2025-2026 Winter Challenge - Feed Mill

[Philip]

  Epic!

[Michael Hohn]

Epic!

Thank you, Philip!

[Michael Hohn]

I've really gotten down to the details; after a break of about a week working on several fronts, it's time to post what I've been up to.

Let me talk about roofs.  In previous posts, I believe I've shown the extent of braching I use on the walls.  The same goes for the roofs.  I usually have heavy bracing between the end gables near the peak and near the walls. I don't rely on the thin sheetwood walls to provide good glue surfaces.  To the bracing and walls I glue the thin plywood subroof. Trim is added to the edges after it is stained and painted:



I measure the area of each section of roof, paint the faux metal roofing, and glue it down:



To be continued . . . .

[Michael Hohn]

This structure is to provide a switching location for covered grain hoppers on my layout.  It occurred to me that I could also spot boxcars on the same track if there were a door on the track side of the mill.  A little late for that realization, but I decided to forge ahead.  I drew the door outline:



cut the opening:



And installed a door:



Cutting the opening required many passes with the Xacto knife while holding the building on my legs, knees apart, opposite-side down.  I was very grateful for my habit of robust construction.

I took a break from the structure by completing work on the covered hopper.  I paint the trucks with a dark brown acrylic paint comprising a mix of burnt umber and black.  I do the frames and the wheels with the same mix.  Once dry, I brush on a dark gray-brown powder to cut the shine and look aged:



The body was weathered with the same acrylic muck to make the the rust steaks on the sides, followed by a general dusting of the same mixture of brown and gray powders used on the trucks:



Notice the horizontal rust streaks where the car side-swiped some object.

I have a few more details to do before I add the large awning on the front.

Mike

[deemery]

Something I now try to do with gable roofs is to use the gable end walls BEFORE they're assembled to draw and cut pieces of wood/styrene for triangular roof braces.  A pair of those glued to the subroof panels makes for a very strong roof that can be removed.  If I forget, I still use the gable wall ends to trace the triangle onto wood/styrene and cut that out. 

And a trick for cutting a door in an existing building:  I cut a piece of 1x4 to a bit less than the interior opening, then clamped that to the workbench so it sticks out.  I put the assembled building so the wall to be cut was over that 1x4, and cut the opening through the wall into that 1x4 as the support for the wall.

dave

[Michael Hohn]

Dave,

That's thinking ahead.

I didn't plan to make any roofs removable, especially with the interior almost invisible with the few windows and solid doors.  However, I used all those triangular scraps of sheetwood that you get when cutting out gables to provide additional bracing to some of the walls. Other pieces I used as jigs in my chopper to cut bracing at appropriate angles.  I have remarkably few scraps left over.

Mike

[Mark Dalrymple]

Nice progress, Mike.

Its looking really good.

Cheers, Mark.

[Michael Hohn]

Nice progress, Mike.

Its looking really good.

Cheers, Mark.

Thank you, Mark.