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Post by Christian on Jul 15, 2021 5:27:57 GMT -8
1. I’m Baaack - Miss Me?
Here we go with another rambling construction project. I’d intended to do the Walthers B&O SD50 followed by the Walthers ranch house in the near future, but got sidetracked by summer. And some A-Line containers. And some home repairs. And just wasn’t in a model building mood. Recently I was in Wellsville, NY for Grandson’s HS graduation. There is a very nice, small train store in that little town in the middle of nowhere. A Walthers Tillman Farm House fell right into my hands. It is a totally nondescript house that could be found almost anywhere in North America from the US Civil War up to, well, right now. I passed lots of similar houses on my trip. And grew up in Western Illinois with similar houses. Photograph one is a concept model snagged from the Walthers website. Photo two shows the kit’s contents. Note that the coloring is different from the box, website, and catalog. At the top left of the photo is the box cover, the sheet of clear plastic glazing and a paper sheet of printed curtains. Next are the five sprues of parts in three colors. Under the sprues and at the bottom is the instruction sheet which is very good. Much better than most Walthers instructions I’ve tried to figure out. Photograph three. Walthers current packaging seems to be in a limited number of box sizes with a printed sheet showing the contents. This printed sheet is not fastened to the box but is secured by the shrink wrap. All well and good until you’ve looked at the parts and put the box back into model marination. Then you have many bright blue and otherwise unmarked boxes. Just a comment. Not the end of the world! You’ll notice on the cover sheet of the box that this kit comes from Germany. It is clearly Faller in the way the parts fit together. More specifically the windows which are not like the Walthers kits produced in Denmark and China by Heljan or the Kibri kits from Germany. Kibri kits are the best of the bunch in terms of fit and finish. Faller is a close second. Heljan is all over the place, but that is another build thread in the future. There are three variations of this kit. The walls, windows, doors and main roof pieces are the same in all three. The difference is that the walls are rearranged to place the main entrance on different sides. The entrance porch is roofed and trimmed differently. The box contains the sprue that has the Faller Swedish House version porch roof, but not the Walthers Lancaster porch which is the one I would prefer. Photos four and five. Much more about porches later when we get to them. Lets cut some sprues! Yep. Starting right now on the model. Photograph six shows my despruing tools. Front an Olfa chisel. Next a tweezers flush cutter. Two larger flush cutters are next and a JLC saw next to the cutting mat. Essentially, choose the cutter that matches the gate size. But, don’t get too frisky cutting off parts. Long time readers know that I prefer to work walls even into the weathering stage while they are flat on the work bench. Painting on the sprue is another method I use and that’s what’s going to happen in the next episode. Maybe . . . Meanwhile I cut the foundation loose so that I could begin planning the site. Photo seven. There weren’t any sprue marks after using the JLC saw, but the sides of the molding were sunken a bit all the way around. I used a Vallejo sanding block to square it up, mostly. Also the bottom wasn’t even so it took a trip over a sheet of 300 grit paper. The site needs to contain the house, a garage, and sidewalks. Photograph eight shows the foundation with a stand in garage on a 9” X 12” canvas panel that I’m using for bases now days. I moved the pieces around and back and forth, but . . . Until next time --
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Post by lvrr325 on Jul 15, 2021 6:00:26 GMT -8
This is another example of long lived tooling. The kit predates Walthers by some years, I have one I about 80% built that was branded differently, the box was brown with the box photos showing an off-white house with green trim, and it was a European company but it's been so long (20+ years) I don't remember the name on it. It's a nice kit though.
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Post by Frank on Jul 15, 2021 6:05:35 GMT -8
Great start! I have also recently dove into building some Walthers house kits, starting with the split level house. I really, really wish they had made the rain gutters separate items. The ranch house kit does it right. With some extra detailing and paint the results are always great!
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Post by Christian on Jul 15, 2021 7:07:37 GMT -8
This is another example of long lived tooling. The kit predates Walthers by some years, I have one I about 80% built that was branded differently, the box was brown with the box photos showing an off-white house with green trim, and it was a European company but it's been so long (20+ years) I don't remember the name on it. It's a nice kit though. Probably Pola which was acquired by Faller some time ago. Lots of Walthers, Atlas, AHM/IHC, Model Power, and Tyco structures came from Pola.
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Post by jonklein611 on Jul 15, 2021 7:12:55 GMT -8
I really enjoy reading / watching these builds come to life.
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Post by NS4122 on Jul 15, 2021 8:30:24 GMT -8
But it isn't even built yet. Those are photos from ads. I'm sure his finished model will be a lot better looking.
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Post by schroed2 on Jul 15, 2021 8:54:00 GMT -8
This is another example of long lived tooling. The kit predates Walthers by some years, I have one I about 80% built that was branded differently, the box was brown with the box photos showing an off-white house with green trim, and it was a European company but it's been so long (20+ years) I don't remember the name on it. It's a nice kit though. Probably Pola which was acquired by Faller some time ago. Lots of Walthers, Atlas, AHM/IHC, Model Power, and Tyco structures came from Pola. brown box would fit with Faller from the 80ies onward. I also remember the kit from the Faller line... Pola would be blue or grey. edit: found one on ebay... www.ebay.com/itm/373636629568the box says "made in Western Germany", so that makes from before 1990...
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Post by lvrr325 on Jul 15, 2021 19:15:35 GMT -8
Faller may be it. It was given to me and I was shocked because it seemed like a more expensive kit.
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wictl
Junior Member
Posts: 75
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Post by wictl on Jul 16, 2021 4:17:58 GMT -8
The kit is indeed made by Faller. It was imported by Walthers many years ago under the Faller name as the "Farm House." It was not very successful in the US as many though that the house was a German prototype but in really patterned after a farm house in Wisconsin with the help of Walthers. Those kits were shelve huggers and I managed to get a few of those kits for $5 each. I am glad to see the kit back, with a few changes under the Walthers Name.
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Post by riogrande on Jul 16, 2021 4:32:13 GMT -8
It was not very successful in the US as many though that the house was a German prototype That house certainly does not look to be German. But those who haven't been to Germany might be easily misled?
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Post by Christian on Jul 16, 2021 8:10:49 GMT -8
2. Backtracking Already?
At this point in my previous two structure builds I spent a lot of time with prototypes and laying out the site. Not this time. There are a zillion prototypes, why even start research? And, I stopped working on the site plan after only a few minutes because I don't know where this surprise building will be used. I decided to just build the model. What a fresh idea! On To the Paint
Most Midwestern houses are white and always have been white. Often there is a trim color, but not necessarily. The street I grew up on in Illinois in the 50s had seven houses on my side of the street and four on the other. Plus three empty lots that had been barns and paddocks. One house was brick, one was pale yellow, and the rest were white. I looked on Google Street last night and all but one of the houses were still in use. The empty lots had new houses and there was a replacement house for the missing house. All but one house are still white. The one is a restoration of a small Queen Anne style house and is now in Victorian "painted lady" colors. That house belonged to Mrs. Saxer when I was growing up and was pale yellow with white trim. Black sashes and porch trim were repainted by me a couple times in the fifties. Fifty cents for a dozen windows was good money for a kid. Plus Mrs. Saxer made the second best oatmeal cookies. In a small rural town in the fifties second best cookies was a big deal to a kid! (Yellow raisins were her secret.) And so I’m naming this the Saxer House. Walthers name for the model is fine, but “Tillman” was not a name local to me. You could just hit the Walthers off-white parts with a matte spray and be done with coloring this model. But I’ve made a lot of white houses. I had “accidentally” purchased a bottle of AK Interactive 3rd Generation Pale Yellow paint and it was screaming to be used. And so I did. I decided to brush paint this model. You could easily rattle can everything. Or fire up the airbrush. Photograph one. I use Polly S ( Floquil) Plastic-Prep on my plastic parts after a dip and warm soapy water. This takes off the soap residue and kills off the static for a while. This became Testors for a bit and then disappeared. An alcohol wash would be fine. I brush painted the walls with Pale Yellow without a primer. What? No Stynylrez primer! It was a new bottle so I added a mixing ball to the bottle. I use 3mm hematite balls because I had a bottle of clear varnish discolored with stainless steel balls. I picked up the idea of hematite balls from a military model building source. Photo two. Photograph three. I used a #10 flat brush for the paint. No problem with one coat coverage. I wasn’t so lucky on the backs of the walls. I used Mission Models Rail Tie Brown to back-paint. I back-paint to cut down of the translucent/waxy look of plastic. Photo four. In fairness to Mission, the paint is intended for airbrush use. I used AKI 3rd Gen Smoky Black to finish the back-painting. Photograph five. Photo six sorta shows the difference between the back-paint walls at the bottom and the bare back walls at the top. I used the same black on the window sashes and doors. After painting two of them I looked longingly at my airbrush. I added a bit of Vallejo Airbrush Flow Improver and a couple drops of AKI 3rd Gen Sooty Black ink and that made the paint work better with my brush. Photograph seven. The window and door trim I left in the off white that Walthers provides. I will, maybe, do a quick coat of AKI Ultra Matte Varnish on these parts to tone down the plastic feel. (EDIT: I did just that.) Next up, I think, gluing some bits together.
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Post by sd40dash2 on Jul 16, 2021 9:36:05 GMT -8
Thank you for starting this thread. At this point I am most curious about how you plan to handle the foundation. Many structure models I've seen fail to properly model this element both in terms of detailing and proper incorporation to the ground on the layout (if applicable). I have full faith that you'll do it right and will be following this project with interest.
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Post by Christian on Jul 16, 2021 11:46:04 GMT -8
Thank you for starting this thread. At this point I am most curious about how you plan to handle the foundation. Many structure models I've seen fail to properly model this element both in terms of detailing and proper incorporation to the ground on the layout (if applicable). I have full faith that you'll do it right and will be following this project with interest. The concrete foundation that comes with the house is fairly common. Including the aged concrete color. But where I'm modeling this house would likely have a sandstone foundation or a foundation built up from cast concrete blocks that imitated cut stone. Both were available locally. I'm using the concrete imitation stone blocks. I'm also making the foundation a bit higher and planning to cut in cellar windows. I'm building quite a ways ahead of the postings and am actually likely to do the foundation today or tomorrow. Photo one, concrete Photo two, sandstone block Photo three, cast cement block
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Post by Christian on Jul 18, 2021 10:37:44 GMT -8
3. Open and Closed?
The windows and doors are assembled while the walls are flat. I mostly followed the instructions. The written text is accurate although the illustrations for the door walls are flipped. The numbering system might make sense to someone. But that someone isn’t me. The numbers on the sprues have to work with all three versions of the kit. The numbers are on the sprues and in the text so I muddled though just fine. First photograph. The walls needed a bit of cleaning from aggressive paint slopping. The tools are what I anticipated using. I didn’t use them. This resin based paint is tough after only one day so I ended up slicing off the ridges with a curved Olfa blade. Photo two. Don’t get frisky cleaning the door and window openings. The casements fit inside and are sloppy at best. Observant readers will notice that the walls are much paler than in the previous installment. Since I’m banking ahead chapters on this build you aren’t going to have to suffer through reading about most of my mistakes and changes. I thought that the original pale yellow was too bright. My initial instinct was to work it over with some dull yellow pigments and also add a bit of aging. It didn’t end well. I washed off the pigments and decided to lighten the paint. I put ten drops of AK Interactive 3rd Generation Intense White into my mixing cup and started dripping in the pale yellow until it went past cream and was very pale yellow. It ended up ten drops of white and twenty drops of pale yellow. When mixing color always start the lightest color and slowly add the darker. The other way around will almost always result in a heck of a lot of paint. I thought that the yellow had a bit of a green twinge so I added one drop of flesh color. The dropper bottles used by most of the military paint makers make repeating mixes really easy. Photograph three shows the parts laid out for one wall. Left are the casements. These fit INSIDE the openings and are actually flush with the wall surface. I let it go, but the next time I do a Faller/Walthers building I will add 0.010” strips behind the casings to bring them proud of the walls. Next are the black sash assemblies. Acetate “glass” is next on the backing tissue. Following are bits of black 0.010” styrene with an olive paint that seems window shady to me. Black so that I wouldn’t have to color the edges. Finally the curtains. Walthers furnishes a sheet of curtains which are mostly blue – the bottom pair. Never say “never,” but matching drapes throughout a house doesn’t seem realistic too me so I dug out some curtains that I had printed out a while back for another project. Since it’s daytime in my little world I made most of the drapes open. I cut them roughly up the middle and colored the edges with Tombow alcohol markers. Following are photographs of the steps in the assembly. Photo four is the back side with the sashes being cemented. Photograph five is the front of the same step. Photo six shows the casements in place. I used dabs of Tamiya Cement. The Scalecoat Probond would have stained. These casements did not fit snugly. I would have much preferred the tried and true overlap of the siding with a trim board. Photograph seven. Walthers includes a sheet of 0.007” acetate for the glazing. It’s better than the thick cast pieces of sorta clear styrene used in Walthers Heljan kits. But cutting acetate is always problematic. It doesn’t score and snap worth a darn. Cutting though with a knife leaves a ridge and a “sparkly” edge. I use a paper cutter and scissors. Fortunately, these cut pieces can be pretty sloppy. I sure wish Walthers would use acrylic, polycarbonate, or PEP plastic. All cut and glue better than acetate. Do not get CA anywhere near acetate. It fogs. Photo eight is from the back and show the acetate glazing secured with dabs of Microscale Micro Kristal Klear. Canopy glue, Weldbond, Aleene's – lots of choices. The important thing is to walk away until the cement has set. Photograph nine shows the blinds in place. I pretty much randomized the heights. Mom would have not been pleased with that! Photo ten shows the completed wall with glass, blinds, and drapes. Six more walls to go! In the Midwest where I am modeling the windows and doors would all be covered with framed screening in the summer and storm windows and storm doors in the winter. I haven't found a good screening solution and I’ve tried lots through the years. Storm windows would also be a pain in that they were sheets of glass with a minimal frame that hung from hooks inside the casements. Somehow it became my job to take down the storm windows and put up the screens each spring. And the reverse in the fall. Whichever were down were cleaned and painted shiny green enamel each season. Since they were our windows no money changed hands. But there were plenty of cookies. Mom’s oatmeal didn’t make the top ten, but there were lots of them! And sugar cookies, sour milk cookies, and snickerdoodles and well, you get the idea. In my circa 1985 modeling era the windows would likely been replaced and central air conditioning along with gas or oil heating and blown-in insulation would have modernized the climate control. When built, a town version would likely have had a coal monster lurking in the cellar. In the country, wood stoves would have been in several rooms. This model will need more chimneys if you are modeling a country location before much before the seventies. My in-laws lived in a country house similar to this model. Three wood stoves. They put in indoor plumbing for our wedding in 1970.
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Post by tankcarsrule on Jul 19, 2021 16:56:04 GMT -8
Is it OK to say it looks good? Last time I was given twenty lashes! I like the research and planning you've put into this project! That's my favorite part of scratchbuilding and kit bashing.
Regards, Robert R Pitts Sr
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Post by Christian on Jul 20, 2021 1:41:11 GMT -8
Is it OK to say it looks good? It's OK. And thanks. No whips will be drawn for the comment! There won't be anything groundbreaking in this build. Not quite out of the box, but things happening down the road will be pretty conventional. My earlier builds were pretty much day by day. This time I'm several chapters ahead of what I am posting. Research on this is simple. Anyone in their seventies just has to Google their own memories!
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Post by Christian on Jul 20, 2021 5:50:54 GMT -8
4. Raising the Walls
The walls ended up taking a while because a. They were boring, and, b. I was bugged by the porches and porch roofs and trying to come up with a solution. I let ten days pass while I got all the walls finished to the point of assembly. Photograph one. Actually putting the house together took a bit more than a half hour including stopping to take photos. I sorta followed the instructions. Walthers has you cementing the walls one by one to the foundation and then to each other. I didn’t have enough hands to hold two walls, a foundation, and a cement applicator to get the first walls and foundation together. I fitted the first corner off the foundation – photo two – using Tamiya Cement which is a bit slow and let me get a square into the action as well as letting me finger clamp the corner joint. Then I cemented the wall corner to the foundation with drops of Scalecoat Probond. Photographs three and four. I continued with the back walls. Photograph five. Because of the way the short blank wall fits in the front I next cemented the final to peaked walls in place. Neither were secured to the foundation at the point to allow a bit of wiggle. Photo six. Photograph seven finishes the shell. Here’s my problem with the porches – front and back. The back porch on a farm house is for mud. Clothes, boots, wash water. On a farm house the front porch is for preachers and in-laws. No reason to be fancy for those folks! A house in town, on the other hand, uses porches differently. The back porch is for family activities. Mud, picnics, and storage that doesn’t go in other out buildings. A kitchen porch might also have the garbage cans, an icebox for deliveries, the sauerkraut crock, and the dog dishes. Before WWI the front porch was “social media.” The build of the porch announced that the folks within were solid. A swing and other sitting places were available for talking with the neighbors. Halloweeners gathered to wait for candy. The REA man left packages. Two mail deliveries every day. Morning and evening newspaper deliveries. The front porch was really where the family interfaced with the world. The two Walthers and the Faller version of this kit mainly differ in wall arrangement and porch details. The Faller Swedish House and the Walthers Lancaster house are older kits and the “front” porch was what is on the Tillman house the back porch. Vice versa. This leaves the Tillman house “front” porch short in length and with a simple roof. Suitable for the country, but not for the town. The Tillman “back” porch is long enough, but narrow and has no roof. To make a too long story shorter, the kit does not have the parts that I feel are needed for the porches. I’ve got the railings and spool-work and the kit has enough of the turned posts. The roof is the problem. There is not enough roof material to cobble up a satisfactory roof. And I don’t have matching roof material in my pile of parts. Nor is there available commercial plastic asphalt roof sheet that would work with the existing kit materials. Stay tuned.
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Post by sd40dash2 on Jul 20, 2021 6:12:24 GMT -8
... The back porch on a farm house is for mud. Clothes, boots, wash water. On a farm house the front porch is for preachers and in-laws. No reason to be fancy for those folks! A house in town, on the other hand, uses porches differently. The back porch is for family activities. Mud, picnics, and storage that doesn’t go in other out buildings. A kitchen porch might also have the garbage cans, an icebox for deliveries, the sauerkraut crock, and the dog dishes. Before WWI the front porch was “social media.” The build of the porch announced that the folks within were solid. A swing and other sitting places were available for talking with the neighbors. Halloweeners gathered to wait for candy. The REA man left packages. Two mail deliveries every day. Morning and evening newspaper deliveries. The front porch was really where the family interfaced with the world. Thanks for this -- very interesting! P.S. You forgot the milk bottle deliveries and place where the kids waited in summer for the ice cream truck.
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Post by lvrr325 on Jul 20, 2021 6:51:17 GMT -8
I do recall from building the kit I had being rather impressed with how well it fit together, it was a very easy build if you were satisfied with it as it comes out of the box. I had no real plan for use either at the time.
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Post by Christian on Jul 20, 2021 7:34:12 GMT -8
I do recall from building the kit I had being rather impressed with how well it fit together, it was a very easy build if you were satisfied with it as it comes out of the box. I had no real plan for use either at the time. If you accept Walthers design and colors than I think all you need to put the kit together is a knife, an emory board and a tube of Testors cement. The instructions are very, very good. The parts all fit well. I think this kit could be put together during a football game. But, heck, what's the fun in that?
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Post by stevewagner on Jul 20, 2021 7:34:59 GMT -8
The following isn't relevant to the kit Christian is building so well. Instead it's a comment on front and back porches of the mostly brick row houses that were for many decades the most prevalent type of residences in many older sections of Philadelphia. In many cases each of the attached houses had a very small garage under the house's first floor reached by a driveway back of the house along with a small yard and back steps to a pantry or kitchen. A driveway or unnamed alley back of the houses parallel to the street in front of then gave access for horse-drawn milk wagons and later trucks, and if I remembering right, the milkman left milk and other products next to our pantry door. On the other hand, a neighbor on our block who still used a coal furnace rather than having switched to an oil burner for heating his house received delivery from a truck on the street via a chute that extended through a low window in his basement above his coal bin. This was in an older section of Frankford one block inland from Torresdale Avenue; the Pennsy's New York Division was about a block farther toward the Delaware River from Torresdale Avenue.
My third set of "grandparents" -- our family was complex -- lived in Feltonville, a neighborhood just a little east from Front Street. Behind the row houses on their block was a rectangular driveway with vacant land in the middle. My "Otata" used scrap wood to fence off what he figured was his portion of that, grew some vegetable there, and built a smokehouse, again using scrap materials, for preserving home made sausage and city pigeons that he killed with a slingshot. We usually entered the house using the outside stairs to the pantry. Those were the only wooden part of the house. Building houses with wooden walls had been outlawed within Philadelphia's city limits -- all of the other municipalities in Philadelphia County had been merged into the city in the mid-nineteenth century -- had been made illegal years before these houses were built.
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Post by Christian on Jul 22, 2021 14:17:39 GMT -8
5. Before the game is afoot thou still let’st slip Northumberland to Henry Hotspur who was getting anxious about the coming battle.
I desprued the Walthers roof parts and did a dry assembly using the removable double sided tape I’ve referenced in all three of my earlier builds. The parts fit fine and the roof works well if you are willing to do things Walthers way. Photograph one. I feel that the edge of the roof is a bit thick and also that the eves are a bit too wide. I’m going to replace all the roofs. I spent a day with research. Yep – “research” rears it’s ugly head. Metal roofs were and are very common on this sort of small, cheap house. A roof replacement by my 1980s era would have been likely. Shakes were popular for renovations until fire insurance increases put a stop to that fad. And so many/most of these renovations were metal. There are lots of types of metal roofs. Photos two, three, and four are prototype examples of older roofs. Photograph five is a detail shot of a contemporary standing seam roof. Standing seam is a bit tedious to model and not available RTR. Metal batten roofs and closed seam metal roofs are also common and those roofs and parts are available. There used to be a lot of suppliers of HO scale metal roofing, but most seen to have disappeared. A true standing seam roof like in photograph five has only been available from Evergreen Scale Models and appears to be out of stock although still listed on the Evergreen site. I used my package long ago on another project. (Or filed it away somewhere!) The Evergreen kit consists of a sheet of grooved styrene and a bundle of skinny styrene strips to cement into those grooves. I experimented with materials I had on hand and then ordered Evergreen V-groove sheet and a mess of 0.015” X 0.030” strips. As a safety I also ordered a sheet of board and batten siding which could be repurposed into roofing is gluing all those strips into grooves gets too tedious. Until that gets here next week I’m putting this house aside. Until then,
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Post by valenciajim on Jul 22, 2021 16:51:14 GMT -8
Are you planning on making the model appear distressed like the prototype pictures you posted?
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Post by Christian on Jul 22, 2021 17:06:30 GMT -8
Are you planning on making the model appear distressed like the prototype pictures you posted? No. I've got enough distressed buildings. I need some tidy houses. This one will get a bit of wear and some dings. But nothing to call in the carpenters and painters. This sort of house often has great bones. You can drive through older areas in any part of the country and see zillions of houses of this nature that are well over a hundred years old and set for another hundred.
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Post by lars on Jul 22, 2021 18:56:11 GMT -8
Are you planning on making the model appear distressed like the prototype pictures you posted? No. I've got enough distressed buildings. I need some tidy houses. This one will get a bit of wear and some dings. But nothing to call in the carpenters and painters. This sort of house often has great bones. You can drive through older areas in any part of the country and see zillions of houses of this nature that are well over a hundred years old and set for another hundred. Of course there's not a square corner or level floor to be found in those old houses. And if they're balloon construction they'll survive all of 30 seconds in a fire, too. Have been enjoying the build though, as well as the history lesson on the kit.
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Post by Christian on Jul 24, 2021 11:27:17 GMT -8
6. Moving From the Top to the Bottom
While I wait for roof parts I moved to the foundation. In the part of the Midwest I’m am modeling there are a variety of foundation materials. Most are sourced locally. I’m assuming that this house was built at the end of the 19th century. Portland cement for concrete was certainly available, but had to be shipped in. Brick, sandstone, limestone, rubble, and brick were local and most likely to have been used. Photograph one shows a house with a concrete foundation. The Walthers kit is ready to go with some staining and dulling spray. I’m guessing that the foundation in the photograph is actually a coat of concrete over some other sort of block or brick. Photo two shows sandstone. In my area this was orange and yellow. Sandstone is easy for masons to cut and trim and was available from local quarries. Photograph three shows concrete blocks cast in molds to imitate cut stone. Although the cement for the concrete had to be shipped in, these were made locally at the brick plant. That’s what I’m going to use. If this was a country house, rubble or sandstone would have been far more likely. The first step was to undo the construction from chapter four. Since I am going to laminate blocks onto the foundation I need to thin the foundation walls so that the finished foundation is set back from the wall face. I figured that taking the foundation off the shell would make that thinning job easier. Photo four. I sliced below the walls with a single edged razor blade and gently pried the shell loose. After I cleaned up the glue marks I began filing and sanding the foundation walls thinner. Photograph five. This was not a lot of fun, but I got ‘er done. I removed enough wall that the ledge that the shell fits into was about 0.020.” (The next day I found that I hadn’t done a good job keeping the walls vertical. Oppsy.) Photo six shows the walls I had to thin. The rest is covered by the front and back porches and the lack of wall overhang won’t be noticed. Blocks are next. See you then!
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Post by alexandrianick on Jul 24, 2021 21:33:50 GMT -8
I did the metal roof thing when I built this kit for one of my modules. I discarded the original roof parts, as I thought the roof would be too thick. Instead, I retained the soffit pieces and laminated thinner sheet stock to the standing seam material before mounting it on the soffit parts.
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Post by Christian on Jul 25, 2021 1:31:00 GMT -8
I did the metal roof thing when I built this kit for one of my modules. Super duper build. This kit has the bones for all sorts of possibilities. I was curious about building a wrap-around porch. I don't think I'll do that. But changing my mind happens right up to the end! As for the roof - I'd considered using the roof pieces under my laminated roof. I never thought about just using the soffit pieces. I'm thinking about it now! I have the Tichy snowbirds on hand and your photo clinches using them. Thanks for this post - I need to kick butt and get er done!
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Post by alexandrianick on Jul 25, 2021 20:39:25 GMT -8
As I recall, the soffit fits into a recessed area in the roof pieces. I made rectangles of 0.060 styrene that would fit into the inside of the soffit. With these on the back of (I think) 0.030 styrene the size of the roof pieces, I'd effectively duplicated the stock roof pieces. Then the metal roofing went on. It worked well.
I built this kit for a module and everything was to my wife's specifications. The wraparound porch was a bear. That's actually porch #2. The only thing I would have done differently is the porch swing. It was done to some plans I found online and the lumber is the right size, but looks bulky even if it is to scale.
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Post by Christian on Jul 26, 2021 10:43:20 GMT -8
7. Chipping Off the Old Blocks
The block material that I used for the foundation came from The N Scale Architect. Don’t be deceived by the name. TNSA has furnishing materials and kits in N scale, HO scale and some Z scale. Notable are the tower kits for several eastern railroads. The building sheets are available in several scales from 1/12 to Z. The biggest selection is in HO. They appear pricey, but the sheets are very large and come two in a package. Photograph one. The bricks come in American, British and Fleming bond patterns. There are also sheets of curved brick. The missing material is asphalt roof shingles. Phooey. The sheets are embossed and/or molded 0.020” styrene. They cut and glue like styrene. Be aware: these are actually Slater’s Plastikard 4mm sheets so the bricks, blocks, and so forth are a bit large for HO. The scale discrepancy is a lot less noticeable than the Holgate and Reynolds 1/8” scale vinyl material that was the hobby mainstay for decades. I used scissors to cut a strip from the larger sheet. Then I used a knife to cut enough three block high pieces for the foundation. Photo two. I used Frog Painter’s Tape to secure both the block sheet and the ruler while I made the long cut. Photograph three is a close up of the block strip. It does look strange if you are a little bitty HO Scale reader with little bitty HO scale eyes, but paints up fine. Photo four. The foundation needed to be taller. Long time readers know that I hate cutting thick styrene. So I used EVA foam to add the additional height. This is my gluing set up. The tooth pick was to blot the nozzle, but I found it to be a better applicator in this instance than the needle that I usually use. Photograph five. I used the tooth pick to smear CA along the foundation EVA join. That’s it for now.
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