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Comments
The first Craftsman Structures Show featured Dave Revelia decorating figures in a continuous closeup clinic on the main stage. Joining him was the late Brian Nolan whose topics included tips on fine-scale modeling as well as decorating castings. In an adjoining clinic room, our leader Brett talked himself hoarse presenting how to prepare his unique and exquisite resin castings in standing room only sessions that went all day and infringed on the happy hour.
So that foundation of learning kept me busy note taking and photo taking for the entire show. Fortunately the skills they presented were recorded for posterity on the University section of this forum as well as many other internet threads and blogs. Photos of these three and also the late Kevin O'Neill and Karl Allison, who later joined Brett's entourage of stars pictured below;
Dave Revelia
Brian Nolan - Center Left
Brett Teaching - Right
Kevin O'Neill and his star pupils Bill and Donna Obenauf
Teacher of the century Kevin O'Neill
Karl Allison on the right making his point to Joel F.
So now we know how to decorate the castings we will take a look at how they were prepared. My sequence includes doing the resin castings first. Brett's castings need no cleaning or washing- and they smell so good! I separate them into piles- all the oil drums together, all the wood barrels together, etc. Then they are adhered to sticks before they are primed.
The sticks can be coffee stirrers you get from Starbucks when they are not looking- at those prices a few extra are included in the price of your skinny, de-caf, extra flavor shot of vanilla latte. Since I don't like Starbucks I get mine at the $ store, where you get a whole bag of craft sticks for, well, a $.
Lay several flat on your work surface-in my case the kitchen counter. Then apply a strip of double-sided carpet tape onto the sticks- but leave one inch not covered by the tape so you can hold on to one end of the stick while you spray paint the castings with rattle cans. After applying the tape turn them over and slice the individual sticks apart with your X-acto.
Peel the tape and put like castings together on the same stick. Larger castings go on bigger sticks like Popsicle sticks from a craft store (or $ store). Buy the spray paints in flat colors of light and dark gray, oxide red, black, khaki (tan), and Earth (dark brown).
I mask-up for sure, ventilate the area, and wear latex or plastic gloves and as my wife suggests, my oldest t-shirt or oldest sweatshirt. She wonders how I can paint incredibly tiny castings with 0000001 brushes but not be able to accurately aim a rattle-can with the priming coat.
You can buy it at several places- try cheapest. I used to get the cheapest possible like the $1 Wal-mart brand. For this I buy the top-shelf stuff like Rust-oleum Camouflage 2x-and you spray very lightly- you don't want to clog up the details like the wood graining on the castings. Krylon was a good brand but I don't see it any more.
In Minnesota I spray in the garage with the door open even in the coldest winter days.
When the virus started I already owned several N32 masks for rattle can spraying. I duck back in by the fire and 15 minutes later go back out to retrieve the castings and remember to close the garage door.
Brett recommends you detail one scene at a time and that works for me as I kind of hit the wall after doing 15-20 castings. Pick out the castings you need for the scene, and use your Dremel to drill a hole in the bottom of the circular ones like drums, barrels, cans etc. and put a pointed at both ends wooden toothpick in the holes. Stick the other pointed ends into a piece of scrap foam until you decorate them.
Twirling slowly the barrels as you stain them or carefully hold your brush steady while you rotate the barrel to color the tiny bands makes the job immensely easier and neater.
The boxes and larger castings are left on the craft sticks for much easier and neater decorating. For the decorating part you use the pastel chalks and alcohol or the thinner and usually more spendy craft or miniature paints. Brett's instructions are the best value in the kit price when it comes to this.
The way the wood in the kits is grained, detailed and stained, and the way castings are decorated have evolved over the years. If you are starting your modeling career with one of the older kits you'll be fine, but you may want to try a newer one for your second, and/or also study up and review the tutorials in the University section of this website.
The castings are the fun and creative part of the kit and you owe it to Brett and yourself as a toast to a job well done.
And finally- here is classic by the incredibly talented Kevin O'Neill:
Hopefully someday soon we can all be together again at least we know 2 of them will be there in spirit!!
Jerry
So the War Dept. has come up with I think a very good solution. Since we never have any family or other type of guest at our dining room table, why don't I just move my little work shop a few feet over to there. She said she can just imagine how much her side of the counter would shrink once the recently ordered O scale Blue Sky Warehouse gets here.
So I quickly agreed. I got a 4x8 sheet of 1/2" tan Gatorfoam from Gatorboard Dave Myers cut into four 42" x 72" pieces and taped two (and someday maybe three) pieces together with a strip of duck tape and put it on the table. Put some pieces of the black rubber mesh stuff you get at Home Despot that bars use for drying glasses the bartenders scrub in the sink.
The leftover Gatorfoam I use for all of my diorama bases and to tack the corners of structures on while I am building them. The black mesh I use for opening my few remaining bottles of Floquil Driftwood stain.
So here I am in my new digs. Note ballgame, fireplace and sleeping puppy in the background. My clean green cutting mat and my 12" square 3/4" thick plate glass paint and stain resistant work surface that is cleaned of dried paint in seconds with a single edge razor blade. Look fast as it will never been this clean again.
So castings are now prepared for decorating. After the primer was sprayed on, the circular barrels and drums had holes drilled in the top and a double-pointed round wooden toothpick inserted for easy painting of the metal bands that are on the wooden barrels and the round oil drums and containers that need multi-colors on them. The toothpicks cost about $1.19 at the most upscale high-end grocery store in town.
All of the other boxes and other big and little piece castings are left on the craft sticks for easy painting. I don't know what you guys use to hold the little drums and barrels steady when you drill the holes on top with your Dremel, but I use this wire cutter that has a circular smooth point grip at the end of the tool which won't mar the resin.
So this is all of just the resin castings. A slightly different process for the metal ones. I did all of these during about 6 innings of the baseball game.
My wife says I am probably one of the few people alive who makes a color chip chart of rattle-can sprayers of gray paint. Hey this may be one of my last HO builds so I will try to get the colors presentable. I have 8 different shades of grey and as you see some of them have been sitting around so long the pigment has all but disappeared. I'm OK with the basic color of the roof but it I will need to touch-up and apply some vertical streaks top to bottom. Also some blackish shadow lines along the battens.
Brett's tutelage of the use of and blending of pastel chalks is fun and effective going in any of several directions. Here are some primer colors and what I put over it. It will be a nice contrast to the reddish tones of the Pattern Shop roof.
I'm adding the vents and the newer square cupola vent or crucible that replaced one of the original three vents. You can see in the first photo it didn't take long to clutter up my clean new work space. I've also added some new toys and dusted off some old tools to help me along.
The next two are of building the crucible using the die-cut laser board which I really like working with. You can see I'm using old-fashioned clamps, squares, and weights.
During this time I have been chasing around our 3 month old puppy who is faster and smarter than I, and he will nip my ankles with his little shark teeth if I ignore him for too long building some silly to him model.
Yes Ed, angel eyes.
Two pics of the sander and all sides of the foundry building of the Brass and Iron Foundry. It is done except for a smoke stack and another detail or two and then build a crane. Then assemble the elements and began detailing with the already primed castings.
This was taken on my deck this afternoon and the colors check out here and also did on my layout a little while ago.
I've got a bad corner seam I'll have to hide with a vine or a giraffe.
liz did pull an all nighter.
quite a few people i know did. not me. i had 7 or 8 beers and by 12:30 i was practically snoring.
zoom kinda sucks. but...we could do a zoom meeting with brett and he could give us a tour of swsm base of operations...? what do you think?
I have been working quite a bit here, and writing some. My oldest son is here from LA, and since he is working from home he figured out he may as well work from his parents home in Minnesota for a few weeks. We'd like to see him move here permanently but my guess is that after a taste of a little winter weather he'll remember why he moved from here in the first place. Especially since he doesn't have to commute these days and can play golf every weekend in California.
So i've blackened the metal castings, dug up some paint I'll use, and as you can see in the first photo I'm ready to paint and chalk. The most important part of any painting project is getting ready to paint- and I'm ready. Detailing is a really fun part- the gravy or the cherry on top.
A few things have happened here. I've carefully measured and platted how this little diorama will fit on the layout and prepared the base accordingly. I pasted the buildings onto the 12"x12" tan gatorfoam and handlaid the standard gauge siding in the foreground. Then I layered in some dirt and gravel, ballasted the track, sprinkled in a couple of shades of turfgrass, a few weeds and wildflowers, a few rocks and a small bush or two.
I painted a few barrels and castings, bashed the barrels with a wire brush before they dried, dusted on some Rembrandt chalks, and planted them on the side of the office. Since the 12x12 base is a little smaller than the base Brett designed, and my base will drop into a slot on the layout, some of the castings and scenes will be extended once the diorama is placed on the layout. Note that there is a tiny bit of a narrow gauge siding behind the brick chimney at the back of the foundry complex. The foundry and the adjoining O'Neills will be on a 2x4 ft. peninsula and all four sides of both will be visible from less than a foot away so I'd better include some detail.
Here is the back of the diorama before any details. The HOn30 track is Crazy Track flextrack sprayed tan. I'll weather some ties and the viewing side of the rails painted and the whole thing mostly will be covered with dirt ballast.
The last two photos are of making some very cool details from the great laser die-cuts to represent the old discarded mold boxes and wheels.
I did a review of this kit that I believe will be in the next "Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette". Here is a sneak preview- I liked it.