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Comments
for one I'll be referring back to this concrete technique in the future.
Thanks again Bill.
Karl.A
The first thing I noticed recently was I built Quincy's barn backwards:
See how I've got the wall with 2 doors facing the street side of the diorama in Brett's version? That gave me an idea to set up the entire diorama as a mirror image of how it's been built following the directions. I'd also been considering making the scrap yard and junk car section a lot larger and adding another structure.
I mocked up a tentative layout:
In discussing this with Brett, we'd talked about maybe adding one of the buildings from the Railroad Camp or from Main Street. But the more I mulled it over, I kept fearing it would look out of place--like I robbed one building from kit A and plopped into the middle of kit B. The only conclusion was to scratch build or kitbash what I was envisioning.
So I ended up combining the Logging and Tractor Repair Shop:
with the Truck Repair Shop from Railroad Camp:
The result is a 3-bay service garage. I kept the roof line of the Tractor Repair Shop and enclosed the left side making that portion 2 more service stalls. So two shallow bays on the left; 1 larger taller bay on the right.
Next, I'll get into the treatment for the wood.
Respectfully,
John
Dave
The garage itself is framed out with 4x4's...nothing complicated. For the siding, I wanted to try something Dave Revelia talked about at CSS last fall. He had a nice method for giving boards a rough sawn look (that's how the boards would come straight from the mill after being run through a band saw. Little if any finishing). All the stripwood is lightly textured as usual with a wire brush. Then, each piece is scraped with a fresh straight edge razor. You hold the blade at 90 degree angle to the board and drag it with the grain. By squeezing the blade tightly and finding just the right angle, the blade will "skip" and vibrate as you scrape. To be blunt...it'll make a fart sound when it's positioned right! It needs to be done repeatedly on each board so that cut marks are close enough together. You're left with the rough, band saw cut marks that are pretty close to the look of rough sawn wood:
Here's a piece of 1:1 rough sawn wood:
This technique is probably a stretch for HO but I think I came close enough to be convincing. Again, it took me quite a few passes to get those cuts to appear really close together and random--which is key.
After texturing them, I used Silverwood stain followed by drybrushing with light browns, tans and gray acrylics.
With the initial texture and coloring done on the siding, I framed out the walls over the plan making certain to keep everything absolutely square. (One thing that I took for granted before was Brett's crisp templates! In drawing the walls out, the thickness of one or two pencil lines is enough to make a noticeable difference in wall height or overall squareness.) Not a huge deal, but another thing to be vigilant about.
The side and back walls required windows. I picked up a ton of castings from a show that came through town. One vendor was a hobby shop going out of business who marked down ALL his detail parts 50% or more. I snarfed up everything that looked usable (even the guys 'scrap box') and found tons of little bits and pieces for this project--including some windows. This was another reminder of "these didn't come from Sierra West"! Some of them (probably old Campbell windows) were beyond help...way too thick. Others needed some filing and sanding and were ready for the wall.
After framing these up, I boarded over just as I did on the front walls. Next up, a little more coloring and weathering.
1) the siding got a lot darker than I had hoped
2) I didn't color enough stripwood for all the walls (I'll explain that problem a bit later)
Here's an example of the wall color after laying up the boards:
I wanted it to be closer to the color of the little shed which will sit next to the garage:
After a little thought, I decided to lighten the walls up with some light tans and gray acrylics in several dry brush applications. I lightened them up but left it a bit darker than the shed. That would also illustrate an age difference between the two. Hopefully, you can see a difference in this shot but I've got some other better examples further down.
I again added water damage to the bottoms of the walls by applying burnt umber oil paint, then flooding the area with mineral spirits and dragging it up the boards:
Once the mineral spirits and oil dried completely, I was left with this...and I HATED it:
Rather than a water damaged appearance, I got some kind of messed up mud look. It looks nothing like the previous result I got with the same technique on the main barn... probably because I had done so much addition drybrushing with the acrylics that it wasn't soaking into the wood; just laying on the surface. The harsh line that formed needed to be softened up. I went back over the bottoms with clean mineral spirits which removed a bit of paint, thinned it out and blurred the line. Once everything dried, another round of drybrushing and I was right where I wanted to be:
Next up, windows!
Respectfully,
John
Dave
Dave
Thanks for the feedback. I post my mistakes because:
-I make plenty of them
-there are usual ways to correct them
-it's a reminder of what NOT to try on the next wall, roof, kit, etc.
I'm most pleased to read that I've inspired you to see through less than satisfactory results. Karl taught me that lesson back when I had the water fiasco on the Twin Mills (bet he remembers THAT call!) Mistakes are fixable.
Even if the wall looked good or "okay", it would bother me every time I look at it in the future. I think that's how all of us individually raise the bar. Honestly evaluate the work: does this look correct? Am I pleased with the result? Have I asked for help? Is this as good as I'm capable of?
If I answer "no" more than "yes", then I still have work to do.
(But don't forget...this is a hobby and we do this for fun!)
I'm going to try the mossy roof technique. Looks great.
thanks for sharing
DJ
Back on the first page of this thread I wrote about using them for windows. It was a lot of work simply because they're so fragile. To mark and score the glass, I had been holding them in place with low tack painter's tape. When it came time to remove the tape, the glass would usually crack (more times than not, in the wrong place).
I found a thread by Ken Hamilton who has a better, less frustrating way of working with the covers. He applies clear packing tape to one side of the glass and doesn't remove the tape at all. Here's a quick SBS he posted:
http://public.fotki.com/khamilton/models/model_how-to/real-glass--bullet-/p8210002.html#media
Ken suggests cutting the glass piece to size, then place it on the clear tape. Cutting the glass to size is the hardest part in my opinion, so I placed a full microscope cover on the tape first. I made sure to wear latex gloves and work on a perfectly clean surface. Any speck of dirt or dust on the glass will show as a huge bubble once the tape is laid down. Here, I've got 3 slip covers laid down on a piece of clear packing tape:
Then I marked the correct sized window with the carbide scoring tool, like this one:
http://www.generaltools.com/88CM--Carbide-Tip-Scriber-With-Magnet_p_50.html
With hardly any pressure, the glass will crack where scored. Next, I used an X-acto to cut through the clear tape and ended with a perfect piece. What's really cool (as Ken shows in that link) are the break effects and bullet holes you can create. I got a bit carried away with this one, but you get the idea:
A light dusting of chalk on the glass side (opposite the side with packing tape) can be added for a dirty window effect.
Respectfully,
John
There are days when I just want to take a very long break from modelling and there are days, like today, when I read posts like this that make me want to stop reading and start doing. You have set a standard in persistence and high quality modelling that we all have benefitted from.
Thanks for posting Bill.
Marty
Respectfully,
John
Let's see, I left off with the exterior walls and have moved on to the inside. On this garage, I want to have it fully detailed with vehicles, parts, repair areas and benches. Plus all the other "stuff" you might expect to find at an old service garage. The interior was sided with mostly 1x10's or 1x12's because that's what I had on hand. I only finished the bottom half of the walls leaving the studs exposed on the upper portion. It feels prototypical and also gives a little flexibility and interest to how things will be arranged on the walls.
I also wanted to point out the nail holes...
They're pretty subtle and hopefully you can see them. I finally came up with a solution to adding nail holes that I'm happy with. Pounce wheels have their place in some applications but are usually too square and out of scale to my eye. My free hand efforts with various pins and needles were sometimes good and often times so-so depending on how steady my hand was. I had an old set of drafting tools from a relative that included some very precise dividers. I can dial in the exact spacing appropriate for the size board I'm working on and then repeat that spacing over and over. Plus, unlike a plain old compass, the ends on these things are extremely fine:
There's a similar set on ebay right now for $10:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Charvoz-Mechanical-Drafting-Set-877-P-/301337769981?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item46292177fd
Search for "drafting set" or "drafting dividers". Just look close so that it has at least one pair with the needle at both points.
I also took a stab at scratch building some detail parts. Here's a little cabinet made from scrap stripwood:
Next up is a board for holding tools. I'm pretty sure peg board wasn't as popular back then as it is in shops today, so I made it from traditional lumber. Again, I used scrap material (various 1x or 2x). The tiny tools came from a vendor at the Finescale Expo. I positioned them on some blue painters tape and cut them from the sprue leaving them in order. Then they got some quick splashes of dark craft paint and a dusting of gray chalk.
After that, I cut out each tool "grouping" and peeled back the tape about half way so that I had a way to handle them and position them on the board.
After carefully applying a minimal amount of Canopy glue to the back of the tools, I placed them on the board and gently removed the remaining blue tape.
Then it was a matter of repeating the process with other similar tools, adding a little chalk here and there to show age and position the board on the wall.
More interior work next time. Sooner rather than later!
Bill
Dave
I love how the tools came out.
Love the rough sawn/ band saw marks on the exterior walls too- that is ALLOT of work. Great technique for the nail hole pairs - I have several compasses/ dividers but never though of this! The tool mounting technique is ingenious too. And I agree- one does see photos of shop walls partially clad on the interior to allow for hanging tools and parts… it does allow for greater flexibility with benches and such.