Junction Farm (BESTTrains kits)

[elwoodblues]

Dave,

The barn is looking great, looking forward to seeing the next picture with the shingles in place.

[deemery]

Underside of the roof under construction:

Yesterday I did the Bar Mills grey wood shingle strips.  i attached them using a glue stick.  This is something I learned from Bob Van Gelder's kit instructions.  Talking to Bob, he said "no problems with the glue stick failing over time."  After the strips are all installed, while the roof is still flat cardboard, I run a rubber roller over the roof to press down the shingles.  Then I flip the roof back over, and run a small line of liquid glue (I'm using Testors clear canopy glue equivalent) along the edges of the shingles.  This locks the shingles into position so they don't come loose later (particularly when trimming the shingles to the edge of the subroof.)

Then I started adding bracing.  The lower piece has a piece of wood cut to the gable shape, with 1/8" square glued to it.  Once the glue sets on the one side, I'll add the bracing strip (top) and glue the subroof to the other side of the bracing.  Then I'll add bracing running the other way on the roof.  When that's done, I'll trim off the shingles from each edge of the roof. 

I painted the edges of the cardboard subroof BEFORE trimming the shingles.  That way any slop was caught by the underside of the overhanging shingles.  Then using a -brand new- X-Acto #11 blade held at a shallow angle, I trimmed off the shingle edges.

Then I drybrushed 2 colors onto the Bar Mills shingles.  The first is 'Barnwood', which I drybrushed (using a bristle fan brush) in both directions.  This tones down the grey and adds a bit more texture.  Finally, I used a light yellow and drybrushed solely from the bottom to the top, to catch the edges of the shingles.  I also ran that along the sides of the shingles.


And on location:

The darker roof will look good against the forest green backdrop.  Now really what I should have there are open fields, particularly given my era (when forest cover was at its minimum.)  But you go with what you can get...  

Next up, the farm house. 

dave

[deemery]

There's still some details to add to the barn, but I opened the house kit.  This is interesting, the walls have 2 pieces, a wood subwall (laser-cut from basswood) and a wood outer wall (laser cut from clapboard siding.)  The first step is to laminate those two pieces of wall together (x 7 sides of wall all told.)  I brushed on diluted yellow carpenter glue, brushed onto both wall pieces.  Then I aligned them and put them under weights.  After about 30 minutes, I went back and double-checked alignment.  Once the glue is set, those walls are probably permanently aligned.  Tomorrow I'll double check everything, do a test fit, and then probably spray paint the walls white (outside) and dark grey/black (inside).  Then back under the weights for a day to cure.

dave