Frederic Testard Critter Shed

[Bernd]

Up next is the clapboard siding on the lean-to.

I used the ROBO to cut out the clapboard. I used a heavy grade of craft paper. I forgot to take a picture of it. Somebody had mentioned it on the forum. I got it at Wally World. It's called Neenhah - creative Collection. It's 65lb paper. Mics out to be 3/4" thick in HO scale or .009" thick. I used a tan sheet and applied the transfer adhesive to the back. The adhesive is the lighter tan color.



It was taped to some chip board and that in turn was taped to the machines table. Here's the first pass, which didn't cut deep enough. Operator error for not setting the knife deep enough for one single cut.



Third pass with the cutter reset to cut .030" deep. Didn't realize how much flex was in the chip board and craft paper taped together.



And there we have it. 30 pieces of 3/4" thick HO scale clap boards.



No comes the fun part. Getting the strips lined up perfect on the model. I don't know which worked best. Drawing the lines on the building and then adding the strips or trying to measure each one 6 HO scale inches up. When I do this type of operation again I'm going have to figure out away to place the strips on the building better.



I measured as shown in the previous photo and then drew a pencil line.



Got a rough idea of how long a piece I needed and cut it to oversize length so it can be trimmed flush at the ends.



Here comes the funner part. Getting the backing of the transfer tape without getting it stuck to me. Tweezers work great for such small parts.



The next fun part was getting it lined up correctly before the adhesive grabed hold of a finger or the building.



And after a couple of hours of relaxed fun one wall is done. Two more to go. The last wall stays blank as it gets glued to the main building.



That's it for this post. Until next time.

Bernd

[deemery]

Troels Kirk would be proud of you for using paper that way.  It came out nice!

dave

[Bernd]

Troels Kirk would be proud of you for using paper that way.  It came out nice!

dave

Thanks Dave.

Moving right along.

I've got the plywood version all sheathed up and the windows cut out. Next time I'm going to cut out the windows as I apply the siding instead of after it's all installed. Much easier that way.

To finish off the other two walls of the lean-to on the plywood version I used a modelers  suggestion of affixing a paper templet of the spacing. I use 9" lines I drew up in CAD and then printer out on the laser printer. I did a quick test with some short pieces for spacing the clapboards.



Added the transfer adhesive to the back and stuck them to the wall after the first clap board was stuck to the wall. Much easier than trying to measure with a 12" long HO scale ruler.



Gave it the red acrylic thinned paint job. Amazing how the brown paper made the fire engine red look.







Windows still needed to be cut out at this point.





I cut out the windows and did a bit of weathering, sort of. I mixed up some "Wrought Iron" black which has a somewhat gray tint to it. Thinned it down to a wash and applied it. Don't look to bad. I'll have to dust it up when compete since it'll sit in a dusty part of the rock crusher complex.



Working on the Plexiglas version. Right now I need to cut out some more clap boards.



After the windows and one door got painted I started adding them to the building once they were dry.





I also started working on the roof. The small shed was to receive shingles, but the larger one I wanted to use standing seam metal panels. Well that led into researching the sizes and when they first started to use this type of roof material. I was at a point of coming up with a jig or fixture to make those roof panels. But I came to my senses and decided that I probably wouldn't get the project finished in time before the dead line of the build challenge. So I'm going with cedar shakes on both roofs.

I had purchased some Spanish Cedar Veneer from the Woodcraft store a while ago. The sheets are .010" thick, perfect for HO shingles. I used my ROBO router to cut the strips.



The finished strips. I cut three different widths of shingles. The sheet is 6.5" wide by 11" long. I separated the sheet into three sizes of shingle width, 5", 6" and 8". They are going to be 24" long. This is according to a spec sheet I found online. I did have a machine malfunction after about the first inch. So I had to start over. This caused the 5" shingles that had already been cut to be cut in half. Had I tried to set the machine to do that it would have never worked out. So the first inch the strips are about 2" HO scale width instead of 5" scale width. The cut lines are a little hard to see due to the grain of the wood.



Once separated into four piles they will be cut to a 24" HO scale length. The pile on the left are the 5" pieces cut in half. next to the right are the 5" scale width, next to the right are the 6" scale width and the next are the 8" scale width strips.



Here's a close up with an HO scale ruler to compare the pieces.



Next will be the roof getting shingled. That'll take a while.

Until then.

Bernd