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Post by valenciajim on Jul 26, 2021 17:23:04 GMT -8
You are really inspiring me to get one of these kits and make a distressed model out of it. Yours is wonderful and I am truly impressed with the detail and craftsmanship. However, I have an open area on the top deck of my layout that will have a Campbell abandoned house, and a distressed version of this house, as shown in your prototype photos would go well with it.
Thanks for another great thread!
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Post by sd40dash2 on Jul 26, 2021 18:57:52 GMT -8
Not a lot of comments and likes in this thread but the view count is in the thousands, so lots of lurkers and maybe google searchers hitting the thread. Nice work and very nice to see all the different tools and products being used to solve various modelling challenges. It is never easy and straightforward if you want quality output as Christian does. Great job, keep it up and thanks for sharing with us and keeping yourself distanced from others at the same time.
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Post by Christian on Jul 28, 2021 5:21:23 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'm starting that later this morning. I'll use a similar approach with the soffit pieces and triangles. But I need to make my roof removable for reasons I'll get to in chapter 12. (I'm working ahead of the posts - I learned my lessons) The toughest of all building inspectors!
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Post by Christian on Jul 28, 2021 5:30:42 GMT -8
You are really inspiring me to get one of these kits and make a distressed model out of it. I keep looking at this picture which I posted a few chapters back. Toss the Walthers foundation and set the house on miss-matched piers. The porch roof can be easily sagged. The porch pillars are replacement fiberglass pillars from a home improvement store which can be simulated with Tichy parts or with fancy cocktail picks. The rest is paint and scenery. The home store metal railing on the steps is a neat touch.
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Post by Christian on Jul 28, 2021 5:37:59 GMT -8
Not a lot of comments and likes in this thread but the view count is in the thousands I keep track of the count and now that I'm stockpiling chapters I can respond more quickly to a drop of attention. The view counts per chapter are running about the same as for the Taco Bell. Considering it's summer and way too many things are demanding attention I think that's pretty good. [CUE X-FILES THEME]
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Post by Christian on Jul 28, 2021 5:52:45 GMT -8
8. Lovely Rita, Mitre Maid
Back in “The Good Olde Days” a construction article in Model Railroader would say, “Cut and fit the concrete block strips to the foundation and then paint with Floquil gray.” The beginner’s magazine Model Trains would say “Cut and fit the vinyl block strips to the basswood foundation with Walthers Goo and paint with Floquil Lark Gray.” In both cases the model builder would know exactly what to do. Times have changed and now these are the “Good Olde Days” again. Most folks now in the hobby have grown up without having to build an addition to their parents house. Or replaced their piston rings. Or walked 35 miles up hill to school in a sleet storm carrying an anvil and wearing mittens Mom knitted yesterday while she slaughtered a cow. In other words, some basics aren’t being covered. The strips are cut oversize, on a block joint line using a square. The strips are numbered as is the foundation. Photograph one. The joint that will be most visible on the finished model is the left corner of the front wall. It will need to be mitered. The butt joints under the porches won’t be at all visible. Leaving two visible butt joints that will be needing to be trimmed and carved. I realized way too late that one of these joints could have been mitered. I figured out how I wanted the joints to be oriented so that I could cut-to-fit all the pieces. Photograph five is the finished foundation from the worm’s view and shows these joints. Photo two. I cemented the strips that will be under the porches with Tamiya. Since the ends which are to be trimmed aren’t visible I didn’t make any effort to match the blocks. Photograph three is my set-up to sand the butt ends square after clipped them close with flush cutters. Don’t go back and forth because that will pull the strips loose. Just one way, release, position and again. Just the same as you do with a file. Press on the cut stroke release on the back stroke. Once these four hidden joints are squared proceed to add the strips moving around the foundation so that only one end needs to be trimmed. The visible corner is mitered with a sanding block and I took care to match the half and whole blocks on this corner. On all the other corners the lengths will not fall on whole blocks so I did do the match, but I know that it won’t really make much difference. Photo four. Photograph five is the underside of the untrimmed pieces showing the joints. All the joints had Scalecoat Probond added and then pressed against a square so that there wouldn’t be any gaps. At this point I walked away so that all the solvents could come out of the cements before I started messing with it. Next, carving and painting. Maybe. . .
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Post by sd40dash2 on Jul 28, 2021 6:30:45 GMT -8
Times have changed and now these are the “Good Olde Days” again. Most folks now in the hobby have grown up without having to build an addition to their parents house. Or replaced their piston rings. Or walked 35 miles up hill to school in a sleet storm carrying an anvil and wearing mittens Mom knitted yesterday while she slaughtered a cow. In other words, some basics aren’t being covered. LOL
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Post by riogrande on Jul 28, 2021 6:58:38 GMT -8
I think it was school books my parents carried when walking mails in snow drifts to school in Iowa about 45 min south of Des Moines back in the late 1930's and early 40's. My Grandma used to knit us stuff when we were kids - in the tiny Iowa town of Lorimar.
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Post by Christian on Jul 31, 2021 7:07:03 GMT -8
9. Yep. Carving and Painting.
The visible butt joints need to be carved until they disappear. This proved to be easier than blending out joints in brick materials. Photograph one shows my setup to do this. In reality, all of the carving and scraping was done with the Hasegawa chisel. The “V” block is really old. It is cut from a scrap of beech. It lets me position the part firmly and close to where I intend to carve and sand. I primed the blocks with Badger STYNYLREZ* Gray Primer which is fairly dark – photo two. Too dark. I went over it with Mission Models Transparent Dust. Photograph three. Photo four – I dragged Vallejo Model Air Middle Stone from the bottom up to get that tanish look old concrete sometimes develops. Then I dragged Vallejo Model Air Concrete from the top down. Photograph five. A coat of AK Interactive Ultra Matte Varnish deadened the acrylics and resulted in a concrete block foundation. Photo six. Another way to do the paint is to brush on a coat of Polly Scale Aged Concrete and be done with it! Meanwhile, the roof parts came and I have a game plan. But, I’m going to finish the foundation. Except I’m waiting for parts for the basement windows. Always something! * STYNYLREZ all caps – is short for styrene/vinyl/resin. I called Badger on another matter and remembered to ask.
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Post by Christian on Aug 5, 2021 4:36:30 GMT -8
10. Basements and Cellars
Hobbies take place in the cellar and smell of airplane glue. ----John Updike Sorry about the haphazard posts. The weather here decided to be great for a few days. A book and an iced tea on the deck beats the heck out of scraping styrene! What is under a house like the one we are building varies from country to town to city. A “basement” is a floor of the building above. Sometimes finished and used for living and recreation. Sometimes used for a model railroad. Sometimes not finished and used for storage. A “cellar” is less than the size of the house above and often unfinished ‒ dirt floor and dirt walls below the foundation. Basements are not common in country houses of this vintage. If more room is needed, just build on to the end or back. There is plenty of space on the land. Basements are common in town versions of this house. Cellars are very important in the country. Back in the day refrigeration was based on blocks of ice and something to hold the ice blocks. The summer produce needed to be stored for winter use. A cool/cold cellar was ideal. Roots (potatoes, carrots, and so forth) were shelved in baskets. Beans, tomatoes, peas, and so forth were canned and shelved. Then there was jam, jelly, preserves, sauerkraut, and many other goodies. Apples, on the other hand were stored in an out building so that the apple gas didn’t over ripen the rest of the produce. The house in the small town that raised me happened to have both a basement under the main house and a cellar under an addition. A “storm cellar” was a different beast. It was commonly placed a bit away from the house so that if the house collapsed the family wouldn’t be trapped. These were found in both town and country. This cellar often was also used for additional food storage. In a small town a basement of this sized house usually was occupied by the coal furnace and the coal pile or a stoker with a stoker coal bin. The youngest child had the onerous task of maintaining the fire, hauling the ashes out to the back for dumping, breaking up the large lumps of coal, and generally banging on the pipes to indicate the child’s displeasure with the whole task. There was no relief in the summer because water was heated in the big furnace. In the summer a small furnace was used to heat water and that d*mn*d thing had to be maintained. Guess who was the youngest? The summer of 1962 was my happiest. Driver’s license, sure. But that was the summer when the beast was converted to oil and an electric water heater was installed. GREAT! Back to the model. This is 1985 and the furnace is long gone. The basement is just a basement, not a dungeon. There are stairs inside the house. Also, there are outside stairs remaining from the good olde days. And that gets us back to the model. Walthers includes a covered basement entrance that resembles the metal doors often used after the turn of the century. I started painting up the Walthers doors – photograph one – but they weren't right for me. I’m sure that there were metal doors somewhere on the street that I’m referencing, but wood doors were far more common. Photo two is a somewhat fancyfied set of basement doors that is contemporary. This sort of basement door is what I remember and want. Photograph three is similar, but in this case is a storm cellar set away from the house. I chiseled and sanded the ribs off the Walthers casting. I cemented 2 X 8” (scale) strips on the sides and top. I let the sides stick out past the concrete base a bit. Photo four. Photograph five – I cut doors out of 0.020” scribed Evergreen Scale Models styrene so that there would be full planks at the edges and cemented them in place. This looked too plain so I decided to add bits and gribbles. Of course things wouldn’t be too simple! I did have a package of Grandt Line hinges, but I only had two of any given hinge. And in my package of Details Associates boxcar door details I didn’t have matching handles. I’m done waiting for mail-orders, so I proceeded with what I had. I can spin a great line of BS if you want me to justify these choices! I used CA to fix the parts in place and a Vallejo Pick and Place Tool to actually maneuver these bitty things. This is a rod with a slightly sticky blob of silicone on the end. Photo six shows the basement entrance before paint. The mismatches are easy to see now, but they aren’t going to be easy to see in a few minutes. I started painting with a coat of AK Interactive 3rd Gen Smokey Black. Photograph seven. I followed with a mix of Polly Scale Aged Concrete and Vallejo Model Air Concrete on the sides. Photo eight shows the result as well as the line up in order of the paint that I used to age and then flat coat the stair doors. The finished basement entry is not glued to the foundation at this time. Photos nine and ten show the paints and cements used in the project so far as well as the brushes I’m working with. Photo eight shows the Vallejo pick. The white rod with the blue blob on the end. Next are basement windows. They should arrive in today’s mail. Yes, Just In Time manufacturing rears it’s head!
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Post by sd40dash2 on Aug 5, 2021 5:08:25 GMT -8
Those cellars were also useful in case of tornado or nuclear ICBM attack.
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Post by stevewagner on Aug 5, 2021 6:23:41 GMT -8
Back to the regular, not storm, cellar, with the slanted door adjacent to or very near the house itself. I really like the outside door Christian has built.
It reminds me of one of my. favorite songs, which I learned from a big paperback book entitled something like "Songs of the Gay Nineties" -- meaning 1890's. It's title, I think, was "I Don't Want To Play in Your Yard". The first verse, as I recall it is:
Once there lived, side by side, two little maids. Used to dress just alike, hair done in braids. When school was over, secrets they'd tell, Whispering arm in arm, down by the well. One day a quarrel came; harsh words were said: "You can't play in our yard!" And the other said:
[The refrain follows.]
"I don't want to play in your yard; I don't like you any more! You'll be sorry when you see me sliding down our cellar door. You can't holler down our rain barrel! You can't climb our apple tree! Oh, I don't want to play in your yard, if you won't be good to me."
The girls reconcile in the second verse and laughingly repeat the refrain.
Apropos of another part of Christian's post, one of my neighbors and model railroading friends. lived, as a boy, in a house heated using coal, which was delivered into its basement using the chute of the coal dealer's truck through a basement window. The boards that hemmed in the coal pile were removed one by one as the pile diminished to make stoking the furnace easier. They had to be put back before the next delivery of coal. He forgot to do so once, and the coal went all over the basement floor. After having to spend a lot of time and effort shoveling the coal back where it belonged, he never made that mistake again!
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Post by lvrr325 on Aug 5, 2021 13:48:39 GMT -8
Another option is to just run a couple of angled ribs out from the foundation with no door at all, and fill with earth between.
The house I grew up in had an outside basement door, it was built in the 1940s. But after we got 12" of water in the basement following a heavy rain that the fire department had to pump out, my dad had the opening blocked up, the stairs filled in, and the door was left but slowly rotted to nothing. I'm not sure if the doorway was the culprit or not, since we had a couple more floods and the storm drains backing up were to blame.
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Post by Christian on Aug 10, 2021 3:21:38 GMT -8
11. Stuff I Should Have Done Earlier
Summer sluggishness continues! But work on a small town version of this farm house does continue. The windows I wanted to use arrived in the mail. Photograph one. The gray windows are Tichy and the black are Grandt Line. Now I get to cut holes into the finished foundation for these windows. The gray are to be centered in each of the three “main” sides. The black window will go into the back wall beside the basement doors. It is a left over from the days of coal delivery and needs to be a bit deeper than the windows on the other sides of the basement. It sure would have been easier to cut the window openings before cementing the blocks. But, at that time, no windows. I decided to leave a whole block above the opening and let the windows run to the ground. There is frequently a no grass zone in front of these sorts of windows and that is what I want to model. Photo two shows the cuts on the blocks which were done with a sharp Olfa blade and a square. Photograph three. I used my JLC saw to make the vertical cuts. Once. The JLC saw has no set to the teeth which makes cutting fairly thick material difficult. I changed to my Zona saw for the rest of the openings. I scored the top of the opening after peeling off the blocks and used flat nosed pliers to snap off the piece. Note that the side walls are a sandwich of concrete blocks, Walthers foundation pieces and EVA foam. Photo four. Usually there is some sort of header where openings are cut into block walls. An iron plate, a wooden beam, or a concrete beam which is what I modeled. Photograph five shows measuring the width of the opening for the beam. The pointy side of the calipers set the width. Then I put some 0.030” X 0.060” strip under the jaws and used a razor blade to chop off the piece. A snick of a sanding block made these pieces fit snuggle. Photos six and seven. Photo eight. I was worried about paint build up on the delicate Tichy and Grand parts so I used a black Sharpie to color them. That didn’t work too well. So I used some acrylic ink which was super thin, like, well, like ink. AK Interactive 3rd Gen Sooty Black. That did the job. Although later I used regular black paint for touchups with no problem. After painting all the new surfaces with Vallejo Air Concrete, I used CA to cement the frames in place. Photograph nine. Under the frames I put a piece of scale 2 X 6n to level out the wall. After touching up the black and the concrete I brushed a coat of AKI Ultra Matte Varnish over the new work. I finished by cutting “glass” for the coal window and using the included razor cut glass in the Tichy windows. Tichy should receive a Nobel Prize for including cut glass with the windows. Photos ten and eleven show the finished windows. On to the roof. Procrastination has its rewards. alexandrianick’s posting of the super duper farm house build gave me an approach that had be eluding me. My way would have worked after a fashion. His way will work well, I hope! Stay tuned!
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platec
Full Member
The object of nostalgia is further away than it appears
Posts: 128
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Post by platec on Aug 10, 2021 19:15:21 GMT -8
Christian, I really like the wooden bulkhead, it's not something that's typically modeled but was common feature in the day. One comment I'll make; the basement window frame would be located directly beneath the mudsill of the house, in other words, there shouldn't be a course of block over the top. The sill provides a fastening point for the frame.
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Post by Christian on Aug 11, 2021 0:35:03 GMT -8
One comment I'll make; the basement window frame would be located directly beneath the mudsill of the house Yeah, I fudged that and wasn't clear in my write-up. IF I had done the cuts into the Walthers foundation before laminating the block I could have put the top of the windows in the correct place. After laminating the blocks (Actually several days after - my posts are well behind the work) I did what I thought I could do neatly. Now, another week later, I see how I could have done the job. It is way too late now. c'est la vie
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Post by Christian on Aug 12, 2021 23:27:09 GMT -8
12. Soffits and Stuff
I want the roof removable for painting. The color I’m intending to use does not brush worth a darn and needs to be sprayed. I don’t want to fool with all the masking needed to paint this roof on the model. The posts from alexandrianick after chapter 6 gave me the clue I needed to figure this out. I’m going to temporarily mount the soffits without the shingle overlay, sheet with standing seam roofing and then remove the roof(s) for painting. Photographs one and two are roof nomenclature illustrations. Fascia, soffit, frieze and rake often get mixed up. So when I call for 2 X 8n frieze boards on the model you will know what I mean. First I wanted to cut down the gable overhang. (Gable = the pointy end) Most, not all, of the photos I’m using for reference show very little roof overhanging the gables. Photograph three shows the soffit with a line marked for a cut. It’s not a lot, but for me it takes away some of the sky lodge feel. I scored deeply and snapped off the excess. Because the soffit pieces on the model do not actually join each other at the peak I felt the need for some reinforcement that would also bind the four soffit pieces together. I laid out, scored and snapped six triangles from 0.040” black Evergreen Scale Models black styrene to be used for reinforcements. These are right triangles so they were easy to lay out. Photos four and five. The roof has to be built in place and then removed. So I needed to attach the soffit pieces to the walls, but make them removable. I used Woodland Scenics Tuft-Tac cement which is sorta removable. I diluted it one to one with water and ten used a brush to paint the tops of the three gables. Photo six. I pressed the soffit pieces in place. Then I cemented a triangle in each gable end. Photograph seven. Photo eight shows the 0.060” X 0.060” fillers I put into the gap where the soffit pieces don’t meet. Note that I cemented the side roof soffit pieces to the main roof soffit. The model as designed cemented those side soffits into the shingle sheet of the main roof. What I did is much stronger. Since I was trimming the width of the soffit it was easy to allow for the additional length needed. Not a lot of model building seemed to have happened today because of having to walk away to let glue dry at almost every step. Next time, roof sheets. Or field as it were . . .
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Post by sd40dash2 on Aug 13, 2021 4:46:30 GMT -8
Wow the quality of these posts is really quite something. You clearly put a lot of effort into the posts to clearly illustrate your work to us. Good quality photography, writing and an ever-revealing array of tools and methods. Black styrene? That's a first for me! And I love the internal light block walls and foundation. Agreed about avoiding masking. Thanks for everything!
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Post by Christian on Aug 13, 2021 9:11:44 GMT -8
Black styrene? That's a first for me! And I love the internal light block walls and foundation. Evergreen black styrene has been available for many years. But I don't recall seeing it in a retail shop. Both 6"X12" and 8"X21" in all the standard sheet thicknesses. Except there is no 0.005". No strips and I wish there were. The light blocks are bits of the EVA foam that has been seen in a lot of my builds.
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Post by jbilbrey on Aug 15, 2021 10:05:28 GMT -8
Keep up the work. You have me wanting to dig out an old Con-Cor suburban house with a garage to build once I get my family settled down in a new house. I will likely use some of your tips and techniques when I build it.
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Post by Christian on Aug 15, 2021 14:49:08 GMT -8
13. Much Ado About Fields
(Just playing with roof nomenclature.) I used quarter inch space “V” grooved siding from Evergreen Scale Models for the metal roof. 3/16” would have been a better choice, but that size was unavailable from my usual sources and also not available direct from Evergreen. (EDIT: It is now available, but the roof work is way too far from wanting to restart.) The spacing between seams isn’t standardized on standing seam roofs. Most are narrower spaced than this roof will be, but I have research photographs of roofs that look to be spaced about that wide. The sheet is 0.040” thick. The resulting sandwich of “V” groove sheeting and the Walthers soffit is 0.112” which scales out to about 10 HO scale inches. Pretty thick for a roof on a small house. I considered not using the Walthers soffits in favor of Evergreen 0.020” thick “V” groove siding with a narrow board spacing for the soffits which would have been more realistic in appearance. But that sandwich would still have been 6 or so scale inches. That conventional roofing modeling method would also require ridgepoles and other bracing. I think the Walthers plus Evergreen will give me a more sturdy roof and does simplify construction a bit. Photograph one. I measured off, marked, scored and snapped the four “main” roof fields. (sheets) I allowed for just a couple scale inches of end (gable) overhang but didn’t worry about the eves since gutters will hide everything. I cut the width to allow a butt joint at the roof peak – ie, one sheet was about 0.040” wider than the other of the pair. Snapping “V” groove is a bit tricky in that you have to score more deeply than normal so that the sheets don't snap along one of the grooves. Plus you need to support or clamp the sheet close to the desired snap line. I held the sheets and soffits together and decided that I really did need to put on rake boards on the gables to give another shadow line. ( Shadow lines are important to designers in that the shadows on the surface of an object can imply greater depth. An illusion, as it were.) I used HO scale 1 X 6n Evergreen strip for these boards. That’s pretty wide for a prototype roof on a small house, but that’s what I needed to give a shadow on the Walthers soffits. I did not need fascia boards along the eves because they would be hidden by the gutters. Photos two and three. I cut over length strips and then chopped the ends at 45 degrees. I cemented the rake boards to the edges of the soffits and later nipped the ends perpendicular to the ground. Photo four. Photograph five shows the boards in place. No visible shadow line in this photo, but I think you can still see that there is some dimensionality added to the gables. Also there is some experimental paint distressing near the window. More on that much later. The Next Day
This turned out to be a day that I should have done anything but model. Sloppy work, but it is fixable. It will just take time to fix that I shouldn’t have to waste. Fortunately the ridge and valley flashing on standing seam roofs is very prominent and will cover most of my slop. One of the main roof sheets has to be notched to fit over the side roof soffits. Photo six shows the shingle roof on top of the metal roof. You can see the changes. Photograph seven – I cemented this roof in place with Tamiya Cement and it went pretty well. I should have stopped, but, Nope! Next I cemented two of my black triangle inside the roof thinking it would help with the big sheet on this side. Photo eight. Nope. I had to knock them out when I put on the big roof. Photograph nine is how it stands at this typing. I need to let the cements and solvents set completely so that I can attack with chisel, file, and sanding block. The biggest boo boo that I can’t fix is that I didn’t think to align the seams from side to side in the valley between the big and little roofs.
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Post by Christian on Aug 19, 2021 10:27:48 GMT -8
14. More Roof Prep
This simple sand and fill job turned out to be no so simple. I’d cut the roof sheets undersized and ended up adding to the edges and also cobbling up a ridgepole. I stalled doing this for about a week. I finally did the fix and I’ll live with what I did. Today I think I got everything done that needed to be complete before the standing seams are added. Starting with checking flashing and ridge covers to see if I had to do more fixing. Photographs one and two are from contemporary roof installations. I’m imagineering a roof that was done in the 1970s, before Star Wars. Contemporary practice uses valley sheets (flashing) that is about a foot wide. The ridge covers are attic vents and are also about a foot wide. They’ll cover lots of slop. Older metal roofs had about the same valleys, but the ridge sheets were, typically, a standing seam between the sheets on one side of the roof with the sheets from the other. I’m cheating. It’s time to get this roof done! But first! The chimney does not have a hole in the top. I made one. Photograph three. I centered the chimney rather than use Walthers placement. I hogged out a hole and cemented the chimney in place at a height that seemed right to me. Photo four. For flashing I’ve typically used heavy foil. I started out doing that, but it was not going well. Age, darn it! (Mine, not the foil) I turned to Tamiya. Tamiya Masking Tape for Curves is like very thin tape much like electrical tape. Photograph five. Old timers might remember that there was a brief flurry in the hobby of using 3M Vinyl Tape 471+. This Tamiya stuff is much thinner. The 3mm was wide enough for the flashing. I started with the chimney and didn’t do a great job of it. Photo six. I next did the valleys. Photograph seven. Although the tape seems plenty sticky I swabbed a coat of gray Stynylrez over the tape to help stick in place. Photo eight. Also seen in that photo are guidelines for the snow birds. Easier to draw them now without the ribs. More later. I think that the next session will be rib time. Despite my grumbling the roof is actually coming together just fine.
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Post by GP40P-2 on Aug 19, 2021 17:44:04 GMT -8
I am certainly enjoying watching this build take shape. Your choice of tools, techniques, and methods is useful; some I'll want to try out, and some just to see how others do it.
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Post by Christian on Aug 23, 2021 10:08:51 GMT -8
15. It Seams Simple
There are lots of ways of doing metal roofs. I chose a standing seam because it seams to be the most common sort of metal roof before the 1970’s. Metal batten roofs are cheaper in terms of labor but are not as common. That sort of roof can be well duplicated with Evergreen Scale Models milled board and batten siding. Plastruct also makes ribbed metal roofing. I posted earlier that the material I ended up using is spaced a bit wide. Still in the prototype range, but at the wide end of common metal roofs. Today, as I type, Evergreen has the standing seam roof kits back in stock and that is what I would use. But, that wasn’t available back when I shopped for roof parts. I used 0.015 X 0.030” strips for the standing seams. This is a bit thick, but using 0.010” strips was more difficult for me. With the “for real” Evergreen kits the thinner strips are not a problem. Since I needed a lot of strips I dragged out my Northwest Short Line Chopper and started chopping. Photograph one. My chopper is an antique. I get a rash from hardboard so I replaced the base with high density particle board that cabinet makers use. The green chunk of styrene is under the blade because use over decades has worn a trench where the blade contacts the base. The roof has five fields so I cut only enough strips for one field and cemented them in place before cutting strips for the next field. Photo two shows how the strips were cemented. I used Plastruct Bondene for cement/solvent because it dries up a bit slower than the Scalecoat Probond that I mostly have been using on this project. I positioned the strips with tweezers and then clamped them in place with a finger. I applied Bondene with a liner brush which held enough cement to run the length of the longer strips. After completing each field I walked away for a couple of hours to let the cement set thoroughly. I used my tweezers sprue nippers to trim the standing seams. Photograph three. Eight done, fifty three to go! Oh yeah – eleven more on each porch roof!
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Post by Christian on Sept 7, 2021 7:29:31 GMT -8
16. Ridge (Note; I wrote this chapter a month ago. I’m intentionally stocking up chapters so there is a natural lag. But this lag was big because I took a staycation and did absolutely nothing on the house for two weeks.)
Photograph one: four days later the seams are done. No issues, just tedious. Porch roofs will be constructed later. Today the ridge trim was the subject. A simple farm house at the turn of the twentieth century might just have a standing seam running along the ridge. Photo two. More likely there was a weather fast cover over the ridge. Pressed tin became available in the 1870’s and was cheap. Photograph three shows a section of this sort of trim. A cheap job would nail it in place. A better job would use soldier. Photo four shows an old roof with the ridge pieces fastened with lag screws. Photograph five shows a fancy ridge piece. Photo six is a 2020 installation and is typical of most metal roofs post WWII. It’s what I chose for this model. I like to use metal for these sorts of things. I would have used metal for the chimney flashing but my hands were to shaky that day to do a decent job. The tape worked fine for the chimney, but this ridge treatment needs to be more crisp. I use black wrap which is an anodized aluminum foil with a dull black finish. About 0.0025” thick. It paints well which is why I use it. HOWEVER, it isn’t readily available to the general public. Amazon sells Rosco Cinefoil, but the price on Amazon will make you gasp. Before using black wrap I used the foil used around the cork on wine bottles. Most of that is plastic now days, but there is still metal out there. Heavy duty oven foil is just too thin to manipulate for me. Photograph seven. I put a straight edge about 0.060” from the edge and used a single edged razor blade to lift the metal against the ruler. Photo eight. I used a scrap of 0.060” styrene as my thickness guide to trim the metal. I put dots of CA on the peaks of the standing seams and then lowered the ridge trim in place. Photograph nine shows the kitchen wing in place. Next up: snow birds.
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Post by valenciajim on Sept 7, 2021 12:38:34 GMT -8
This thread inspired me to go out and buy the kit!
Thanks for the wonderful pictures and explanations.
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Post by Christian on Sept 13, 2021 8:01:03 GMT -8
17. Give ‘em the Birds!
Those of you above the 40th parallel know already what I’m going to model: Snow Birds. Here’s a little bit of music to get you in the mood. Turn up your speakers and chill. Now that the ear worm is firmly planted lets talk snow and roofs. Christmas cards are so pretty with snow covered roofs and steeples and trees and streets and, well, you get the picture. Living with the stuff is a whole other thing. Not much romance to several hundreds of pounds of snow sliding off the roof onto the paper boy. Metal roofs are a particular problem. The “slickness” is no help shedding snow. Snow has to build to a certain density and weight before it starts to slide. Regardless of the roof material. Freeze and thaw cycles make the resulting mass a mix of brittle ice and hard packed snow. Once the slide starts metal roof slickness now comes into play as the moving snow picks up speed and shoots over the edge. Various fixtures are attached to the roof to stabilize this snow load until it can melt. The most common are called “snow birds.” Photograph one shows some antiques and you can see where the name derived. Photos two and three show modern snow birds. Placement seems to be more of an art than a science. Photos two and three show two patterns of snow birds clamped to the standing seams. The model by alexandrianick way back on the first page shows another common pattern where the birds are soldered to the tin roof. Or epoxied to modern powder coated roofs. I should note that sometimes the snow pack gets so dense that it rips off the snow birds and there is a lot of potential for damage and injury from these chunks of iron. Tichy makes HO scale Snow Birds and packs them 65 to a bag. I bought one bag figuring I’d have enough for lots of roofs. Nope. I found a chart for applying snow birds. The main field of this roof would require three rows. That field alone would require 90 birds. This is actually a very steep roof – a 12 in 12 pitch. Less pitch would use fewer birds. The roofs in the photos with this chapter are of a much lower pitch. I decided to do one staggered row as in photograph three. Further I decided to put them on the roofs that feed onto sidewalks. Not doing the long side roof which is above lawn. This is common. That gives me enough bits allowing for the birds that fly off my tweezers to never be seen again. (Post Edit – I only lost one!) Photo four shows the Tichy sprues with a hand for size. Photograph five is a close up of the birds. Photograph six. The birds are under way. I know that such tiny bits are now at the cutting edge of my capabilities. So I started with the most important roof so that if I need to spend time in the rubber room I will at least protect the postman from snow and ice. First I tried slow setting CA. Nope – still sets too fast for scooching the part into position. Next was Plastruct Bondene, a small brush, and tweezers. That counts up to three and I seem to have only two hands. It didn’t work, but was funny to watch. Finally I tried my bottle of Tamiya Cement that I seem to be using a lot on this project. I stopped at three today as I ran out of time and wasn't having much fun. You can see from photo six that this might be wasted effort. I will finish this roof field and evaluate again.
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 13, 2021 8:26:53 GMT -8
OK I live north of 49 and have never heard of or even seen roof fixtures that look anything like this. Maybe this is a US thing or maybe I live under a rock but 'snowbirds' are new to me.
I have a metal roof but the snow is held back by a solid dam that runs the entire length of the roof and allows the water to flow under it and into the eavestrough. This dam is located where your pencil lines are on your model.
So I guess...thanks for the education? LOL
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Post by riogrande on Sept 13, 2021 8:34:14 GMT -8
I used to live in Central NY and snow birds there are people who go to Florida for the coldest months of the year and then return, usually Jan - Mar.
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Post by Christian on Sept 13, 2021 12:10:20 GMT -8
I used to live in Central NY and snow birds there are people who go to Florida for the coldest months of the year and then return, usually Jan - Mar. I thought it was a happy little sad song by Anne Murray. These things on the roofs come in whole lots of shapes. "Snow Bird," "Snow Guard," "Ice Barrier," "Roof Defender," and all the name variations you can find. I haven't found any contemporary maker of bird shaped snow birds, but there are lots of folks making cast aluminum snow guards that look like the Tichy ones I used. Amazon has some at twenty bucks a piece. There are lots of the bird shaped cast iron antiques available on eBay and the prices aren't outrageous.
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