'll be OK and I can adjust the front and right side (the visible parts on the layout).

dave

[Mark Dalrymple]

You're making good progress, Dave.

Some of these kits seem to demand a lot of fudging around.  Fortunately, I have a very good recipe for fudge.

Cheers, Mark.