Continuing Saga …

Myles...it’s fun to follow along. Thank you for posting the things you do, I (and I’m sure others) thoroughly enjoy your process. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you and your family. 

Andy

Thank you for all the good wishes. My test results came in with little or no change in echo cardiograph and no evidence of circulation problems in stress test.  And that’s good. Now we just have to get my rythym back. Merry Christmas. 

That is great news!!!  Merry Christmas!  Have a great visit with family!

TRAINMAN2001, great news and Merry Christmas to you. Your articles are very interesting and your work in progress is Amazing. Thank you for your contributions to Our Hobby. Happy Railroading....

Hey gang… I'm back! I hope everyone had a terrific holiday. We saw lots of family and friends, ate great food and only gained two pounds. That was a record. We had a suite in the Homewood Suites which had a complete kitchen and full-size fridge and freezer. So we were able to make our usual breakfasts and even have lunch there occasionally. That made up for the over-the-top dinners. Trips to and fro were uneventful with all of the road construction tie-ups gone for the winter and lots of newly paved surfaces. The weather cooperated with only rain and no wintery stuff.

Only spent an hour getting back to work today and started working on the windows. I'm finding that ALL of my laser cut windows don't fit and I'm scratch-building the whole bunch. I started with the right side corner big window and the adjacent small front window. Window construction is similar to the technique I developed on the Nighthawks cellar windows: using thin styrene sheeting to form that entire shape of the window to which is glued the separate  frame pieces. The inside of the sheet is then cutaway leaving the frame and a solid piece of sheeting with the glazing opening cut in it. I then glue the glazing to the separate pieced frame leaving the solid frame as the exposed exterior. I leave excess clear styrene and apply liquid cement around the outside perimeter keeping glue off the exposed glazing. I then trim the clear. I then glued addition separate frame pieces to the other side of the glazing making a nice and stable window. 

The side window is just a rectangle, but the small front corner was a bit more complicated since all the windows have to share their corner frames. I made the outer single piece so it would overlap the side window's corner, and then the rest ends at the side frame. The glazing is only supported on three sides until it's connected to the corner window.

Here's a different view of this assembly.

The window will be captivated in the window opening by small styrene square stock that will hide any irregularities (like molding is supposed to do). The lower brick work and the front ledge gets an engraved part that will simulate black ceramic tile that appears on the prototype.

I'm trying to keep the outer frames really clean so I can use the native white styrene instead of having to mask and paint them. All the trim on the building as it now stands is white. I'm thinking that to not glue the windows top and bottom to the building to enable the floor to be removed easily is a fool's errand. It may not work.

Wow, an amazing startup for the new year 2019.... The building looks really good and the window ideas are great. Keep posting pictures of your progress as your Continuing Saga is very interesting. Happy New Year....

Welcome back, Myles. Happy new year. The window looks good. 

Thanks guys!

First of all, I finally got my copies of RMC's Bernheim Article Part 3. Between the printer's screw up and having our mail held while we were away it was almost 5 weeks late! For me, it's one of the best parts since I really liked the pictures I included. (if I do say so myself).

Since my stress test and echo cardiogram results were nicely negative, my doc called today and said they're going to schedule the cardioversion shock treatment to get me beating more regularly. I really can't tell I have Afib unless I actually feel my pulse. It's no wonder people can walk around with it and not even know it. It's also funny that since I have the Afib, I don't get the sudden irregular beats that I was getting for almost 50 years. Could be they were always related.

I got a little time in the shop today, and then we went with my daughter and younger grandson to the movies to see the new Spiderman animated film. It was probably the most enjoyable film we've seen the whole holiday season and that includes, Fantastic Beasts, the Favourite, Ralph Wrecks the Internet and Mary Poppins. 

I continued building the right side windows today and found that the laser cut windows for the front actually could work, but I needed to "stretch" another board to make it fit. I may have a problem with the tile appliqué that goes on this lower portion, but we'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I still don't understand how I made some many errors in drawing this model.

Here's the right corner windows completed. And the right turned window for the main window set. You're looking at the backside of that window. The front is the solid piece.

When the Bronx Building is complete in another month or so, I'll be building another pull-out-all-the-stops plastic kit. The fellow who commissioned my to build the "Yankee Lady" B-17 two years ago has asked me to build another. This one is a 1:32 F-105G Thunderchief Wild Weasel from the Viet Nam Era. It's an older Trumpeter kit which implies lots of filling. I've also ordered some nice and some essential aftermarket stuff for it. One is brass landing gear since the model is big, heavy and the styrene gear is weak. The model has a complete J-75 turbojet included which, we installed with be out of sight. So I may cut some access panels to show it off, or, make a support stand to have the engine removed from the plane. I love detailing jet engines.

I didn't ask for a fee to build the '17, but we agreed that I will receive some compensation for this one; a beautiful, Tamiya 1:32 DeHavalind Mosquito kit. It's engineered like the Corsair and is big and beautiful. I don't know where I'll put it since the "Mossie" didn't have folding wings. Perhaps I'll display it at the hobby shop like the Corsair.

I’m glad the ekg and stress test were okay.  The afib thing is interesting, and I hope they get you beating right.

I can see where it is so easy to make mistakes on the drawings for the laser cot buildings.  I know you will come up with great corrections.

 I don’t know much about airplanes, but these models you do look fantastic.

Mark, your undying confidence in my skills is very nice, but you don't give me much room for abject failure.

Had a rare Saturday session… Instead of using the laser-cut front window (it would be too flimsy) I used it as a pattern to make another out of multi-layer styrene as I did with the other windows. It fits nicely in the space. I also added a piece of 0.188" X 0.060" styrene stock on the front window's left edge to close off the space to the inside partition wall. You might notice that the left side entry door is only 30" scale inches, whereas the right door is a scale 3 feet (or bigger) space. I don't know how that happened… I was thinking about removing the 1/4" from the adjacent brick wall, but there's some decorative stuff that goes there so I left it alone. Somewhere I lost a 1/4" in width. When I added that bit on the end of the long sill, it now fits the front window, but the tile laminate that goes below is about 1 tile vertical course short. If I balance that on both sides, I can be handled. Otherwise, I'll have to hand-engrave some laser board to match the tile and add it to one end. Wait until the molding and cornices go on… this thing's going to POP! The build would have been more precise if the lower front sills could have been part of the building's front, but the design didn't allow for this. 

The window got some solvent damage and was covered in fine scratches as a result of my attempt to remove said glue with various grades of abrasive cloths. As a result I dipped all of the completed windows into Pledge (with Future) floor wax which is a trick that airplane modelers use to make the canopies crystal clear. It takes a while to cure completely and it's best to cover it so dust doesn't settle on it. I uncovered it to take this pic. It really works! It's basically a clear acrylic, water-based coating. Give it a full 24 hours before attempting to handle it.

While this was drying I noticed that the side sill is not level. My many activities of sanding and rebuilding it left it at the right height on its outside right edge, but progressively lower moving back on the left side. I used thick CA to glue some laser board shims and then, using the long sill as a level surface, filed the shims until it squared up with the long sill. This all will be painted before the windows are inserted so it won't be noticeable. I put masking tape on the long sill to keep from sanding that too since it was the correct height. 

As I'm thinking about the next steps, I realize that I can't button up the insides just yet. I'm glad I didn't glue any of the storefront into place. I have to install the first floors double-hung windows from the inside. They might extend a tad into the space making sliding the main floor assembly into place a bit more complicated. I'll probably have to cut some relief on the ceiling piece to let it pass the windows without grabbing (and wrecking) them. I'm glad I hardened those screw holes since I seem to be taking them in and out more than I would have thought.

As I've said, many, many times before, writing this stuff up every day, while being entertaining for you all, gives me a chance to more clearly understand just what I'm doing and catch some stuff before I do it wrong. Scratch-building has no instruction sheet. In the December issue of RMC, in the Editor's column, he talked about the importance of good instructions and gave advice to the kit manufacturers to get their acts together and do a better job. At least kits HAVE instructions.

 

Myles, I don't foresee abject failure on your part.  Just today for instance.  You made the windows out of styrene, built up the side sill, realized the door widths are off which I'm sure you will overcome.  That is a good trick on the windows using the Pledge.  Your door problem reminds me of when my in-laws built on the addition to this house.  There was a sliding glass door on the back of the house.  They had the contractor put in a 36" door on the right side, but the space left for the right hand door going into the daughter's studio, now train room is only 27 inches wide.  Oh well.  She sold the house to us at a bargain price, so I can't complain.  

No real work today… was at Roundhouse Trains giving them Part 3 of the Bernheim article and then at my hobby shop getting some supplies. By the time I got home I didn't have much time to get into anything. But I did try out the coated windows in the building, and other than one obvious blemish in one corner, they look very transparent as seen in this picture I took. They are very clean and fine scratches are gone. Pledge with Future is a good way to save clear parts. By extending the lower sill, puts the window's edge right at the end of the partition wall, which is really what I wanted. 

Tomorrow will be a full-session with some real progress to report. Stay tuned...

The windows look real nice Myles. 

Thanks! 

I removed the first floor again (glad I screwed it in and not glued) and started window install. The window assembly is consistent with my previous work on the distillery being a three-layer affair. There is an outer, thin, rectangular piece to serve as the exterior reveal molding. Then there's a full-frame containing the upper sash and a frame to which to connect the lower sash behind. And finally there's the lower sash. After putting it all together I added another piece using a chunk of the spare lower sashes that I had cut to act as a filler so the window would sit square in the opening.

The front frame and the two sashes were held together with thick CA. The Clear parts and the added filler piece were held with MicroMark Pressure Sensitive Adhesive (PSA). I did not use a flange piece in this design. Instead the window sits back in the opening, but not all the way back. To keep the windows from falling in and to give additional gluing surface, I installed a set of stops. The bottom stop was made out of 0.125" X 0.030" with a piece of square 0.030" stock glued to the back edge that slipped over the window opening and set the amount of protrusion into the building space. The bottom piece (and all the other pieces) were held with thick CA.

I held a steel ruler on the back side of the window opening to positively position the stops at the edge so they were all in the same plane and the windows would sit nice and even when glued.

After I assembled the three first floor windows I glued them into the wall using some very old, Henkel Pritt clear urethane glue that was given to me in a set when I moved from Germany back to the USA in 2002. It's a good glue to glue oddball materials together, in this case styrene to MDF. It has more tack than typical PVA glues.

Since there's so much of the building's first floor interior visible through the big front window, I decided to dress up the insides of the windows with some casing moldings. This too was glued with the Pritt glue.

I found out, much to my dismay, that I didn't have enough lower sills 3D printed. I have enough for the upper floors fancy windows, but lack the three needed for the first floor. So I have to make them. I glued two pieces of 0.030 X 0.080" stock together and shaped the ends to the correct taper and then scraped the sides with the edge of a #11 blade to shape the sides to the same taper. This was glued to a piece of 0.040 X 0.188" styrene, but not before I reduced the width of this piece to about .140" using a razor saw and sandpaper. Once you get over a width of 0.125" Evergreen styrene strips move by larger increments. The 3D printed sills are about 0.140" wide. I'm not going to attempt to make the little drops at the ends. I'll leave the fancy stuff for the second floor windows. The resin that Rusty Stumps uses for his 3D printing is very tough and held up to sanding very well.

Notice how fine the mullions are in these windows. Laser cutting them from Laser Board produces very fine details and is remarkably tough. I'm using my micro razor saw to cut the little bits that keep the parts in their frets. You have to be careful to go very lightly since the saw can dig in a pull the fret sideways and that WILL break the Laser Board.

My oldest (and soon going to college) grandson came over for a brief visit today and we were exploring where to place this building on the layout. I'm now convinced that some reshuffling of town buildings is necessary. I'm going to substitute this building in place of Saulena's Tavern so it will sit on the corner opposite Nighthawks. I'll maybe about to move the gas station to the left about 3/4" so it will fit, but if I can't I'll move it too to the far side of the right end of town. In this new position, viewers will be able to look directly into the art gallery and also have a good view of the big side windows.

I really like Saulena's. It was my first complex craftsman build and had a full interior, but it's very hard to visualize the interior and doesn't need to occupy that piece of prime real estate. None of these are glued down so moving them involves nothing more than disconnecting their lighting wires from below. I may need the help of a younger, smaller and lighter person to crawl on top of the layout to make the changes. I have a person in mind.

 

 

 

Those windows and frames look great!  Yes, the mullions are so fine it would be easy to break while cutting the frets.  I like your drawing in the first picture.  Though I helped my dad rebuild double hung windows in his 1888 house we both grew up in, your drawing helps visualize what you are doing on the model.

Has your grandson picked a college and major yet?  It's a question I always ask.  I find it exciting to watch these young people become adults!!

He was accepted into the engineering programs at University of Illinois and Penn State and was deferred at Wisconsin and University of Michigan. His first choice was engineering… what kind, I have no idea, but his dad is a terrific orthopedic surgeon here in Louisville (as is his other grandfather in Stockton, CA). He spent a day in surgery with his dad as a part of his school's senior experience. His dad picked a particularly bloody ankle/heel fusion surgery to test his son's ability to stand the "sight of blood". He loved it! And he's now also considering throwing pre-med into the equation. He would make a great doctor like his dad and like my son. He has the intellect, problem solving and the humanity that all need to come together to be a good doc.

Thanks for asking!

That sounds excellent!!  My wife and I could use a great orthopedic surgeon!  Maybe we should retire to Louisville!!

The surgeon who did my second carpal tunnel surgeries in each hand told me he started out working as a mechanical engineer then went to medical school.  He pointed out that orthopedics is somewhat like mechanical engineering.  I hadn’t thought of it.

Trainman2001 posted:

Notice how fine the mullions are in these windows.  

Not to be anal, but aren't they "muntins"?

Yes… perhaps you're right, but you are being anal. Here's the description that tells the story. They're both part of windows. I will now refer to them as "Muntins".

"The whole shebang - sash, jambs, sill and everything else - is called a window. Mullion/muntin: A mullion is a heavy vertical or horizontal member betweenadjoining window units. Muntins are the narrow strips of wood that divide the individual panes of glass in a traditional sash."

While I could have built more windows today, I was itching to get to building all the molding assemblies since this is such a focal point of the building. I finished scratch-building the 1st floor's window trim and then went to work on all the 3D printed stuff. I'm very happy that Rusty Stump's resin is very tough and you can sand it without worrying about it falling apart. 

I may have overdone it with the amount of trim over the first floor windows. Before I glue them in place permanently, I'll re-evaluate, and if necessary, build them again a bit smaller. Nothing is glued down yet.

The trim is made with a  stack of varying width, 0.040" thick styrene stock. After gluing the stack, I notched the ends staggering up to the top piece at 0.040" increments and cut each level with the micro razor saw. I spent some time sanding off the remains of the support legs that typify 3D printed parts using the aluminum sanding block from my Precision Sander. The resin sands fairly easy. 

After sanding I stuck all the 3D parts onto masking tape turned back on itself and first sprayed it Rattle Can Tamiya White Primer, and then airbrushed with Tamiya Flat White. The long white piece is the "concrete" foundation trim that extends from the end of the right side lower sill to the building's rear. The top and ends are chamfered 45 degrees.

I couldn't help but to try the 3D parts on the wall. They look brilliant!

Now for the really cool stuff… The dentil molding sits within a nest of many pieces of styrene to build it out to the building's design. The special widths of many of the wider parts necessitated me to cut it from large 0.040" sheet (about 2" in 1:1 scale).

I often use angle blocks as a backstop to keep pieces that need to be even on one edge in place while gluing. Even with this aide, parts can move and I needed to check alignment before glue dried. Since the dentil molding is resin, it must be glued with CA. I did have to break a joint since it got out of alignment.

I got about 1/2 done on the building front molding. There is a pile of strips that have to go on beyond what you see here. Then there's little round trim pieces that go under each corbel to finish it out. All in all, it's a lot of trim. The extensions out of the right end are because this needs to be mitered to the right side's trim. I was proud of myself that I thought of this before cutting everything too short.

Here's the cross-section that needs to be created. There are five pieces in the top stack with a thinner strip in the number 3 position from the bottom. Again, I'm constrained by the thicknesses and widths offered by Evergreen plus cutting the widest pieces out of a large sheet.

This detail view is from the original drawing with the two chimneys.  There's more stacked trim at the roof edge, and still more complicated layers at the store front. The lower trim only extends over the display windows (thankfully…), since the longer the trim to be glued up, the greater the chance for misalignment and twisting. In looking at the below image, I'm realizing that forming the curved roofs on the gables will be challenging too. This is not a building project for the faint-hearted. I'm also thinking that the roof edge trim should be hollowed out since it's actually serving as a rain gutter also.

I cleaned up the oval window 3D print and tried them in the laser cut holes. Fits like a glove! Would have been a bear to scratch build.

Tomorrow, molding work will continue… I expect, by the end of the week, I'll have the rest of the windows done too.

As to the first floor molding looking overdone...It's a Victorian building.  How could it possibly be overdone!!  I say that in jest, but I think the first floor goes right along with those upper floor curved ones and the dentil molding!  It is going to look super!!

Love the detail.

Fantastic work Myles

Thank you guys! Each day the project is getting more exciting. 

Today I finished all the upper cornice work and started on the detail that lies above the store windows. 

After building the short wall, doing the long wall went much faster (as usual). When I reduced the length of the building I screwed up the nice fitting of the dentil molding. The last bay is now significantly shorter than the rest, but there wasn't much I could do about it at this time. I though about reducing each bay by one dentil, but it didn't come out evenly either. The length did provide a challenge so I used a longer straight edge and three angle blocks as a back stop. This picture also shows the little doodads that I describe making further on.

After cutting the long wall miter and cleaning up the short wall, I tried them on to see how they mated up. Notice too, there is now a rain gutter. When assembling multi-layer constructions like this you really need to understand how the miter extends out past the wall edge when you're cutting and gluing up the material. Gluing these in place is a little later...

Here's a profile shot showing how all the strips stack together to make the cornice.

The little drop "doodads" were created by a sandwich of some half-round Evergreen styrene glued to a piece of custom-cut strip that had to match the width of the corbel's width. I couldn't use existing stock since Evergreen didn't make a piece that was 0.140" wide. I cut the piece from some 0.040" sheet stock. Several of the widths were cut this way. After making the sandwich I sliced off individual profiles with the Chopper like salami. 

I then had to cut the little circular details from another piece of round styrene. When I first started cutting them with a single-edged razor, they were flying off in all directions. I solved that problem by cutting then on a piece of double-sided Scotch Tape. I cut them by rolling the razor over the cutting spot enough times until the piece came off. These are too small to cut on the Chopper.

With my finest tweezers I touched the circle to the solvent cement applicator and then placed it on the other assembly. The trickiest part was keeping the little tiny circle from preferentially gluing itself to the tweezers. The Doodads were solvent glued to the cornice to lie underneath each corbel.

Next up was the lower trim band. First I had to figure out exactly how big this was since the picture I had printed out was not to scale. So I went back upstairs to the laptop, pulled up the detail on SketchUp which is in 1:1 scale and strunk it by 0.021% to make it O'Scale and drew measurements on the screen with the Tape Measure tool. I really only needed the overall height of the backing piece since this was another custom cut piece.

My printed out pic was slightly over size (about 10%) so I could take measurements directly from it and then take them down 90%. With these calculations, I was able to build the profile. Went together pretty quickly and I'm done the front portion. There's still a side component that miters to the front (like the upper trim) and I have to check to see how the other end is finished (square cut or stepped).

I definitely would want to do any this in either HO or N gauge, but I know there are folks who do it. I'm now a FaceBook friend with a wonderful Japanese craftsman, who is making scale tin buckets in HO that are simply hard to believe. Whenever I think I'm good, I find people in this world who are so, so much better. It's keeps me grounded.

More great work.  Thank you for pointing out where the rain gutter is on that.  I did some scratchbuilding in N scale once upon a time, but my buildings were basic farmhouse, brick garage, simple station; things like that.

I finished the big trim pieces with the build and attachment of the shorter right-side piece. I should have done the entire length in one assembly, then cut it where the miter had to go. Instead, it was a pain to recreate the right side with the exact same spacing of all the members so the miter would meet correctly. I got the small rear windows completed and started working on the fancy main 2nd floor windows. I did find out something interesting. The real building is even more ornate than my model. I made a cropped picture of the real building to show this. Notice the raised details within the flat areas of the upper cornice. Notice too the friezes on the upper fancy roof facing. And then there's those corner details where the trim members meet in the Mansard roof. There are joist clamps (starts) on the brick at the corner. I don't have stars, but I do have some Grandt Line "S" curve joist clamps that I can use. And I just realized there is a masonry lintel on the main windows at the top below the frieze panel. I may add this since the windows are very fragile and could use a bit more bulk.

After building the lower trim and sanding the miter nice and true, I decided to pre-glue this piece to make installation easier. I clamped it onto an angle plate so it dried square.

When it was dry I filled any remaining gaps with thick CA and filler beads and then Tamiya Fine Filler. When dry and filed, I painted this trim and the upper trim airbrushed flat white. Here's what the lower trim looks like fitted to the building.

To my chagrin, I found that my drawing only had one small back window. I made a mistake and had two large windows cut and only one small. The modified building was the reverse. So I had to scratch build another one which has a slightly more bulky profile than the laser cut ones, but it's in the back, will be highly difficult to visualize and it will work. It's either that or spending $$$ to get this little part re-cut. Using that method I developed of using thin styrene sheeting as a backing for the window structure works really well. Also, the texture imparted by using hand brush-painted craft paint on the "stuccoed" walls really looks kind of nice.

The main windows laser cutting is so fine that it's almost too delicate to build. I was surprised just how thin the cross-sections were and how carefully I had to work to get them together. Those mullions are probably no more than 1/64" wide. That window is not glued in and was the first one I built before the day ended.

So here's another picture showing all this molding trial fitted.

Ha

Have a great weekend!

Very delicate indeed!  It is really coming along nicely!  I'm not surprised you noticed something new on the original.  There is so much detail, it would be easy to miss certain aspects.

Thanks Mark!

A snowy Saturday with nothing on TV but golf and my wonderful wife said I should go down and play in the basement. So play I did and got the main windows built and installed.

The windows are a tad undersized and needed some support to hold them in the openings. I put a stop of 1/8" styrene that was flush with the back edge of the opening held with thick CA, and then put a curved stop on the top front since the windows weren't reaching all the way to the top of the opening. When the eyebrows are on this piece really finishes up the space nicely. I also played with adding some side shims. I used 0.188" X 0.015" strip to shim it. I tried both sides, but it was too much so I just put it on one side. Then I found as I was actually installing the windows that even one shim was too much. 0.010" stock would have been better. It's very hard to laser cut the windows and their respective openings to get the fit just right. In addition to the .005" kerf left by the laser (about .0025" per side of the cut line), there's the variability of my assembly of the 5 components that make up the windows.

It's always a challenge gluing styrene to MDF. CA doesn't always like styrene, unless it's not where you want it, and MDF is friable, and the part comes loose by the MDF flaking. It took a couple of tries in some of these to get them to stay.

 

I made 8 windows only needing 7 and I'm glad I did since one broke in half when trying to get into the now-tight opening. Did I say the windows were fragile… I have a problem with keeping all kinds of crap off the windows. Between the pressure sensitive adhesive getting on it (removable with Goo Gone), and the thick CA, which was too thick, streaming little strings that settled on the windows (of course) and this is not removable with anything. I suppose I could have changed out the glazing, but I didn't feel like it. I can still do it if I inclined.

So all the windows are now in. I glued them in like I did on the first floor using Henkel Pritt Urethane glue. It's forgiving since it stays somewhat flexible. It will cure until Monday when I get back to it. Notice that I put that thick lintel on the windows that I mentioned yesterday. I also notice that I didn't put one on the last window on the right side wall.

On Monday, I'll reinstall the interior and get the front window assembly work done. There's a trim panel that covers the bricks on the left side of the front and that gets some 3D printed ornamentation. It's a much simpler deal than the other trim. Then it's onto the upper reaches. This project should be completed in a couple of weeks working at the pace I've been working. Since the Afib, I haven't been exercising which is giving me more time in the shop. I'm due to meet with the cardiologist next Thursday and then we'll schedule the cadioversion procedure that hopefully will get me firing on all cylinders. I was happy that the tests showed no cardiac circulation problems.

 

 

Good news regarding test Myles, the building looks great! But there’s the NFL playoffs on today and tomorrow if you’re interested. A little more stimulating than golf😄. 

Andy

 

I’m glad the tests are good and you are seeing the cardiologist  this week to schedule the procedure.  Me, I would probably watch a documentary on Netflix.  For some reason I can’t watch any sports anymore.  I get bored or anxious.  LOL

Thos Windows look great.  They are so fine it would be easy to break.  I agree this one is going fast compared to the brewery and Nitehawks.  Of course as you said you have some more time each day.

Thanks for the kind thoughts, Mark!

Well… whatdaya know? I actually worked on the building on Sunday too. It was another crappy weather day and my dear wife granted me another weekend work session. And a mighty productive one it was.

I got all the window trim installed. Remade and installed the lintels for those first floor windows. Glued the upper cornice together at the miter and then, when dry, mounted all the cornices. I trim painted the inside edges around where the store window was going, and finally, started working on the gables, with the fitting of the critical front gable.

I mounted all the eyebrows and sills on the upper right windows and then turned my attention to those 1st floor lintels. They were actually wrong. Here's a picture showing the correct lintel to the incorrect. The backing plate was the window width as was the lowest layer, then they expanded upwards and outwards, and there were only four tiers. It was a quick job and I painted it with Rattle Can Tamiya Matte White so I didn't have to clean the air brush.

I glued up the upper cornice again using the angle block and some quickie clamps. When they were dry I glued all the cornices to the the building. Before doing this, I brush painted the edging that surrounds the store front since this surface will be exposed unless I would cap it. I don't want to do that since the space is already narrower than I would like.

I couldn't help myself, but to take the building as it to the layout and try it on one of the possible spots. It fits, but it's facing the wrong way, meaning you won't be able to directly view the interior. My ideal spot would be where Saulena's is, which is the yellow building in the lower left of this image. Bronx is a bit wider so the Sinclair station would either need to be moved or slide to the left a tad. I would mean some minor adjustments to the macadam so it could nestle closer to the tracks and accommodate the crossing signal that also sharing that space. The building in the foreground right is destined to be the appliance store. I didn't build that one, but bought it when I bought that little crossing guard tower and the water tower.

Back to work...

I could have continued with installing the interior and then the store front, but decided that it was more prudent to work on the upper stories since I would be having to manhandle the building for a bit more. I found quickly that the square hole that I had laser cut in the attic floor had to be closed. I don't know why I drew it like that since the front gable needs to rest on that spot. So I cut a piece of Masonite to fit, glued it in and reinforced it with some backing plates. I sanded all of the exposed edges so it completely matched the existing floor.

The window pieces had a sloppy fit in the their respective openings. I still haven't got the hang of just how to draw the holes and window parts so they fit. As I've noted before, if you use the same drawing pieces for the windows and the their holes, the holes get bigger and the windows get smaller due to the width of the laser beam and how the material burns. But I don't think it is as big as I ended up with. The gap seemed to be somewhere around 0.020" to 0.030". I tried tow pieces of 0.015" stock, but it was too tight. I then tried a piece of 0.015" and another of 0.010" and while the window fit, there was some compression that was deforming one of the tiny mullions. So I went with two slices of 0.010" and it fit perfect. There was also a 0.040" gap from top to bottom. Instead of screwing around trying to fill the curved portion, I pushed the window up and made a nice 0.040" window sill.

I know had the formula for fitting the windows. I hadn't tried the fit in all the single gables spaces, but my guess is they are the same dimension.

I put all the upper pieces together with masking tape so I could make measurements. The gables are vertical and, of course, the Mansard roof recedes backwards as it rises to meet the roof. At first I attempted to measure the distance at the gable's top and cut some angular pieces to fill the space, and only after doing all the cutting and sanding did I realize that I made the opening in the roof facing so I could simply use rectangular pieces. The hole was the same as the width of the gable front so the rectangular pieces would just slide in. Easy peasy! Again, I used a combination of Aleen's PVA and then thin CA with accelerator to speed up the build. While the CA cures instantly, but is not too strong (brittle), the PVA will cure slowly and form a more permanent flexible bond.

So here's the gable slid into its space. The fit was perfect! I will painted the gables, assemble and install all the windows, and put the fish scale shingles on the Mansard front before I finally glue the gables in place. In looking at this image, I think I'm going to run the downspouts for the cornice waterways at the open ends thereby eliminating the need to have downspouts disturbing the facade.

So, all in all a very productive weekend. Tomorrow, I'll continue working on the upper stories by fitting the remaining four gables and building that nice ornate chimney. I'm sitting here thinking how I'm going to construct the curved roofs for the gables. I have some thin ply that could be laminated to a curved shape. I could also do the same with some thin styrene sheeting. I could trace the curves and make some molds to better form the shapes. I keep noodling it until the solution presents itself. Meanwhile, I'm watching my Eagles struggle with the Saints.

 

Always finding a way out from a mistake.  Like you have said before, the drawings have to be perfect with laser cutting, or you have to be able to craft a fix, which you are up to the challenge.  The building is really taking shape!  I love it!

Happy Monday!

Hobby shop visit so late start. And Mark, I simply can't believe how much I drew wrong on this laser cut. I just went back in CorelDraw and corrected them. I also found that on the Mansard errors, part of the problem was I was position the parts in a different place than I had originally designed. I may never cut another one of these again, but one of you folks might so now the drawings are corrected (or at least I think so at this moment).

One of the craziest errors was the faces of the single gables. Their width was correct, but the height was way off (too short), the curve was wrong and didn't match that of the Mansard opening and the window hole was no where near what the window sizes were. They were useless, so I had to scratch-build the four faces! At first I thought to make them out of thin aircraft ply and after creating one, I went "DOH", "why the heck am I struggling with cutting plywood that needs to be sealed and filled afterwards?" So immediately, I switched to 0.040" styrene and it went much faster. When I made one good one, I used that as a template for the other three. One came out with a funky window opening so I made a fifth one as a replacement. 

Here was my 2nd attempt with the line work already drawn on the 2nd piece of ply and the styrene piece that ultimately replaced it. Besides, styrene is some much easier to join with solvent cement. Ply is hard to cut AND you can't snap it like you can with styrene; you have to cut it clean through and it's tough. But notice how nice I got the window fit...

Here's the window fit in the styrene cut part. Nice and tight. It can't be too tight since it will deform the window frame. In all cases, I individually fit the windows into the spaces, and filed the holes so they fit perfectly.

The side walls on the first gable was the last thing I got to today. I need to adjust their height (too tall) since the curved roof piece won't fit right. I'm putting some 0.060 square stock inside the window edges to provide more gluing surface for the windows since they are a 5-layer affair, and not just one layer of laser board which measures about 0.023". You can see that the side walls are just a tad too high. The curved roof has to slip straight under the curved opening in the Mansard. I also want to add a small window sill under the window openings. The rectangular opening to the right of the gable is the chimney slot. The laser cut bricks on the chimney are going to look very spiffy.

Gable windows should be built tomorrow, and then I'll be back to the interior. I need to add the visual breaks in the second floor so you can't look through a completely empty space. The windows are big enough that I could (if I want to) install some sort of interior detailing and lighting, but frankly, am not sure what to include. I'm planning on shingling the Mansards straight across all the opening and then just slicing out the window spaces. This way I don't have to mess with cutting little pieces to fit in all the in-between spaces.

Happy Tuesday!

Spent a long and fruitful session building all of the gables and then putting the shingles on the Mansard front.

I added the side walls to the remaining three small gables and then added a rear "rafter" since the curved roof was going to need something in the back to form the roof. I traced the front curve of each and made an exact replica for the rear former. I squared the ends and solvent cemented them at the rear of the gable. For the double gable, I made a plywood piece held with Medium CA. Speaking of CA; I replaced all of my CA at the hobby shop yesterday. The medium had turned to jello, the thin was a mess, and the thick was getting thicker by the day. That stuff does have a shelf life once it's opened. I also added a bottom stringer to ensure that this fragile structure remained square.

The front and side edges of the gables has trim. I'm using 0.030X 0.060" trim for the sides and a piece of 0.015" sheet that I cut to the specific curve of each gable. Since all these were hand cut, each gables curve is slightly different. I traced the curve on the sheet and cut it to that curve. Then I used the caliper set at 0.060" and scribed a parallel line which I then cut.

I glued the curved trim on first with the ends extending off the edge. Then I butted the side trim up against the front trim and trimmed the front trim close to the side. I also cut the side trim flush with the gable's back.

For the roof I chose a double layer of 0.015" sheet stock. In looking at the prototype pics, the roof extends past the trim by about 3" so I cut the pieces to extend over all the edges about that amount. The plan was to glue the first layer on, and then after drying, laminate the 2nd layer to it. I used rubber bands to hold the roof to the curve and put them on on the front edge first and glued that. When it set, I moved one rubber band to the back edge and glue that and the sides. This worked perfectly!

When dry I cut another batch of roof pieces the same width, but left long, and slathered some Testor's Tube Cement over the entire roof (with my finger) and adhered the roof to the sub-roof. This too went flawlessly.

When the roof was dry I cut off the excess and then sanded the front and sides so you couldn't see the doubling. I also sanded the sides so they were parallel to the gable's sides. Last thing I did was add some windowsills with 0.060 X 0.030" styrene.

After these small gables were finished I did the same procedure to the double gable, with the exception that I used CA to hold the first roof in place. I did the upper roof the same as the small gables.

I had to open up the side Mansard's gable spaces since the roofs and their trim was not fitting without distorting the thin ply. I again scribed a parallel line, but after attempting to cut it with an Xacto and the razor saw, I simply engraved a good cutting line and used the Dremel with a carbide mini-router and a sanding drum. I then covered the Mansards with black construction paper (tar paper) and got the fish scale shingles on the front Mansard. It was very easy to just pave the shingles right over all the holes and THEN cut out the black paper AND the shingles in one go.

Those gables are not glued in place. There's a lot of white trim that goes all over the front and sides that will hide all the raw shingle edges, so I'm not worried about them at all. All the gables will be finished painted white next session in preparation to receiving the windows. Speaking of windows, I have six more to make.

The gables was a challenging part of the project; first due to the laser pieces being useless and having to scratch-build them all, and then the intricacy of the build with all the curved cuts. Curve cuts are never easy. All's well that ends well. Tomorrow have a lunch with a buddy so may or may not get much done. Thursday is an early afternoon cardiologist visit, but shouldn't take all day, so we'll see.

Those little dormers that slide in the mansard roof look great!!  I like how you used the calipers to score the exact curve of the thin pieces so they fit the main part perfectly.  Yes I agree CA doesn’t have a very long shelf life after opened.

Didn't post yesterday since it was just a little bit, and then today just a little bit more, but enough to write about. First of all on the cardio front. Because I am asymptomatic and both my pulse and BP were actually very good, we're going to hold off on the cardioversion procedure until I have another progress checkup in 6 weeks. We had a long conversation with the cardiologist today and found there was more nuance in the decision. There was a very large study done 15 years ago with control groups having cardioversion or not with Afib measuring quality of life and longevity. Turns out there wasn't much difference. Actually, there was higher mortality in those having the procedure. You can live with Afib especially if you on an anticoagulant so you don't form clots or get a stroke. If the pulse rate starts going up, then you don't want it to go on since it can wear the heart out. The other factor in my favor is there is no other cardiac trouble, either valves, circulation or heart muscle. So it's just a mildly dilated left atrium and bad signaling. So on we go...

I finished up all the gables and painted them yesterday. Today I went back and sanded the base of the double gable and filled some imperfections that I should have done before painting. I then, for fun, I built the chimney and started working on the decorative roof structure on the top. I don't know what to call it, so I'm calling it the "top knot". And I find that something's not quite right. The formers are good and the shape of the curved surface will be fine, but the area covered by this complex roof structure is too small of the footprint it has to fill. The convex roof should match the width of the upper part of the Mansard, but it's too narrow.

Here's the cross-lapped former structure. The diagonal formers were cross-lapped. The straight former pieces nestled into the crotch at the center. They were a bit long which wouldn't work since the curved pieces of roofing need to run straight across. So I marked the upper roof piece with some pencil lines at the correct position and trimmed and sanded the straight formers to meet that line.

I glued together the 3-sided box making up the back of the upper Mansard roof and realized I hadn't drawn a roof piece for this transition. I quickly cut one out of plywood and put the formed roof section on top and it shows the width discrepancy.

It can be fixed in two ways. I can cut the sides of the Mansard front and back to narrow it to fit the formed roof, or I can remake the formers to add 3/16" on each side so their width conforms to the Mansard's shape. I don't think narrowing the Mansard is a good idea since there is white raised trim that runs up that angle and it needs clearance. That leave remaking the formers. I could redraw them on CorelDraw, print them out and cut them out of styrene. Styrene simplifies adhering this styrene sheeting to form the curved roof.

As I'm writing this, I've come to the conclusion and have already re-drawn the corrected parts to be cut out of 0.040" styrene. The rear wood part forming the box side angles were slightly too wide at the bottom and I've re-drawn that also. So all the new parts will fit perfectly as they should. It is not difficult to cut parts out of styrene since you can scribe and snap the parts. I'm not married to wood. I only used it since it is what people use to laser cut. You can't laser cut styrene.

I'm glad you are in a position where you can just keep an eye on things and do what you are supposed to to take care of the afib etc problems!!!

Thanks for the nice thoughts, Mark. 

I instituted Plan B. I used the redrawn parts as patterns and cut new parts out of 0.040" styrene. The formers were the correct width now and reached to the corners of the top knot roof. I didn't cut the new base for it yet, but will do that on Monday. That said, when I went to skin it with 0.015" styrene, I was unhappy with the results. It doesn't sheet evenly, but distorts between the end and middle former. I may have to go with Plan C. I not sure yet what Plan C actually is, but I need to find a different sheeting material the will only bend in one axis. I may go back to thin balsa, but I'll have to buy some new fine-grained material at the LHS. Another possibility would be to use card stock, or individual planks (which is probably how the original building was constructed in 1870).

This pic has the assembly upside down. The square plastic base is on top and is not glued yet. You can see how the shapes reach the corners. I took care to ensure that the middle former is actually in line with the corners.

Here was the first piece of thin stock glued in place. To keep it tight to the curves, I took a 1" brass bar and pushed it against the sheeting and held it there with lots of rubber bands. You can see the distortion on the left lower edge. Plastic was held to ply with medium CA and accelerator.

When I tried it on the building, the width was correct. The height of the base is wrong, but I'll fix that with a new base.

Have a safe, dry weekend. If you're north of the Ohio Valley and in the Northeast, you're gonna get a nice reminder that there still is a Winter. We're supposed to get 2" here in the L'ville, but temps are going to drop fast and freeze everything quickly. It's when that sign, "Bridge freezes before road surface" is something to which you need to pay attention.

That does look like a tough piece to make look right.  I wonder what the full size carpenters ran into building the original.

Myles, the complexity of that roof makes this a very interesting build. Thanks for sharing.

Happy Monday!

Thanks gents! Yessir, that roof does add a lot of interest and is unusual. I tried Plan B today and then Plan C. Plan C worked! Exercised today for the first time since the Afib started on Thanksgiving. Took it easy, just did the recumbent bike and had no problems other that what I normally experience after not exercising for two months.

Plan B was to make a lamination of three layers of 0.010" styrene sheet. I tried to mold it around this nice brass round bar, and it did accept some curvature with the three layers held together with Testor's tube cement. But the curvature was insufficient and it was still distorting. So I reverted back to using balsa sheeting soaked in Vinegar which is the same technique I used in shaping the Mansard roof sheets in the Nighthawks Project, only this time the curvature was tighter. 

My difficulty with this was the crappy balsa I was using. This was left over from a 20 year-old B-17 Royal/Marutaka RC bomber kit that I built on commission. I used this terrible wood on the fuselage with great tribulations, but bought new balsa for the wing skins. The stuff in my scrap box was the bad stuff. If the weather was nicer and if I didn't start exercising today, I would have gone to Scale Reproductions, Inc. and bought some new thin sheeting (I still have to do that), so I struggle with this sub-par wood. But even so, I was able to soak it, shape it and glue it to the formers with medium and thin CA. The tension on the bend broke some of the joints loose more than one, but I prevailed gluing everything solid including my fingers occasionally. But it worked!

The balsa was trimmed near the top, bottom and corners, and then I soaked the end-grain with thin CA so I could use a sanding drum in the Dremel to shape the corners closer. I used the sandpaper on the surface place to sand the narrow side flush with the support structure, and then used the Precision Sander to sand the side edge to conform the plywood. I put each side on in turn sanding each as I went. To further sand the curves nicely with a piece of my self-adhesive medium grit sand paper onto the same piece of round brass. This worked perfectly.

After all the sanding, the lousy wood had a lot of imperfections, so I slathered Squadron and Tamiya fillers on and will finish sand them tomorrow. Then I put the base together to conform to both the Mansard extension and the shape of the narrow bottom of the top knot.

As I said, many, many times… It's not that I'm patient, it's that I am persistent… very persistent. My dad would always say, "Illegitimus non carborundum". Translation: Don't let the *******s grind you down! I knew I could figure out something that would shape this roof in a respectable manner. Scratch-building… no instructions.

Just went back on Google Earth to get some more looks at the actual building. I went down E.151st street on Google Street View and got a different view of the rear of the building showing the downspout which is just about how I envisioned it, and A BACK DOOR. I need a back door and wasn't sure where it would go. Now I know. There's a nice garden out back. The large brick wall is almost entirely ivy next to the parking lot. Anyone have a  way to make convincing ivy? I went on Gimp and removed some of the exaggerated perspective of the building.  Just noticed that the upper corner turns back on itself in the corner. I may be able to do this (or not…depending on how much overhang is left at the corner). The downspout collects water from a scupper at the top roof level through a hole in the parapet wall. The other stem comes from the rain gutter at the cornice. Glad I built that gutter into it. It also looks like the collectors are brass so I'll be able to use untreated brass for that function. I'll could use aluminum tubing for the downspouts since these are pretty shiny. If I'm not mistaken, the parapet wall top looks like it has ceramic caps on them. That top roof cornice is very evident in this image. And what's that protrusion sticking up from the rear wall? I didn't notice that before. It looks like the top of the stair and a roof doorway. Hhmmmm? Can I do that at this late hour? I have Tichy fire escapes that I may add to the building… or not.

The top knot roof is finished! Whew! It was the most challenging part of this build (so far), but it is now complete and ready to be installed once I paint it and add the roofing paper. I got the gable windows are finished and installed. I even made two of them in the open position. And lastly, I finished the "tile" facing pieces for the store window sills.

I remade the entire top knot base taking actual measurements off the Mansard front AND the Top Knot Roof base so all would engage properly. For some reason my Mansard roof side taper was not equal from side to side. I traced the taper as it was account for any field variations. I glued this up out of 0.040" styrene with 1/4" sq. styrene corner reinforcements to keep it nice and square. I also added a front piece that would sit flush behind the Mansard so the styrene formed a complete box. 

On top of this frame I glued an "almost" square piece of styrene sheet to further reinforce the geometry and to provide a broader gluing base for the top knot roof itself. The balsa/styrene composite top knot was glued to the based with thick CA. At the seam between the two main parts I glued a 1/2 round trim piece which was held with solvent cement since it was basically glued to the edge of the square transition piece. 

The laser cut wood rafters for this roof were not the correct length, so I made new ones out of styrene. These were glued to the upper roof ply with thick CA.

The Top Knot roof consists of four right triangles. They not since the roof has a bit of pitch which reduces the included angle by a few degrees. I started with a right triangle and then reduced the angle so the roof pieces would split the corner rafters down the middle so they would be glued on both sides. I made the roof piece of out 0.015". The first piece fit so well that I thought I could just trace it as a template for the other three. The 2nd one wasn't right, so I scrapped it and hand-measured the next one. I then traced that one thinking that it would be better, but I had to do the 3rd and 4th individually. The 4th one was particularly tricky since the final exposed rafter wasn't very wide and needed the roof to be dead on to contact both sides enough to glue it. But… it did get done.

Around the upper roof perimeter I glued 0.080" X 0.030" to trim the edge and seal the roof edge. On this will go a "rubber membrane" roof which will happen after it's all painted. When the trim is all added to the Mansard it's going to look very special. I did spray it with a light coat of Tamiya Fine White Primer. I may add another coat or just go with the white. Windows in the below and not installed yet. (neither are the Mansards which accounts for the masking tape).

The last thing I did was prepare the laser-etched front sill tile laminate. I first brush painted with 2 coats of the Tamiya gloss black. When dry I sprayed it with rattle-can Testor's high gloss coat lacquer (sold for model car finishes). When that was dry I did my joint compound trick. When dry wiped it with a damp paper towel. The end result is okay. It's a bit irregular and I may add some more grouting tomorrow. I'll see. The ragged one (top right) was hand made since I miscounted the number needed and had to make one more by scribing my own. It's going on the inside of the  right sill next to the front door and not really visible.

Little by little, all the bits and pieces are coming together. I'm writing the article about this project concurrently with the build so I won't have to re-create the steps in my memory.

 

Today was a hodge podge of activity. I spent time doing foundation painting and starting to mount, or at least figure out how to mount, the store windows. I opened up the scuppers to accept the water collectors from the roof, got the sill tile in place and, finally, decided to build another front window since the condition of the first one was fair to poor and getting worse each time I touched it.

I used the Pritt glue to hold the tiles to the sills and then enhanced with a dribble of thin CA. The front piece was 1.5 tiles too short, and the side sill tiles were about 8 tiles too long. Perfect! I was able to use a piece sliced off too extend the wall. I glued a piece of 0.040" square stock just on the front edges of the lower window sills will perfectly framed in the windows. I did an experiment of just gluing the right side windows to the building proper, to see if I could insert the entire base without wrecking anything. It worked, but I have to slip the ceiling in first to clear the window and then push the diorama straight up.

I used a 1/16" carbide router to hack open some scuppers that will drain imaginary rain water from the roof in two places. I'm going to try and replicate the intricate 3-way rain downspouts. There are two assemblies: one the back left corner and the side right corner. They're not visible from the decorative front of the building. The collection boxes will be soldered brass.

The tile front really adds interest to this building… in fact, there's interest in many places. When you look at this gem on Google Earth you realize that it's the only building of its type and era that exists anywhere around it. It's really good that it's been preserved.

The added the trim pieces to the main window sill and tried the window in its place. 

It was then that I decided the front window was crap and I had to remake it. Again… benefits of scratch-building… you can do stuff over.

This time, I worked specifically hard to prevent glue from getting on the styrene, and instead of using thin cement to hold the glazing to the windows, I used carefully applied Testor's tube cement before applying the strips and very carefully placing it on the glazing. It worked! The window is much cleaner and I'm still going to coat with Pledge to even it brighten it.

Here's the old window.

Here's the new one. Practice makes perfect! If I keep building these windows I might actually get good at it.

One of the weak spots is the right angle junction of the small side window to the main one. I went from using 0.010" sheet as the building matrix to using heavier 0.015" sheet. This will help a bit, plus I'm going to exert more care in matching the side window frame into the corner of the main window so it has better gluing surface.

It's funny… in the early 70s, while being a shop teacher, I actually researched being an architectural model maker. It was 20 years before computer aided design was widely used and 30 or more years before laser cutting and 3D printing could be used to quickly and accurately create architectural models. There were several big studios in Philly where I visited and spent time with the proprietors. It was very interesting, but a small, exclusive field and was already feeling stresses of the costs that a fine model was costing. So, of course, I didn't do it. But then here I am almost 50 years later building models of buildings using modern and old-school methods.

 

Myles,

Glad to hear you were able to exercise with no issue. I’m following this project with fascination, wonder, and a lot of head shaking (as in how’d he do that)? Thank you for taking us through the process.

Andy

Thanks for the good wishes. My pulse got up to 144 yesterday which is too high so I'm going to back it down a bit next time. 

Regarding "How did he do that?" I would hope my extensive descriptions would answer that question for you. If not, I need to do a better job.

Due to spending time at my daugher's waiting for a new washer to be installed, and taking #2 grandson to piano lesson, I had a shortened session today.

Finished gluing up the new front window. Besides changing gluing methods and being more precise, I slightly changed the method of framing the side window to give it more strength and more gluing surface area. I added framing on all four sides including the one mating in the corner with the front window. This adds some thickness to the forward edge of the side window, but greatly increased the rigidity of the corner joint. Here are the front and side windows clamped to an angle plate so it dried at a perfect 90 degrees.

After this was dry I added the small filler piece on the opposite end. Then I dipped it in the Pledge to clear up any scratches. I'm not sure if that step was productive since it introduced some new dust onto the finish even though I was trying to be careful. Need to build this stuff in a clean room...

I glued the sub-roof in place using Aleen's and while this was drying with some weight on it, I went to work preparing the oval windows with glazing.

At first I thought the internal step in the oval was too close to the edge to preclude using a shape instrument to trace the oval's i.d. on the clear styrene, so I came up with a scheme that I thought would work. I traced the o.d. and cut it out with scissors (the styrene's thin enough that you can use scissors for curves). I then measured the wall thickness with the caliper and transferred this to the oval clear part and cut out that shape which was supposed to be the window size. It was way too small and fell right through!

So I went to plan B when I found that I could trace the o.d. directly using a scribe. I then traced it and cut out this piece and after some edge sanding, it fit very well. I spent some time retouching the white paint before gluing in the windows permanently with some thick CA.

After both windows were glued in I went back and did more retouch up on the white so the glazing looks like was born there. So both oval windows are complete and ready for installation in the front Mansard.

I need to prepare the widow's walk laser cut pieces with the addition of some epoxied wires extending down from the bottom so there will be something positive to fasten them to the upper trim piece. After the epoxy sets I'll air brush them semi-gloss black. I need to create said upper trim package and prepare the other trim pieces for the front Mansard and rear edge of side Mansard. The sides of the lower top knot need to be shingled like the Mansard. This last bit should be fun and shouldn't take too long. I also have to build the two front doors. I may have snookered myself with the back door since my exposed brick work falls where the prototypes back door is. So I'm going to put my on the back corner of the left wall. Any ideas about how to add ivy vegetation to the big blank wall?

On the ivy, I have dribbled white glue in thin crooked streams resembling branches and sprinkled green ground foam.  Use the glue strait, don’t dilute.  In the case of such a handsome building I think something like Scenic Express foliage would look more realistic.

As to not explaining well enough, I think the problem with me is I don’t read closely enough.  You provide such detailed explanation, the only addition could be another photograph to go with the explanation.  This is a general comment, I have no particular procedure in mind!

Thanks Mark! I did find this in Scenic Express' catalog and it might work, although it represents an investment that may be out of proportion to its importance. The 3-sheet set should give me reasonable coverage to give the correct impression.

I realized when I got up this morning that I may have snookered myself by gluing the 2nd floor ceiling in place yesterday since I wanted to add the vision blocks to that floor AND I wanted to work on some exterior lighting like the prototype has. I had to put the vision blocks in with the building turned upside down. Instead of over-engineering these I simply cut them out of cardboard and pasted some black construction paper on them using PSA.

To make sure it didn't interfere with the fit of the first floor diorama, I measured its height and marked that height on the side wall. Then measured the cardboard to be slightly smaller than this distance. It's glued to 2nd floor ceiling with some Aleen's.

I glued a small ceiling piece over the front door area and was debating with myself if I wanted to have any lighting in that spot and decided, "NO". The ceiling is glued to the side window which is part of the building proper. Then I glued the main store window after shimming up the back edge of the inward facing window that leads up to the front door. I double checked to see if the building would go together and not interfere with either of the window assemblies. The main window was a little distressed so I relieved its height just a tad and now it fits completely flush when the floor is at its final position. All of this nonsense is because I wanted to make the insides removable. My wife suggested tonight that I probably risked wrecking the project in my attempt to make it removable, especially since I may never have to take it apart. She may be right … often is.

Another complication which I thought about this morning, and especially since I'd blocked access from above by gluing in that 3rd floor was making it easy to tap into power for the outside lighting. I engineered a system that will enable me to power the outside lights which are part of the building by the power hookup that's part of the first floor. I cut the power cord shorter and added a junction block (Euro Style). I stripped and prepared the leads for ferrules. But before adding the ferrules, I stripped another set of leads that would go to the building's front, and put both sets of leads into eh same ferrules thereby giving me a nice parallel circuit for two more LEDs. These too will be driven by their own CL2N3 driver chip and being parallel will enable to me to add more LEDs without reaching the voltage limit of a single series circuit. I then connected the main power lead to the other side of the junction block and led it out of the floor. The diorama is laying on its side with the base to the right.

Then, in my usual over-engineering mode, I wanted another junction nearer to the front where the outdoor lighting leads would connect. Had I thought this through, I could have eliminated the need for the first junction by simply making the front junction the only one and using that for the voltage tap. 20/20 hindsight. That's servo tape holding the junction blocks in place.

So… I'll be able to slide out the diorama and then disconnect the power to the outdoor lighting, again making it so the interior will be completely removable.

My last thing was to start building the front doors. As with everything else with this model, my laser-cut door pieces were too wide, so I'm scratch-building those too. As this pic was taken, I still need to cut out the white part, glaze the door and add the back framing.

Thanks for the update, Myles. The first two images say "image not found" . The last three images I can see fine.

Don't know what to tell you. I'm seeing all five. I reloaded the page and they were all still there.

Myles,

My statement “how’d he do that?” was more amazement than not following. Your explanations are straightforward and thorough. Thank you.

Andy

Better over engineered than under engineered! Always a good read!!   I'm having the same trouble as Pat earlier not seeing the first two photographs.  Yes if it is an expensive solution for one use, it isn't worth it.  

Myles,

You are doing an amazing job with this building.

Myles it looked really cool. Keep up the good work.

Popsrr posted:

Myles it looked really cool. Keep up the good work.

POPS!!  It's been a while.(or our timing has been bad) Nice to see a new post even if it's shy a War Bonnet

Did you ever finish and place the petroleum tanks? I don't think I ever got to see them placed.

(sorry Myles, I got exited. I thought this was WDYDOYLT thread)

Thanks Guys! Adriatic… no promblemo!

Happy Monday! Got the front doors built and installed today and did the Top Knot finishing.

As you'll see on the finished picture. The apartment door is much, much narrower than the main gallery door. I still don't know why I reduced the width of the building when I reduced the height and length… maybe I was trying to keep the proportions, but the result was both doors were smaller than my laser cut pieces and the left-hand door was very much narrower. As I said before, I could have removed stock from the brick wall next to the door, but this gets some more detailing which I didn't was to short change.

I installed both doors attached to the first floor plate. Both needed packing to fill the gaps between the front window assembly and provide a secure mounting surface. I used solvent cement to glue the styrene parts together and medium CA to glue the styrene to non-styrene parts. I have to be especially careful when assembling the base to the building, but everything does nestle in nicely.

I built the transom and door as separate pieces for the main door and this led to some minor alignment problems. For the apartment door, I simply built it as one piece and cut a line to simulate the door separation from the transom. For the door handle I bent some 1/32" solid aluminum rod which negated the need to paint it some metallic color. Nothing simulates metal better than metal.

Here're the two doors permanently installed. Circumferencely challenged individuals might have trouble with that left door's width. The front assemblies were a lot of work and fiddling.

I air-brushed white on all the top knot exposed surfaces, so it was time to finish this detail. The sides of the top knot get fish scale shingles which I did today. I then used my left over, self-adhesive, sheet roofing (Bar Mills) and a scale 4' wide. I put the roofing on and went back and CA'd any areas that weren't sealing properly.

I then masked the white edges and brush-painted two coats of Tamiya Nato Black (very dark gray). The second coat I brushed in the direction that water would flow. All of the edges and corners get additional fancy molding. It's going to look much more refined by the end of this week. The junction between the Mansard and the top knot also gets some of that 1/2 round trim once it's all glued together, which it isn't yet.

Trim work will start tomorrow.

 

 

Myles, The doors and whole store front looks great!  You can sure see the visitors to the art gallery admiring the art.

I never knew what to call the top knot until I saw you referring to it.  It looks great!  Do you know if there was a purpose for it other than decorative?  I had thought the purpose of them was for ventilation, like a cupola on a barn.  But your research has shown this is completely enclosed.  I'm just curious.

The building looks fantastic, Myles. I agree, it looks like most people would have to turn sideways to get through that door. The gallery looks amazing. 

Thank you! Mark, you may be on to something. In the aerial photos from Google Earth it looks like there are openings in the top knot's base, so ventilation may be its purpose.

Didn't get into the shop until 3:00 today so not much to show, but I did get started on the Mansard trim. There is a sequence of vertical/angled large partitions that add shape to the Mansard, and then there's the corner trim. There is upper trim in two layers; a lower layer connecting between the verticals and then the top trim which is an assembly.

I had to cut through the shingles and the construction paper which lies beneath. I then scraped the area clean to remove any PSA residue. I glued the styrene with med CA and trimmed the tops and bottom flush with the micro saw and then sanded flat.

To get the corners built and not have to do it handling the entire building, I glued the side and front Mansards together and then built the corner. The only additional trim on the side is the upper cornice trim and the back corner which gets treated the same as the front left corner which is not part of the front Mansard, but the building itself.

The only problem with now have a right-angled assembly to deal with is it makes it harder to cut the shingles et. al. away to prepare a good bed for the trim, but I'll work around it.

Spent a couple of hours building the decorative framing on the Mansard roof. The relief of Tuesday's work wasn't sufficient so I added another layer of 0.156" X 0.030" styrene. There are also some circular accents. I also started building the top cornice detail. 

The circles are slices of 1/4" dowel. I tried some other diameters including cutting my own pieces from styrene sheet, but the dowels offered the most practical way to produce the ornaments. I had to cut away the roofing every place I was running the trim. It was time consuming and stressful, but I did okay. Couldn't rush it. To keep all these angles consistent and not make too big a deal out of it, I just marked some lines with a Sharpie on the Chopper so I could line up the strips and duplicate the angle.

The top cornice has a concave curved inner surface which I tried (operative word… "tried") to replicate. I thought I could use some thin styrene stressed to form a curve between the trim. It didn't work. The solvent cement combined with the stress caused the thin material to collapse, and it pushed the elements out of square.

Plan B: Instead of trying to make the curve, I would just produce an angled piece to represent the curve. It's viewed from 4 feet away. I also didn't add the wide, top piece since this is going to overlap the upper roof and will provide the mounting surface for the widow's walk. I shaped one edge of the angular piece so it settled in at the correct angle. It wasn't elegant, but it did work. In the below pic you can see the doubled-up trim pieces.

The inner corners of the front trim also have some little filler pieces that nest into the corner angles. They are parts of a circle. I scribed the circles with my machinist dividers with the one leg sharpened to a chisel point. After setting up the angles across the diameter, I cut the little pie slices and then had to clean up the edges. These guys were little! I held them lightly in my parallel jaw, non-serrated pliers and sanded the edges to match the scribed circle line.

In this case, I didn't remove the roofing. I just CA'd the parts to the shingles which put them at the same level as the other trim. I actually tried to cut the roofing, but it wasn't going to be a good thing.

I was hoping to be able to NOT have to paint any of this, but there's enough variation in the surfaces to warrant painting. I also have glue on the roofing. So… I'm going to paint the roofing a gray…probably a bit lighter than the paper, and then mask and paint all the trim. I need to add flashing over the big window too. Would have liked to have avoided this additional work, but this roof is one of the building's focal points and it needs to be right.

I started working the cornice trim on the long roof also. This roof doesn't get any of the other vertical details except that wide piece at the rear.

This is definitely not a project for the faint-hearted. I really couldn't have attempted this one if I hadn't built the five other major scratch-builds that preceded it. A couple more weeks of effort and the building should be finished.  

Finished up as much of the upper cornice as I could do until gluing the Mansard onto the roof. And I also put the end trim on the left wall end so it is soon time to glue it to the model. I then used Tamiya primer on the Mansard and since it's such a nice gray I may leave the shingles that color. It brings out the shingles shape nicely. I'll mask the shingles and air brush the white trim.

I then finished up the chimney. Instead of using the laser cut pieces for the trim bands, I used a base of 0.060" X 0.040" strip to form the band base, and then hand laid my pre-cut styrene bricks left over from making other chimneys on other projects. The bands were attached with med CA.

I have full-length bricks, 2/3 bricks and half bricks. I try to lay them so the corners look correct.

With the bricks in place I needed to build the masonry cap. I first was using some MDF, but quickly realized that it wasn't working, so I used 1/8" square styrene. I wanted the overhang to be similar to the brick trim row. I cut the pieces to length on the Chopper and then sanded an accurate miter and attempted to perfectly match the lengths of the opposite sides. I glued them together with the help of a V-block and angle block. I glued the opposite corners together, and when they were set up I joined the sub-assemblies together.

For this picture I placed the cap on top. It was not glued yet.

After sanding and filling any corners that needed treatment, I masked all the previously painted laser-cut bricks and then sprayed it with the Rattle Can Tamiya Red Primer.

I mortared the bricks with Joint Compound and wiped it off while still wet.

I glued the cap on with med CA and then carefully measured, cut and fit four pieces of styrene to act as the flue pipe. This was glued with solvent cement. I broke the shape corners with a file and cleaned up any irregularities.

The last thing I did was paint the white styrene my concrete mix and then painted the insides of the flue flat black. 

Next up I will air brush and use some weathering powders to make it look like a chimney in use. The new bricks need some toning down since the others are laser cut in a textured product and the new bricks are smooth styrene so the joint compound gave them different looks. Tomorrow I'm going to glue the brass pins to the widow's walk before I forget. It will have the weekend to cure. I'm really itch'n to glue that Mansard on...

 

 

The mansard roof and chimney look great!

Fantastic work Myles! 

Andy

Thank you!

Friday I spent rebuilding two brass porch lamps. They were 23 years old and the candelabra sockets were completely deteriorated. We were about to buy new ones (over $400), and I thought about seeing if I could find these sockets on line. I found them for less than 3 bucks a piece. There were two per fixture so for less than $15 I bought sockets for both lamps. Replacement required complete disassembly, and while I gave it a good try, I could not really bring the brass back to life, but we'll live with it. What I did do was get two fixtures working perfectly for less than 15 dollars.

But I did work on the building today, although didn't get started until 3:30. I did two things: epoxied the pins to the Widow's Walk laser cut details and masked and painted the Mansard trim.

I had bought some 6 minute 2-part epoxy and that too, like the last batch I had to throw out, the resin had kicked as was almost a useless solid. So I dug out some that was at least 20 years old, but had not solidified. The pins are .021" phosphor bronze wire. When it cures tomorrow, I will airbrush them semi-gloss black.

Masking the Mansard was simple to do.

Air brushed it with the detail air brush Tamiya flat white. When it was dry enough to handle I pulled off the tape. I looks just the way I wanted it to. I want to paint the rain trough in front of the Mansard a darker color since I doubt that it would be bright white. Before gluing any other roof detail in, I really need to decide on and then build whatever form of exterior lighting I'm going to use. I need to do this now since I will be turning the building upside down and would damage the roof it was all installed.

There's another trim panel on the front left next to the smaller door that I need to build. After this is done, it will be time to glue the Mansard down and get the gables installed. Some final roof detailing is in order. I need to create and access door to the roof area (or not).

The pin epoxy trick worked! I poked the pins into some foam and airbrushed the widow's walk semi-gloss black. These are now ready to be installed when that time comes.

I built the left side trim, glued it in place including the last of the 3D printed doodads and then airbrushed it in place with flat white. I had to mask the entire building face to do the airbrushing.

Here's the front trim complete.

Lastly, I masked and then brush-painted artist tube acrylic Mars Black for the attic space AND the waterway in the gutter system. I'm not making the same mistake by leaving bare wood in a partially visible space like I did in the turret window on Nighthawks.

I also did another repair project today. Our Waterpic shower head was just getting awful with water squirting in all directions, and many holes dribbling or completely blocked. I couldn't figure out how to take it apart, so I went on Google and found a nice video on disassembling a model similar to ours. After taking it apart I found little chunks of precipitated lime clogging about 1/2 of the holes. I soaked it all in CLR and then used a small drill in a pin vise to open up all the holes. I put it back together, put it in the shower and tested it. It worked great until the front control ring blew off. I hadn't realized that in order to get it apart I had to break it away from the backing piece, which didn't remove when you took out the plastic nut that holds its all together. I took it back to the shop and mixed up some of the same epoxy I used on the pins yesterday, and it's curing nicely. I put it back in the shower and it will be okay for use tomorrow.

The front trim really looks great!

My wife would die if she didn't have a working shower head!  It's a good thing we have two showers!

   I ended up with 4 or 5 lamp kits over the years at yard sales. I also still have single, two way, and three way lamp sockets and base sockets, just used my last ceramic extra in the garage last year.  When the national big box home improvements drove the locals under I bought a "lifetime" worth of a lot of things for dirt cheap. At 1¢ or 2¢ I didn't buy lawn bags for a decade either, lol.

  I just used one lamp socket in faux fireplace logs the other day with a 15w vs a 7w candlebra (toying with tv backlighting levels...kinda funny, I don't really watch it) . This one has an extra long 3"(?) lamp control shaft topped with a dark "wood-brown", octoganal at least, vintage twist knob. I'm tempted to try to run the fast angle sized shaft out of a hole in a log's branch stub, if I can get the knob off & use a small hole I think it may hide in plain site. 

  Your lamp reminds me of designers wishing petina would set in sooner, on copper gutters espially. And the homebuyers that would inquire about "getting those fixed" usually about 2 years later (it's just getting started?)   "Green&black" = "pure gold" to these home designers

I have chemicals that can patina quickly, although as noted in the Nighthawks build I didn't use it for the flashing since I couldn't use it after the flashing was installed. I may use copper again on this build, but this time, I'll pre-treat the flashing.

At noon I had my first physical therapy session to see if we could improve my sciatica. My son in law orthopod suggested trying PT first since he didn't think I had spinal damage. I believe he was right… he usually is. I have two more appointments next week and exercises to do to strengthen my core and limber up so very tight muscles. So I got to work at 3:00 again today. But… got some stuff done.

I put on the gallery name. I had made these decals when I did the interior lettering. I had three different sizes not knowing which would fit best. I put a bit of gloss clear on the white paint first to give the decals a better surface to which to adhere.

The last store front item was the goose neck light that would illuminate the sign board. Again, I made it with the Scale University white metal industrial lamp shade and a piece of 1/16" aluminum tubing. I also used the surface mount LED with 30 gauge magnet wire to power it. To hold the soldered light into the shade AND insulate it at the same time, I put in a liberal amount of Bondic UV curing material, pulled the LED into it and cured it. Then added more to surround the LED and cured it again. The results were terrific. Not only did it completely stabilize the LED, but it also pretty much glued the aluminum tube in place also. I had to just add a bit of thin CA down the joint to solidly hold the shade.

I machined a little base piece to finish it off and primed the assembly after masking the LED area. Then I brush-painted the shade and base piece with semi-gloss black. I drilled a hole in the wall, which miraculously, was just above where the 1st floor ceiling was. Dumb luck. It was so close that the drill actually made a little divot in the ceiling MDF. I made that divot bigger so it would bind the wires.

I used a piece of 3" shrink tubing to stabilize the magnet wire and then prepared the connection to the building's power grid. I soldered heavier gauge wire to the negative lead and shrink tubed it. I then soldered the CL2N3 LED driver chip to the positive lead since my tie in to building power was before the other driver. I insulated this also with shrink tubing. I tested it and got just what I wanted.

In real life, you can read the lettering under the light. Our eyes have a significantly higher dynamic range than the iPhone's. When I tied all the wiring in to the junction block I was Concerned that it was to visible from the outside in the little door, so I popped the junction block off the side servo tape and then added some new tape and fastened to the 2nd floor and tested it all again. It worked.

But, as luck would have it, where I put the junction block now completely interfered with the 2nd floor vision blocks.

And this kept the assembly from seating properly. So… I moved it back to where it was originally and buttoned the building up including screwing it together. That all happened after I re-glued to people to the gallery floor. The last one, I wised up and used hot glue instead of CA. Hot glue is flexible and more forgiving. I should have used it for all the people.

The front light was very bright… and that was after deliberately letting some black paint to obscure some of the LED. 

I put a piece of masking tape over the LED to see what it would do.

It reduced the light by half, but was very yellow (the Tamiya tape's color). So it does work to attenuate the glare. I will experiment with various forms of blocks to get the color right. What I need is a strong neutral density filter. The nice thing is that the LED basically produces no heat. You couldn't do this to an incandescent bulb. I really like how even the lighting is inside the gallery. It looks like a really building's lighting.

Outstanding work Myles. I really enjoy the process.

Andy

Well physical therapy has helped my sciatic nerve, along with prescription and steroid injection.  Tomorrow is my 19th visit to PT.  I hope you get relief quickly!!!

The sign and lighting really spruce up the outside!!

Myles, I love the way this is turning out.

Thanks fellas! And thanks for the back encouragement. I'm doing all the exercises the PT gave me to strengthen my core. But it seems to be more tender now… Like all exercises, it's not instant pudding and it takes weeks rather than days to make the difference. I ordered and received a microwavable heat pad to apply after exercises. It arrived today.

Didn't post yesterday which is the reason for this Saturday post. I'm annoyed at my audience. How come you guys didn't notice that I perforated the blank walls for the upper gutter outlet ON THE WRONG FLOOR! While waiting for the glue to dry on the Mansard, I started planning for the complicated downspout system. I'm staring at the building and something didn't seem right. I then started measuring for the capture boxes (to be made out of brass) and it hits me. I have the upper scupper holes coming out of the ATTIC, not the upper roof parapet. 

So I mixed up some Milliput 2-part epoxy putty and plugged the errant holes, then laid out and drilled the corners of the new locations which I opened with the Dremel and a 1/16" carbide router. After some sanding and maybe additional Tamiya filler, the mistakes will be gone. 

As a reminder, here's my SketchUp drawing of the downspout system. This repeats on the other blank wall so no downspouts appear in the decorative areas of the building. It's obvious that the upper collector pulls water off the upper roof, carries it to the lower junction where it joins water from the collector at the edge of the Mansard trim. 

Anyway… I then tried to fabricate my first collector box out of thin sheet brass. The operative word is "tried". Here I'm drilling the inlet holes to receive the water from above and let it out the bottom. Always clamp sheet stock to a drill press table. If the drill grabs (and often does in brass), the spinning sheet would be a weapon. There was a large burr on the bottom even though I backed up the drilling with a piece of pine.

I cut the shape out with small tin snips and then a nibbler. My cutting wasn't precise AND my sheet metal design really wasn't correct. You can't bend a small sheet metal box without relieving the corners. The sides did not meet well and the joint gap was really too big for successful soldering. I bent the 1/8" thick wall tubing using a spring tube bender. Thick wall forms tight radii better than thin wall, which will collapse on tight bends.

The box is a) not square, and b) has huge gaps. In this case I laid out the cut lines directly on the brass. Now I'm going to design the box on CorelDraw and paste the drawing on the brass, and hopefully it will be a better pattern.

While all this was going on, I was pre-treating the copper foil for the flashing with chemicals to age it. I taped the copper foil with its backing on a piece of Masonite. I should have done this when I did all that copper work on Nighthawks… live and learn. The chemicals don't work well on the copper as it is. I had to use some fine steel wool to rough up the surface so the chemicals whet it evenly. First I brushed on several coats of the blackening chemical. After it reaches the darkness I wanted, I washed it off with water, dried it and then applied the patina chemical. This too required several applications. When it was dry I sprayed it with some Dull Coat to fix the patina. If not, the blue/green powder on the surface can rub off.

The last thing I did was glue the upper roof in place weighting it down down so it dried in the right location. Chimney and front gable are not glued in yet. I tested it all today and the roof and Mansards are solid, ready for further detailing. The black paint gutter makes sense when I look at it. I'm going to put some 1/4 round styrene trim at the bottom edges of all the Mansards to finish off that edge and cover any small gaps. BTW:  you can see that I aged the chimney cap with some black pastel powder. I also attempted to dull down the newly painted plastic "bricks" with some white weathering powder. It helped, but could be even more.

I'll be adding the upper trim band on the Mansard upper lip which serves as the water barrier for the roof edge and the mounting space for the widow's walk trim. Still mind-wrestling how I'm going to flash the gable-to-Mansard joint. BTW: I also have to add some roofing material to the curved gable roofs.

Meanwhile, I'm doing final designs on the 40" engine house. This time, I'm actually spending that time to understand not only what it will look like, but how will I build it. I've already picked up a bunch of details that weren't thought through and would have caused troubles.

The Military Modelers Club of Louisville (of which I'm now a member) has a new member who is the technical manager of the University of Louisville's Additive Manufacturing Research Center. It is one of the most comprehensive labs for 3D printing in the nation. We're having our next meeting at that center. AND… apparently you can rent time on their laser cutters for $4.00 an hour. If that number is correct, making the engine house just got much easier. Right now I'm paying $1.00 per minute to cut my models. That price includes the raw materials, so the price may not net out to be quite as dramatic as it seems on the face. But, I can imagine that it will be much more economical for me. 1/4" MDF is not that expensive in the quantities needed for a model.

Even making the trusses for this monster is going to be challenging. Just for the raw styrene shapes it's going to cost me around $100.00, and then I have to build them. I could build the model without doing the interior work and greatly reduce the complexity and cost, but it would be nearly as cool.

 

  I've got a set of "weights" "just like that". I mean impulsive thoughts of checking my box "just like that"

   Schools are a great place to find a talent for cheap. The material, electrical and a small machine fee might be all you pay for. Maybe tip the talent. Well if you want to retain them bad enough.

  ( I started doing graphics ceramics woowork and art for folks in 7th grade. Money and an A. Had to love it   In trade school the tips and business cards padded my butt pretty good) 

  It's been years, but I used to eat at a culinary school sometimes. Full dress tables and enough "mystery" silverware to confuse you at times (they eagerly "save you" if you ask or comment), full dress staff, a casual yet "fine dining" experience. Some folk go black tie, some go in cut offs , T, and cap.

  It often involved accepting whatever you get without complaint at times. Well, actually, just be nice about it, they tried.. and don't lie about the experience either. Not much is learned without critique. If something goes wrong you might be SOL though.(.. the food was ALWAYS great .

Whoops!!  You caught us sluffing off!!  Didn’t catch that It was the wrong floor!  It’s hard to get good help these days.

The downspout work is coming along nicely!  Planning how the engine house will go together ahead makes sense.  It seems it is like putting together a puzzle.  

 

I got a quote to cut the engine house windows that's not out of line. I'm still refining the building itself and pretty much have it finalized.

I posted this just a minute ago on another thread dealing specifically with Engine Houses, but I'll show it again here. I made an exploded drawing of the whole deal showing the inner and outer buttresses. The outers are just simple wood strips, but the inners have more structure to support the roof trusses and the large I-beam holding the gantry track. The inners will probably be a hodge podge of laser cut strips and conventionally cut lumber to bulk them up.

I anyone has suggestions on building those inner buttresses that won't break the bank, I'm interested. As it is it's going to be another expensive project. I've offered to do drawings for others if you'd like it in a different length and track spacing. I'm stuck with the 3.5" spacing resulting from using Ross #4 yard ladders.

Now back to the Bronx… I installed all the Mansard windows and chimney. Started putting in the 1/4 round molding and began putting in the age weather stripping. I did draw up more specific plans to cut the brass for the downspout system. I first drew a tapered box in SketchUp and actually bent the pieces into position to see if they were correct. I did have to make some minor changes to get this right. I also made the side opening slightly oval since the pipe will be entering straight into a tapered surface. The real ones are tapered in two directions forming a square funnel. I chose to go a bit simpler just tapering in one direction. No one will care...

I didn't cut them out today, but instead got back to all the gable installation. Before I did that, I sanded the erroneous scupper hole filler and repainted the blemishes with the Antique White.

Before installing, the gables needed roofing. I painted some of my very-diminished stock of the Bar Mills "tar paper" roofing some Nato black and applied it to each gable.

The first window in was the front double gable and the oval windows. I used a combination of Aleen's and CA for this. I then cut and installed the 1/4 round molding to trim out the bottom edge. I then installed the four side gables. The front one fit too tightly and was distorting the bottom of the window frame. I finally removed it and shaved a smidgen off the bottom third of the opening on both sides. That corrected the problem. The rest of them went in with less trouble. The chimney was glued to the sub-roof and then tacked where the back touched that reinforcing bar that connects both side Mansard pieces together. Finally I started applying the pre-aged copper flashing and was very happy with the result.

Here's a chimney closeup. I first added some step-cut copper to the chimney before installing, but it really didn't help cover the gap. So I ended up putting a wider piece that covers both sides of the joint. If you closely I've put some over the front gable. This will be repeated on all the others to cover that large gap. I still have to use the 1/4 round on the side Mansard.

I need to put some parapet capping on the as one of the roof detailing tasks. I've entertained thoughts about resin casting some scale terra-cotta styled caps that would be appropriate for building of this age. I can sculpt the master in Super-Sculpey and the make a silicone mold and go to town. The only problem is if I make only one master, molding takes about 1/2 per piece. I'll need about 20 pieces (guesstimate) so you're looking at 10 hours of molding time. It would look very cool though...

I could probably be done this building by the end of the week if… I didn't have two PT appts. to keep working on my lower back. So let's say that completion day will be the end of next week. Hmmm…. as I'm writing that I may be forgetting that just because the building proper is done, doesn't mean the project is. I still have to create the baseboard, the parking lot next door, the signage for said parking lot, any lighting and that wall of ivy. So let's let completion date float a bit.

 

The engine house plan looks great!  

The Bronx building looks great!  It will all come together the right time 

The house looks fantastic, Myles. That engine house looks like a nice project. Especially the detailing. 

Pat

Thank you!

Very short session today since I had PT that killed most of the afternoon. Then I went to Costco to get some berries and when I went to pull out my membership card I see that my Visa is not in my wallet, which freaked me out and killed my Costco visit. After calling my wife, she concluded it was at the Mexican restaurant we ate at on Saturday night. A phone call proved her correct. Later I picked up the card and finished my berry buying venture.

But what I did get done made a significant difference. I finished the flashing, completed the top trim, fixed up some gaps on the roof, and added the remainder of the 1/4 round trim. Starting with the quarter round… I did have a small gap in the trim under the double gable which I filled with some Tamiya putty, and then did touchup painting of all the white parts that were showing some wear and tear. My flashing is not quite kosher since it's sitting on top of the shingles whereas it should be coming from underneath. I may add some individual shingles to simulate the overlap. The big arrow shows the seam that was filled. The black gutter will be touched up shortly.

The pre-treated copper really works! This flashing filled those voids and makes it look like everything fits as it should. The long 1/4 round also nicely finished up the bottom joints of all those disparate components.

This image shows the top trim piece installed. To this piece the widow's walk will be fastened. That will occur after the roofing material will be finished. Under the top knot (not glued in pic) I masked the glue area so the roofing will not get underneath. The roofing material will be black paint with fine gravel adhered to it. The arrows point out the top trim AND the 1/4 round. I will put the black tar paper up the parapet as it should be to prevent a leaky roof.

The last thing I did was make another attempt at making the water box. This time I glued the pattern to the brass using PSA and then spent more care cutting it out and drilling the relief holes in the corners. To help prevent carbide drill breakage, I used some brass cutting oil. This prevents the drill from grabbing as it breaks through and gives more life to these delicate tools. I then used the tin snips/nibbler combo again and filed to the line. While not perfect, the results were significantly better than the first attempt and I will surely get better the more of these I do. I need four of these per system. Each box has a slightly different configuration depending on where the pipes connect. I'm getting there.

 

Oh it is a shock to the system to realize you are missing a card or wallet!  I’m glad you got it back!

The flashing and trim looks great! Yes, it would be better if you could add some shingles over the flashing.  It shows up on my iPhone 6s.  

The fill under the front window looks like my temporary repair job that turned into permanent, at least for me, on a cape cod house we owned in Virginia.  I intended to replace the  wood siding under the dormer windows, but figured some layers of caulking could Buy me some time.  Then I got the transfer to West Virginia and we accepted the relocation company’s as is offer, and I was off the hook.

It is another great building!

Again, with PT exercises, my shop day was cut short, but not unproductive. I applied the roofing material, but I'm concerned that the grain size of my gravel is just too darn big. While that was drying I built some more water boxes. Each time I do one it's getting easier and they're coming out better. "Practice makes perfect"! I did get the shingles over top of the front flashing. On the side windows, there's not enough shingles to overlap the flashing so I left it alone.

I masked the top facing of the top trim boards so paint wouldn't get on them. The gravel I have looks more like an S-gauge ballast than O'scale roofing granules. It was very light color so I first soaked it with some Tamiya Panel Line Accent Black. I then liberally applied a Mars Black/Neutral Gray mix of Artist Acrylics and sprinkled the stained gravel onto it. I then dripped a liberal amount of W-S Scenic Cement and should have set it aside to dry overnight. Instead of just letting alone, I decided (wrongly) to tip the building over the trash can and let the excess fall away. Why it was a mistake was because I also painted the parapet walls and the gravel then stuck to that making a mess. I cleaned it up, repainted the damaged areas, AND THEN put it aside to dry. The parapet top edge is a mess, BUT will be covered by the parapet cap system which I have to build. You can see the buried flashing in the front if you look hard.

With the water boxes, the real improvement was a) using the paper templates, and b) perfecting the cutting technique. I stick the pattern with the longest edge flush with the brass edge. I then cut the sides and the long edge of the tapered back panel with the mini-tin snips. Next I use the nibbler on the tapered edges and straight sides of the two ends. I cut as close to the taper as possible, but stop before I get too far since the square nibbler blade can't cut into a acute angle. The little bit left is cut using a jeweler's saw with a very fine blade since the brass is 0.010" thick. I file and straighten all the surfaces including filing the area around the pipe holes. By careful cutting and filing, the folds went better and I got tight corners that were very easy to solder using the RSU. I do the folding with the template still glued on and then soak the workpiece in acetone to dissolve off the adhesive before soldering. After soldering I dip the piece in isopropyl alcohol to remove excess flux (using rosin core solder and TIX liquid flux). I have to make 8 parts with the middle boxes being mirrored for the two sides of the building. Holes exiting out of the sides of the tape are made slightly oval using the Dremel with a cylindrical diamond-coated burr.

After they're all made and soldered to their respective downspouts I will age the brass to make it look more like old copper. I will have it done tomorrow or Friday. BTW: that pipe is not soldered. When it is, it will exit straight out to the side, thus requiring the slightly oval hole.

After the roof is cured tomorrow, I'll re-evaluate whether or not to strip the larger gravel and do something else. 

The gravel dried nicely and I'm going to leave it alone. I'm getting the hang of building the downspout system. I got one full set done, chemically treated and waiting for installation, and got 3/4 done on the second set. They're mirror images of each other and of course I made one part backwards. After this picture was taken I added 0.032" pins to several of the boxes to affix them to the wall and made a loop that I soldered to the midsection of the long downspout to stabilize that long run.

Here's the downspout for the second set showing that mid-loop. I rediscovered that I had soldering paste in a syringe applicator. This further simplified soldering the boxes since I apply the paste to both inside corners and heat each side with the RSU until the solder flows nicely. I solder the downspout to the box with TIX low temp solder so the other joints don't de-solder too readily.

Here's what I have done so far. Notice how aging the brass really adds to effect. The top section of the 1st set is over at my workbench since I'm using it as a model to get the dimensions equal. You can see the added mounting pins in this image. Without the pins, gluing those brass boxes to the wall would be very insecure.

Have a PT appt tomorrow so don't know how much more I'll get done. But it's already Friday again. I don't know what it is, but weeks never flew by so fast when I was working. Maybe it's because I get up around 9:00 and don't get done messing around until after noon. When I worked, I was up at 6:00 and often had a 45 to 60 minutes to commute to work and then back. In the winter both ends were in the dark, so the days just lasted longer. Longer days = longer weeks.

The place looks so great, only questions I have are when can I move in, and how much is rent? Fantastic work, amazing details as always.

Myles, the aged brass looks great!!  I really like the completed downspout on the one side.  Yes, I can see the pins are necessary for gluing them on.  On the prototype there would be hangers attached a various key spots.

Being laid off for the last 4 months after a year of part time, I agree I don't make quality use of all my time.  My insurance approved PT expired yesterday.  I was given a gray tee shirt with the facility's name in white on the front.  It will work for mowing grass and such!  I wish you well on your therapy!!

Dave, Are you ready to move in to the Bronx?  Since you live in New Jersey if I recall correctly, I'm guessing you may have been there.  I've never been to NYC or NJ for that matter.  

Mark Boyce posted:

Myles, the aged brass looks great!!  I really like the completed downspout on the one side.  Yes, I can see the pins are necessary for gluing them on.  On the prototype there would be hangers attached a various key spots.

Being laid off for the last 4 months after a year of part time, I agree I don't make quality use of all my time.  My insurance approved PT expired yesterday.  I was given a gray tee shirt with the facility's name in white on the front.  It will work for mowing grass and such!  I wish you well on your therapy!!

Dave, Are you ready to move in to the Bronx?  Since you live in New Jersey if I recall correctly, I'm guessing you may have been there.  I've never been to NYC or NJ for that matter.  

Well, it would be full circle I suppose sort of, lol. When my grandfather came to the USA was back in the early 1900's, he took up residence in I think the Bronx for a while. Some real funny stories my late uncle used to tell me about his father. My dad really never told me much about him though, but I guess that was because I was 2 when my grandfather passed, and was 18 when my father passed.

I have been to NYC a few times, and a little further up state. I think I would need to pop about a bit more, maybe a vacation. I'd like to see Cooperstown someday, but I'd also love to get out to Pittsburgh for a Steelers home game as well. Sent what the future holds, maybe next year.

There is always next year, Dave.

Yeah, all starts with planning. See how this year comes along, and go from there.

Happy Monday… what again! I've been trying to figure out why the days and weeks are going by so fast and have some up with a possible theory (despite that I'm just getting old). When I was a working man, I was up a 6:00 a.m. and on my way to work at 7:00. Now I'm up somewhere around 9:00 and don't actually sit down for breakfast until almost 10. That means I'm unconscious for about 3 more hours per day than before. That's 15 hours a week. No wonder the days felt longer….They were longer. This is a long post so bear with me...

We're getting near the end folks! I got the Widows Walk installed, installed all the those crazy downspouts, put in the plumbing stack, added weathering on the top knot, added some weirs so "water" would end up in the water buckets, and started making a master for the parapet capping system.

Mounting the downspouts should have been a no-brainer, or at least a half-brainer. Instead it had the makings to be a real pain in the butt. Several things contributed to this. First there was breaking four 0.032" carbide drills. Drilling the hole wasn't breaking them; pulling them out of the hole did. They're $1.50 each, so I blew $6.00 making 8 holes. Then there was the breaking of the solder joint when I was putting too much pressure on the brass pins when inserting them in the holes. This was complicated by having the aging treatment affecting solder ability. I ended up filing off the old solder. I also changed from using the TIX, which seems to solder well ONCE, but doesn't seem to have any strength on re-soldering. Instead, I used standard 60/40 rosin core. I was afraid of un-soldering the whole deal so I clamped a hemostat to prevent the long downspout from coming loose.

To close up any gaps around the water boxes, I added some shaped styrene to act as a weir. I added some styrene up top also for the same reason so the "water" would leave by the scuppers and not run over the edge around the parapet wall.

The plumbing stack was just a piece of 1/8" brass given some aging.

On Saturday, I went with a friend to an open mic jam session at Mom's Music in Louisville. We didn't play. I was just checking on the competition. I am totally out of shape having not played much at all lately and have no callouses. I did by a neat Wah Wah pedal on sale for $70. I am now officially entering the 1970s musically. Anyway… this person is the retired CEO of a large, commercial roofing company. He said my gravel is okay, and he said there probably would be a roof access hatch in the top knot. So I added one today and then glued the top knot in place.

I then added all the Widows Walk pieces. I was able to neatly join them and had plenty of extra to use if I broke anything. I did… The pins worked well and I added some thick CA to join separate sections and to tie down any loose ends.

Finally, I started crafting the master for the terra cotta parapet capping. I'm using Super Sculpey to make the master. We just bought a new toaster oven after our 30 year old Black and Decker's toast switch stopped latching. But the oven controls still work fine, so it's now in the shop where I can more conveniently bake my Sculpey stuff. I went on line and found some specs on these.  There was some vintage ones on eBay and they measure 26" long. I found a piece of 1/4" MDF scrap from this building and molded the clay on top so it would be the correct bottom shape. The master doesn't have to be strong… just strong enough to hold its shape when I do any finishing on it and when surround by liquid silicone.

It's not final shape. I've learned that you shouldn't waste your time trying to get Sculpey perfect before firing (275° for 15 minutes for each 1/4" of thickness). Instead, you make a basic shape, fire it, and then it's stable enough to work more details and get it perfected. Once I get it the way I want it, I will create a silicone mold and cast a bunch of replicas for the total cap. A 1 foot scale wall thickness is not out of line with real world practice.  I may make two of them since it takes about 1/2 hour for each resin cast to cure. That will be many hours of curing time. I may start building the Thunderchief while I'm casting all these multiple parts.

I put some weathering powders on the top know roof so it wasn't so pristine.

With the parapets finished the building WILL BE DONE. What's left is creating the base plate and siting it on the layout. I'm still debating (in my mind) how to fit it at the corner I want and what to do next door to its left. This building is 2" wider than Saulena's and that 2" will need to come out of the Sinclair Station. 

Here's where Saulena's and Sinclair Station will go. Sinclair is 17" deep, and the space near the tracks on the front is 15". I can get the 2" off the back of Sinclair's base plate and it will simply flip from one side of the street to the other.

Then Bronx and the Appliance store will move into the vacated spot. Bronx is a foot long so fits perfectly in length. It's 2" wider and that will come out of the parking lot. The appliance store will be rotated 90 degrees to the right some the display windows face the parking lot. Should be enough for about 8 to 10 parking spots.

Lastly, I still need to find stuff for the vacant lot on the other side of town. Ideas are welcome.

On another topic: I bought Phillips replacement LED tubes for a florescent fixture in out master closet. These are not plastic tubes like occasionally goes on sale in Costco, but are glass enclosures and very substantial. They're not cheap ($16/tube) but their light is terrific. You can get them in about four color temps. I chose 3500k, which is a neutral white. I was buying complete fixtures to replace all the florescent fixtures in the basement since I had tried the Costco tubes and one caught fire. I now know that you have to be very specific about what types of ballast is in the existing fixture to get the most compatible LED. The Phillips lights are correct. Now I'm re-thinking actually replacing the rest of the fixtures, since it's not so easy restringing lights over an existing layout. Replacing the tubes is much less hassle since I don't have to disturb the power connections. It's within a couple of bucks of buying new fixtures. Then I had the problem of not only disposing of the florescent tubes, but also the now obsolete fixtures. So from now on, I'll be replacing the tubes one fixture at a time. All the lights over the town are now LED. The rest of the layout is Florescent. You can see the level of light intensity is much higher with the LEDs.

You come up with a lot of little details like the terra cotta covers and the wier to direct water flow.  Now I see one use of the top knot.  I wouldn't mind an access door to my roof and especially my dad's house and shop.  I don't know if I will be able to go back up on Dad's roof again to point the chimney and fix a tiny leak in the roof vent joints that broke loose 6 months after I had it fixed, temporarily.  

Yes I do see more light intensity over the town.  I was glad to see the photographs of the existing town and your plans on moving buildings.  I forgot what the town looked like overall.  You had some photographs when placing the Night Hawks. but this shows much more.  

  I came across a "forgotten" detail you might be interested in using on one of the really old buildings; gutter valve handles.

 Before city plumbing, you likely had a cistern well for water storage below grade (basement) and gutter valves to divert rain water into it until full. Fancy systems would have a float to move the valve back to yard discharge once full. Others might have a few valves outside to be turned manually once full.  If you come across an odd basement "bunker" with a doorway later cut into it, that may have been a cistern at one time.  I've seen a few, but never knew what they were for or why a fat crock pipe was high up in the basement wall aimed up at  the house corners vs down and towards the sewage lines.  One of those times years of "useless" info bits suddenly clicks into place as a likely explaination to many of the little mysteries encountered.

 This thread has been one of the best ever for watching an evolution of a big design imo. Not Big Boy big, but "normal big" and a different type of focus all together so far.

I'm in no hurry to see you finish either... leaving me just that much more bored.  It's been a while since I said a thank you for that too, so thanks

 We all knew it would be, but it is really beginning LOOK like something very special now fyi. So hurry up not finishing it too fast so I can enjoy the completed view 😵...

Butch, your second comment is right in line with my thinking.  Certainly a different focus from Elliot and others.   I appreciate the work documenting everything, Myles!! 

I wonder if that is how they got water in the cisterns at my Dad's house, the one I grew up in, and am now maintaining until our older daughter and her husband can get their low budget fixer-upper into a state they can sell it.  There were two cisterns outside the basement door at the lowest corner of the house.  Dad and I, and with some help of my brother when he was visiting, pumped the one out that was caving in and filled it up with broken concrete, bricks, stones, anything.  The other cistern is still there as is.  I kept the pump, etc we used when we had someone in buying salvage, because our son-in-law may need it some day.  Dad had never cleaned out all the junk grandpa had accumulated.  No it wasn't of any value to American Pickers.   The house was built in 1888, still has a brick outhouse standing, and is in an area that was very rural until developers started buying up farms for houses.  The house isn't far from 2 highways that weren't even built until I was driving, that is why the area is changing.

I kinda know what you mean, though "modern" (57) this house used to have tractors cutting through the neigborhood all day when I was a kid, farmers stands everywhere and there was no police force at all until the early 70's.  It was as rural as a suburb can be.

  You could see for a couple miles once you cleared the sub. Today, you can't really see a clear quarter mile anywhere and the city has always been in the top ten for our states population beginning by the late 70s. All the nice farm houses are pretty much gone now... a few moved to a park. There are lots of small 30s-40s houses kinda spread around too, though they aren't really pretty any more.

Keep the pump. That's worth more than gold should it ever be needed again. There are still three old ones in our family.... just incase.  (and a working one at the cottage. Likely over 100 years old and holds prime even if unused for the summer.. good thing as it has a 50yard & 15ft drop to work a draw through. It's got one of the longest pump handles I've ever seen too. 

Nice comments guys! I don't think I'm going to add anything more other than the vegetation growing up the blank walls and maybe another TV antenna like the one on Nighthawks. Unlike you guys, I'm generally happy to see a project done once I'm into the multi-month duration. Besides, I have that massive F-105G Thunderchief to build on commission and then it's on to the Engine House. I'm finalizing its plans and working right now with Stephen Milley of Rail Scale Models to get an estimate of cutting both the windows and the main building. It's good to have choices re: custom laser cutting. Additionally, there may be a way to cut it myself at the U of L Additive Manufacturing Lab. Choices, choices.

I did get some new stuff the other day. My new True Sander and Duplicutter II arrived from Northwest Short Line. I simply wore the other two out. They were at least 10 years old. I dropped them more times than I'd like to admit and it damaged them eventually to failure. Clear to see old vs. new. The new Duplicutter is below the old True Sander. These tools are indispensable scratch-building items. And I've produced a lot of work with them.

Didn't get into the shop today, but will work tomorrow. I'm going to start moving out the Sinclair and Saulena's and make the changes to the Sinclair base to fit in its new space. I just went downstairs to bring a new supply of surface mount LEDs that arrived to the shop and was handling the clay parapet tile and broke most of it. It was too thin. I'll make another tomorrow with a little more cross-section. I may also add a bit of wire in the friable edges which could use some reinforcement. 

Yes, we got too carried away for sure.  I agree it is about time to button this one up and move on to the Thundercheif!  I will like to see how the building arrangements work out on the town

Myles, the Bronx house is magnificent. Fantastic job. 👏👍

Myles, your work is Fantastic and I look forward to seeing your progress updates. I think you mentioned a place you do business with, The Roundhouse in Louisville Ky, ?, if so, do you live in that area? I visit that hobby shop and like Tom and Kevin, they are very nice folks to deal with.  Thanks...

Thank you!

Yes… I live less than 2 miles from Roundhouse. I buy as much from them as I can, and when I'm not buying, I'm drooling. If you're in the area, give me private eMail and we can arrange a layout visit.

Well… I pretty much got the parapet cap master done… possibly a little bit more cleanup, but it's really done. Now I have to cast a couple of them and see how they key together. This was the third attempt. I made a fixture that provided the correct thickness of the cap's body and formed the body flush with this styrene gauge. I then fired that part. I trimmed it up a bit and then put it back on the fixture and added the thick portion with half on the previously fired body and the other half on the fixture which would provide the indentation so they would nest together. I then fired it again and cleaned it up some more with a sanding block and files so it would be a slip fit onto the wall. I won't know how they fit together until I make the castings.

It takes 15 minutes at 275°F to cure Sculpey. While it was curing both times I started doing other stuff. I measured and cut out a baseplate template that I will trace onto 1/8" Masonite and 1/8" foam core. 1/2" thick baseplates work best with my street height to make reasonable curbs. The base is 13" deep and 9" wide. The pavement area is 8 scale feet wide. Is that too wide? I think my other buildings are not set back that far. I can easily change it since it's just sitting on some Bristol Board. That's why I'm making a template.

I crawled under the layout and disconnected the power to the Sinclair Station and Saulena's and then moved them out. Saulena's is sitting in its final spot, but I'm still experimenting with the Gas Station. I didn't like it next to Saulena's since you couldn't see any of it from almost every vantage point. So I moved it up to the right corner and will trim the mounting board so it will fit into the RR curve. This picture shows that orientation, but not the fitting. The Sinclair Station uses an actual mini-florescent tube and needs DC. Saulena's is lit with grain of wheat bulbs and uses AC. Only my very earliest structures have incandescent lamps in them. Anything built over the last 5 years is LED and therefore DC.

Having the Appliance store facing front now gives me more motivation to do a nice job on its interior. As I noted a while back, I was exploring having a bunch of O'scale appliances 3D printed, but the bill would have been $350. Sorry, I'm not going to make some miniature plastic appliances for the same price as I can buy a 1:1 dishwasher. Most appliances are 30" wide so a piece of 5/8" square wood stick would slice off to some "appliance-sized" block to which I'll stick images of mid-century appliance images. So block could be 3/4" for 36" appliances like fridges.

Here's the kind of images I'm collecting.

They'll need some photoshopping to separate any backsplash control panels so they can be added on top. And the tops will have to be guesstimated since I don't have any top views of them. Viewing from 3 feet away pasted on images should work nicely.

While I was crawling around the layout, I was able to refit the guttering on this side of the fire house. I was going to make a single base plate for Bronx and the Appliance store, but had second thoughts that this is limiting. I'm going to make separated bases.

 

 

 

 

Started the mold making process. The part is so small that the mold process is very crude not needing a lot of sophistication. For silicone mold making you must use a tin-free clay that available from art houses. I simply built the clay base on my Corian work surface and made the dam out of the same clay. For larger pours I've used Lego bricks to build a mold box. The master was imbedded halfway in the clay and I use extra plastic kit sprue material; it's round and already has curves and joints that make for good flow. After all, that's the purpose they play in the plastic kit manufacture.

The Smooth-On M0025 2-part silicone is mixed 1:1 by volume. I just opened some brand new stuff. It has a shelf life and one of the two components starts to set by atmospheric moisture. You have to use it up (which I won't). I use disposable plastic cups and since I'm using such as small amount, I make the cups with the same level on both. You pour Part A and B into separate cups with the equal amounts, then pour this into a 3rd cup which is mixed a lot until it is completely homogenized. Pour from one end and let the material slowing work its way up the mold so the entrained air is pushed out ahead to the silicone.

\

Looks like a kiddie pool… I head the mold plate with the pour on top of my air brush compressor to help vibrate the pour and encourage air bubbles to exit. This is a very basic silicone and doesn't need vacuum degassing.

It takes about 6 hours to cure at room temperature. I brought it upstairs since it's a bit warmer than the shop. I went to my model club meeting tonight and when I got back it was cured some pulled off the clay to expose the mold half.

Next session I'll wrap a dam around this portion, spray it with Easy 200 mold release agent and pour the top half with additional silicone. The lumps are alignment tabs that will insure the two halves register properly. Then I'll be pouring resin over the next week or so while I start working on the Thunderchief.

After the pour I got back to the base plate construction. I took the template I made yesterday and placed it in the spot. My corner was exactly square being slightly open, so I adjusted the template and then transferred this to the 1/8" Masonite. I cut the Masonite with the saber saw clamping the stock to my back shop work table. I then finished up the edges on the belt sander and my edge sanding fixture. Using 3M99 high-strength spray adhesive, I glued on a piece of 1/8" foam core to the bottom, cut it flush with the Masonite and tried it on the layout. The curb height was just a tad low, so again I used the spray adhesive and added a layer of Bristol Board on the back which gave me the correct curb.

I marked the location of the storm drain on the street and cut the notch using a razor saw and scroll saw. Into this I glued the Westport Model Works resin cast curb inlet. The last things I did was locate and drill the hole to pass through the power leads and then measure and scribe pavement expansion strips and some strategic cracking. A corresponding hole was drilled through the layout by tracing the location of the base plate hole so the leads will be able to be terminated.

I split the difference on the setback at 1.5" (6 scale feet). There was a little filler piece that occupied the space between Saulena's and the Fire House that needed cutting down. I first had to get it off the layout. I had used styrofoam structural adhesive and had to use a putty knife to break it loose. I measured and cut it in the chop saw and just cleaned up the edge. The base plate and the filler fit like a glove. That filler was the black top area where the rescue fire truck sat.

Next session I will paint and weather the base and attach the building to it. I will also fabricate a TV antenna and install the power utility stuff like I did with Nighthawks. And I need to do something about the ivy. I probably have to do the parking lot and Appliance Store next since it's going to look funny if not done. I will make another chain link fence, only this one will be cinch at only a foot or less, compared to the monster that surrounded the refinery. Getting there… Can't forget modifying the gas station either...

Happy Friday! Today I was definitely multi-tasking. I mixed up more silicone and poured the upper half of the parapet cap mold. I then glued on some .250 X 0.020" styrene strip on the curb edge of Bronx's base plate to finish up the curb appearance. I then primed it with Tamiya light gray primer. I then went back and filled some of the gaps between the styrene and the base so it would look like a single surface. While this was drying I wired up Saulena's in its new location and also moved the elevated guard shanty to the other side of the street and then wired its lighting back up.

I went back and sanded the now-dry filler and then air brushed my concrete color blend. While this was drying I fit the Sinclair Station to its new location. This required reshaping the back edge of its base and then creating a template and cutting a filler piece from on of the remaining chunks of very high quality foam core left over from my work in Germany. I glued that in place, and while drying, went back to the Bronx base, masked and painted the black asphalt side and back edges. 

Here's the base with the painting completed. Next session I will seal this flat paint and then highlight all the expansion strips and cracks, repaint the storm water inlet, weather the entire base and glue the building in place. This will have the secondary effect of being able to move and carry the building without the fear of damage. I already knocked off the far right end of the widows walk and had to replace part of it. It's delicate and brittle.

I'm going to glue only the first floor plate and not the building's edge which will still permit me to remove the building from its interior. Speaking about lifting from the base, I find that Saulena's is aging… badly. The building is separating from the base and I don't know exactly how to fix it. It's due to it being all wood and possibly being exposed to that moisture from the dishwasher leak that destroyed the streets. I suppose I could simply overlay another piece of strip material to hide the gap and leave it alone. Rather than drill another hole in the sub-base, I just fed the wires through the watchman's shanty hole. I'll cover the wire with some scenic work.

Sinclair needed a lot of changes to make it fit the wedge-shaped new space. I had to do all this while crawling on the layout. The sub-base under the town is not support really well enough to handle full body weight, but the rail sub-roadbed is, so I'm careful to have my knees on that strong part and just lean on my hands in the weaker areas. This involved a lot of bending, climbing and trial-and-error to get a reasonable fit. I made a Bristol Board pattern, transferred this to the foam core and then re-fit… twice… before cutting anything. I have a very limited supply of the thick German foam core and I don't want to waste it. The rectangular cut out was necessitated by fitting the Z-Stuff Crossing Signal and now I had to refill it.

After a reasonable fit, I glued the new piece on with some Henkel Polyurethane glue which is pretty benign and won't damage the foam. I held the glued piece with tape.

Here's the station fitted in final position while waiting for the glue to dry. Note that there's a bit of a gap on the existing base towards the left, but I think I'm adding another curb cut there which could easily fill that space so I'm not worried.

There's one other area of concern. There's a large gap at the back edge near the right of way. Part of the problem is a slight elevation due to the Sculptamold that was used to edge the town's sub-base. I really don't relish breaking that out, so I'm thinking of building a low retaining wall to keep cars from rolling on the tracks. As I look at the station, that far back edge is no longer wide enough for a vehicle to pass. This clearly wasn't the best place for a gas station, but real estate is tight in the Village of Woodbourne. It's on a convex curve so the large overhang engines shouldn't collide. Long cars could bind on their flanks so I'll have to check that out. I can always cut more of the base away.

 

The mold was fully cured after dinner so I split it and cleaned up the sprue access points. Next session we'll make the first pour and see how it works. Then production will begin. Once you get the hang of it, resin casting is fun. Not cheap… but fun!

I wonder if it's too late to engineer and install an access hatch in the center of the town. It's really getting hard to get reach and I've got a lot more detailing that needs to be done (street lights, power poles, signage, more buildings, repairs, parking meters, etc.). I'm going to seriously think about this. I'm not getting any younger and can no longer count on the grandsons to do it for me. The oldest is 6 months from starting college, and the younger is a sophomore in HS and will be driving before I know it.

 

The Bronx building looks great!!

Yes, Sinclair Station will fit nicely.  I'm sure the addition tot eh pavement, curb and any sidewalks will look great when done.  I'm with you on the retaining wall and also some trimming so you get the proper clearance.  I'm sure it is a happy-sad time seeing the grandsons get older and start moving into "adult" activities.  Even if they were available, what they have in flexibility, I am wondering if they are getting even more long legged than you.  I agree, you need to find an alternative to get access for yourself.  I just rolled under my new table for the first time to attach some OSB to the frame.  My back is slightly sore already, but it isn't the area that had the bulging disc, so I'm not too concerned.

Yup! The boys are moving on as they should. They always check on progress whenever they visit. Which brings me to my challenge. I went under the layout today and studied the structure I built under the town. It's a hodge-podge and I should have thought of the hatch when I did all the framing. That said, I really don't think it will work. Too much stuff to wreck first before the changes can be made. The town was the last part of construction and I really wanted to get it done. So I broke some of my own rules. I fastened the Masonite from above; meaning… the fasteners are now buried in styrofoam and streets. The buildings are all removable, but not the foam and the streets. So instead of unscrewing the cleats from below as I can do on all of the subroadbed all over the layout. Here, the cleats are screwed and glued from above and are not easily moved.

So plan B. I need to be able to reach over tracks and scenery without damaging anything while extending that reach. So I'm going to try and build a wooden bridge support that I can lay on and will spread the point loads so as to not damage anything. I would like a top creeper, but can't justify the cost considering the state of completion of the layout. I post when I decide on what it's going to look like.

Trainman2001 posted:

Yup! The boys are moving on as they should. They always check on progress whenever they visit. Which brings me to my challenge. I went under the layout today and studied the structure I built under the town. It's a hodge-podge and I should have thought of the hatch when I did all the framing. That said, I really don't think it will work. Too much stuff to wreck first before the changes can be made. The town was the last part of construction and I really wanted to get it done. So I broke some of my own rules. I fastened the Masonite from above; meaning… the fasteners are now buried in styrofoam and streets. The buildings are all removable, but not the foam and the streets. So instead of unscrewing the cleats from below as I can do on all of the subroadbed all over the layout. Here, the cleats are screwed and glued from above and are not easily moved.

So plan B. I need to be able to reach over tracks and scenery without damaging anything while extending that reach. So I'm going to try and build a wooden bridge support that I can lay on and will spread the point loads so as to not damage anything. I would like a top creeper, but can't justify the cost considering the state of completion of the layout. I post when I decide on what it's going to look like.

Have you considered checking with the rental places and painting contractors in the area to see if they have something you could rent for a few days?

Hadn't, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't. It's a possibility. I did do some more engineering on the creating the hatch. It's feasible from an engineering point of view, but the difficulty may be having to do all the construction upside down underneath the town since I can't remove the Masonite/Insulation Foam sandwich that's overlaying it all. Here's a before and after shot showing the actual location of where the hatch will go. To accurately position the cuts needed to open the hatch exactly where I want it, I'm thinking to drill a 1/4" hole at each corner of the to-be-cut area and inserting a 1/4" dowel so it extends below the layout. From below I can take some string and connect the four corners thereby giving me the accurate location below the layout about what's going on above. From this point I can clearly decide what members need to be cut and where the new framing goes in. When the exterior hatch framing is complete and supporting the town, I can cut out the hatch, remove it and frame it up off the layout. But… all this is moot if I can't manipulate the new lumber from below. As I'm looking at this, the doublers could be screw up to the cross members from below by putting them on the bottom. If I put them on top, I would have to use very long screws from below to reach the doublers on top. All this thinking just occurred as I'm writing this and looking at my drawing.

I'll have to buy some more 1 X 3 and perhaps some more 1 X 2 stock. I buy the pre-primed, finger-jointed finish dimensional lumber from Lowe's. It's less expensive than clear lumber, very straight, and causes no problems whatsoever.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I started pouring the resin castings. The first one had a bubble, but it's not open to the outside. I wasn't getting good flow through the vent ports.

Before pour #2 I took the Xacto and opened up the vents more, and the result was a good pour with liquid resin showing at both ports as it should. 

I have to pour the resin in very gently in a tiny stream so it doesn't entrain any air going in. The fill side is on the right. When I did my first resin casting a few years back I didn't realize you feed the liquid from the bottom of the mold cavity so it pushes all the air in front of the liquid. It really works!

The resulting casting didn't have any bubbles. I have to manage how much pressure I put on the Panavise when holding the mold halves together. This is a very small mold and too much pressure could easily distort the mold and cause some of the furry flash you see. The mold needs to be snug enough to not leak and that's it. Not so tight it starts to distort.

I went down after dinner and poured another one, and after cleanup, it looks very good. I have to cut away the bump where the vent ports attached so they nest together properly. I poured one more before coming upstairs.

3 down, 17 more to go. Since resin is expensive and I keep mixing a least twice as much as I need for this tiny pour, I think I'm going to make another mold so I can pour two at a time and double my production. I know what I'm doing now so the second mold should be quite easy. These will all be painted a terra cotta brown before gluing them onto the parapet. With two molds I should be done pouring them at the end of the week or early next week.

More parapet tiles completed today. 7 molded, 1 more in the mold. I think I'm going to need 23. I was wondering why I have a lump in the interlock area. I found an air bubble in that area in the mold. I can't fix the silicone, so I'll just have to trim out the bump. Still getting some air bubbles in that one spot in the fat area. I actually filled it with some not-quite-set resin. It worked. If I was a smarter person I would have made my master to be multiples of these tiles so I wouldn't have to cast these ridiculous small tiles. It's not too late… I could still do that. If I did a set of four, I'd be done in three more pours. When I pull the casting from the mold it's still a bit rubbery so I put it one the wall until it hardens up. This way I can be sure that the spacing of the parapet groove is correct. It takes about another hour before the urethane is fully cured especially in such small sections. It's an exothermic reaction and the larger the quantity, the quicker the cure.

While each mold is curing I do other stuff. I got the expansion joints in the Bronx pavement treated with Tamiya Black Panel Line Accent. I first sprayed the flat paint with Tamiya Gloss so the accent wouldn't spread too far. Then after treatment, sprayed with Dullcoat. I painted the storm drain and accepted with some bare metal cream paint. Not shown is the fire hydrant that I added. I'm also going to add another telephone pole, a service hookup and a no-parking sign.

I fastened the building to the base using heavy duty Servo Tape ONLY ON THE FIRST FLOOR PLATE and not on the wall edges, so the building is still removable by undoing the screws holding the walls to the floor plate.

I then got back to work on the Sinclair mods. I have some hydrocal cast curb cuts that I made years ago when originally building the gas station. I cut the new edge and added it using the Henkel Pritt urethane glue. Next session I'll fill all the gaps, glue a cover strip on the curb to hide the foam core, mask and paint the new pavement, and try and match the aged gray/black macadam of the existing station.

While it's on the bench, I should probably figure out how to do that retaining wall. Woke up thinking about different ways to approach it, including using Bristol board, or molding a plaster wall using styrene or card stock as a casting forms.

 

Happy Friday!

Well… gang… it's not often that a plan goes so bad. My retaining wall attempt #1 is not going to work. I have to wait until the plaster cures (Monday) to rip it all out and do it over.

The forms dried nicely and fit on the track well. I did a couple of clearance tests with some big locos to see if anything hit. It didn't.

With a Veranda, and then a monster Coal Turbine.

I should still check it with the Allegheny and the Pennsy S-1 to be sure.

Then I had to decide what to fill the wall with. I thought of Urethane casting resin or Hydrocal plaster. Resin is very expensive, plaster is very cheap, so I chose plaster. I sealed the forms as best I could with thick CA, mixed up a pourable mixture of Hydrocal and poured the mold. First this I noticed was I had leaks at the two extreme ends. Not a problem… when the plaster hardened it would seal and I add a bit more to top off. But then… it hit the fan! The Bristol Board I used for the forms absorbed a lot of water and started to distort. The distortion got worse and worse making the whole deal into a fiasco.

 

I can't tear it apart until the plaster hardens, but then it's all coming out. I'll come up with another method. I may go with using wood forms, filled with Sculptamold. I'll have to use thin ply in order to follow the curve. Resin would have worked since it wouldn't have wet the Bristol Board, but I don't want to use my supply for a non-critical use. I'll keep you posted.

When I was running the Coal Turbine into the test position it was running terribly. It hadn't been run in quite a while and periodically the middle unit with its twin motors and 12 driven wheel would stop working forcing the lead control unit to spin its wheels. I pulled them off the track to examine the circuit board interconnection used in this MTH engine (and the Baldwin Centipede) and has had problems (with both engines). There were no broken or loose wires, but I did notice that all four traction tires on the control unit were gone. So I took it to the shop and gave it new tires and lubrication. The complete unit is now downstairs charging which it probably needs. I haven't put a BCR in that engine yet.

Meanwhile, Stephen Milley of Real Scale Models and I have reached agreement on all the bits and pieces to cut the Engine House. There are several changes from my previous work with River Leaf. We're using 1/8" stock instead of 1/4". It reduces cutting time and material cost. At first I wasn't sure how it would look so I made all these changes in the SketchUp model to see how it looked and it will work. Next comes the windows. Stephen does a great job with windows and is cutting them out of self-stick laser board. He's cutting the glazing too. And then we've added another wrinkle. I'm putting another laser cut window with mullions that will be stuck to the back of the glazing to give the window more stiffness and relief, and then I've added a wider frame that will stick the window to the inside building wall, solving the window mounting challenge at the same time. These windows will save me hours of time since there's a ton of them.

Stephen's machine is not very large and I've had to split the long walls, main floor and main roof into pieces with indexing keys so he could cut them. I will have to splice them together during construction. Here's the main building pieces. The long strips are the inner and outer buttresses. The inside buttresses are also going to have a very hefty block glued to it which supports the big I-beam holding the gantry rail, and then another lump up top to support the roof trusses. I did some quick research and found that I can easily get 3/4" square milled wood with will easily bulk up the 1/8" thick inner buttresses without a lot of fanfare. Actually, it would take a very large industrial laser cutter to handle the +40" length of this engine house.

The main floor need to have openings for the tracks which made the multiple pieces more finicky. Trusses will be cut from 1/16" MDF for stiffness and $$$.

Here are all the windows cutting files. Lots of windows, no glue needed… whoopee. You can see the thin exterior framed outer windows and the wider exterior frames on the inner windows.

The cutting drawings are done in hairline line width and are very precise. When I converted them to JPGs to show in this post it muddies the lines a bit. The laser program cuts .3 pt lines and engraves lines .7 pt and wider. The total bill for all the cutting will be something shy of $400.00. Doing large scratch build projects isn't cheap.

Oh… and I cast two more roof capping tiles. Slowly, but surely, I'll get them all cast.

 

Myles, only the window pictures can be seen. 

I can't see the photographs either.

Try again… I've reloaded the missing images.

Still not working for me. Bummer--they sound like interesting images.

Actually, you took a half-step. The pictures are not showing in-line, but you can click on them in the attachment section.

Okay… Just'a one more time...

I can see all the pictures now. Thanks Myles.

Yes, I see where the retaining wall warped.  Well you will come up with something great.

That is a lot of delicate cutting for the engine house!!!

Mark you are such an optimist… that being said, I did do a fix and it should work out okay. Bought some fresh balsa today at the LHS and simply laminated it to the wrinkly wall instead of ripping it out and starting all over. It made the wall marginally thicker, but I think I had enough clearance with just another 1/32" balsa overlay. I wet the balsa with Windex with Ammonia so it would be just a bit more flexible, and after it was dry, sanded the top flush with the existing wall so it would receive a top surface (also balsa).

\

Simply resurfacing the wall seemed a much easier solution. Due to the undulations of the existing wall, I only glued the new surface on the high spots thereby restoring a regular surface albeit a bit thicker. I glued the top piece on and it was a bit narrow so I just added tad of Bondic UV filler. It was the right length and when I cut the curve into it it just exposed a bit of the wall below. I thought I could bend the balsa width-wise, but wood doesn't like bending across the grain and it really didn't bend without distorting.

The wall's still slightly irregular but sooo much better that lies beneath. I also bought some fresh water-based sanding sealer and coated the new construction. When it's dry tomorrow, I'll fill the dents caused by the clamps. Balsa is so soft that clamping will leave marks. 

None of this work happened without the usual drama that seems to happen around me. I was also pouring another couple parapet caps. I've got 11 done so far. When I spun around in my father's old desk chair that's my working chair in the shop, It caught one of the clamps sticking out from the Sinclair station. It spun it around and dumped it on the floor UPSIDE DOWN! This, of course, did some damage, but it could have been much, much worse. It broke off the two white metal gas pumps and bent the light pole between them. It broke loose the new plaster casting curb cut and mashed the opposite corner. The whole base is German foam core and it delaminated at that corner. I put it all back together and it will survive another day. The miniature florescent light came loose. I hope it's okay. If not, I'll replace it will blue-white LEDs. I built this before I started using LEDs for all model lighting.

The area behind the wall just begs to have piles of automotive junk: old engine blocks, exhaust pipes, a pile of old tires, radiators, etc. I'll have to find out where to get some of this stuff. It's now going to be quite visible from the layout's front.

Tomorrow, after prepping the surface, I paint it concrete color and weather it a bit. I will also glue some foliage at the base to hide the interface with the roadbed. I also finish sanded the new corner and that will be painted too.

 

I knew you would come up with a workable solution!  

Cast some more parapet caps: number is now up to 16 with 9 more to go. Should be done in three or four days.

Got the retaining wall complete and weathered a bit. Repainted the Macadam and checked the fit again on the railroad. I realized that there was a storm drain inlet at the curb so I had to add an inlet into the curb too. It was a challenge climbing over the layout to get into a position to mark its location. 

All the filling, sealing and sanding made the balsa look decently solid so I was able to paint it my latest concrete color mix. Again, it came out looking like wet, fresh cement, not aged dry concrete. I have to figure out how to do this better. Tamiya doesn't have a "concrete" color pre-mixed. 

I painted the asphalt a gray/black mix. I first tried to match the old paint, but soon found that to be a waste of effort and repainted the whole deal like the station got a fresh coating of driveway sealer. It's funny… the area that was plastered with the joint compound caused the paint to dry more glossy than the paint on the pre-existing finish. And then after shooting it with some Dullcoat, it's still shinier. I may add some weathering powders to it to break that sheen. I also need to add tar strips, oil and gas spills, and tire wear and tear to give it some character. That concrete color is too dark!!

In the following image you can see the storm drain street inlet in the lower right corner. Leaning way over the station while on my knees, I marked the location on the curb for the curbside inlet matching the street inlet. I removed the station, took it back to the shop and cut the space out for the inlet.

Here's the new inlet. I bought these nice details from Westport Model Works a few years ago. They resin castings and look very prototypical. 

Tomorrow, the paint should all be thoroughly dry and I'll do some more weathering. I marked the sub-base for the power lead which I'll drill tomorrow also and I'll keep making parapet caps. It was a lot of work modifying the Sinclair Station for its new location, but I think it ended up okay. After it fell on the floor yesterday I thought it would be wrecked, but it survived. I'm going to add foliages and weeds at the junction to the right of way.

Nice job on the station, Myles. That area behind the station is a great place for accumulated junk. That was what was behind the station I worked at as a kid.

Thank you! This is going to be a two-day post, and today was a real potpourri.

I really didn't want to get into the junk pile building at this time, so I punted. I decided to create a form-fitting sub-base that fills the junk space behind the station. It's removable. When I'm ready to get into this little vignette project I'll be able to build the project on the work bench and drop it in when it's built. Meanwhile, I can get the gas station back onto the layout and wired up, clear the work bench and get started on the commission F-105G Thunderchief models. 

I started the process tracing the curve of the wall onto paper. I cut this out and transferred it to Bristol Board, which needed to be a bit wider so I added a straight piece to the front edge as you can see here.

I then transferred this to thin aircraft ply which will serve as the actual landscape base. It will be removed when I install the station later in this post, and will be kept for when I detail the junk pile/weed garden at the back of the station.

I then wanted to add the foliage to the wall BEFORE installation so I could do it on the bench and not laying on the railroad. At first I tried to glue it on vertically, but the stuff kept slipping off and ending up on the floor. I then took the entire station and slide into my wood working vice and carefully clamped it so the wall was now horizontal. It was then easy to keep the foliage in place.

I made a single vine out of some fine gauge twisted wire held together with thin CA. I painted the stem with thick artist acrylic and then coated it with veggie stuff. This was glued to the vertical part of the wall with Aleen's. That was yesterday. Today, I glued the upper part of the vine with thick CA so they clung to the wall.

I added an early 50s DeSoto, the wrecker and the station attendants before putting it on the layout. These metal characters had metal bases which finally had to go. They're a bit oversized already and the bases just made them even bigger. I glued them to the asphalt with thick CA.

Meanwhile I was continuing to cast parapet tiles for Bronx. 

I took the Sinclair station to the layout and got it all hooked up with power.

Here it is with the lights off.

Then I decided to try a clearance test with my most interfering locomotive, the UP U-50C. Something about this engine's geometry makes it a major impactor. It almost wrecked the Victorian Station's loading platform due to its extending fuel tank. And guess what? It rubs! Not badly enough to wreck anything, but enough to scrape off some paint and rock the engine. I made a movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu0pxEnaqKQ

Here's what the wall looks like after some repeated hits… 

I'm not going to fix it right away. I'm going to run some other equipment by also since the U-50C may not be the only offender. I will remake the parts that impinge to give more clearance. I was worried that the foliage would get hit. I was wrong. I could have solved this problem must more easy earlier if I had scribed the initial curve closer to the building, but that train has left the station. Now it will have to be a retrofit.

Back to the Bronx...

I have three more parapet cap tiles to mold and should get them done tomorrow on schedule. A couple of them I probably has the mix ratio a tad off because they never truly hardened up. With the tiny quantities I'm mixing, slight volume differences are changing the chemistry. I've tightened up on my pouring. I also made the corner pieces.

There's the need for a slightly smaller piece to fill the final gaps. I'm not sure where I'll put them… probably at the corner which will be furthest from the viewer. Notice that I'm pressing the master into service too since I'm pretty sure I won't be making these things again… famous last words.

I can't forget the electrical service or the TV antenna. But I did start working on the F-105G today too.

AND… Stephen Milley sent me the samples for the Engine House. The windows will work perfectly. The sample trusses were cut from 1/16" MDF, but he has a source for 1/10" stock which is much stiffer. We're going to use that instead of the thinner material. I would have to put webs on the top and bottom stringers to made these sample trusses stiffer. I may do that anyway since it will add to the fidelity. Won't be seen...

And this thing's going to be huge!!! There's another half wall that connects to this one. The keyed joint will be hidden and reinforced by the 3/4" outer and inner buttresses. And look mom! No bricks! It will be all concrete.

 

I cast two more parapet caps today. One was so poor I had to chuck it. I don't think the problem was just a slight difference in mix ratio. I think it was due to not stirring the individual components since I first opened them. The mold was soft and had liquid, oily chemical on its surfaces. It was so soft that it was unworkable. I then shook the components, remeasured a new mix and it cast perfectly. It was solid as a rock and easy to file and sand.

So I still have a few more to make and I'll attempt to get them done on Monday.

Remember to spring forward this weekend. It really seems too early for Daylight Saving Time. We just had snow this morning. It will also be dark again in the mornings here on the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone. It won't be getting dark until well after 7:00 p.m.  As a retiree, dark in the morning is great, but I feel for the school kids and folks who actually have to get to a job. Going to work in the dark was depressing.

Tomorrow I'm doing something new. I'm going to be a judge at a Science Fair for the Magnet School for STEM here in Louisville. A friend of my daughter's husband has done this and she thought that I would like to do it too.

Myles,

You present everything, warts and all, I appreciate the reality...the gas station project is coming out very nicely, even with the wall issues. 

Andy

Thanks Andy! It annoys me that I didn't spend just a little more time when I scribed the contour of the part I was to remove from the Sinclair's base. If I would have taken just a 1/4" more all the clearance problems would have gone away. It would have put the back right corner another scale foot closer to the railroad and made passage by that corner a bit more cramped, but it would have solved a lot of future work. It's always easier to do it right the first time. I was leaning over at a difficult angle and have a very annoying lower back so I didn't take too much time doing it. I was more concerned getting the base to fit the space and neglected to think about the TRAINS.

Myles, The whole town looks great, and the the Sinclair station fits great there.  It was so close to having enough clearance.  It is certainly a shame.  The parts for the engine house look great!  That should be a great project as well!

That sounds like a great opportunity to share with students at the STEM program!  I hope it goes well!

Thanks Mark! I'm just going to let the train keep hitting the wall until it's worn away enough so I'll know exactly how much material to remove. It's pain to get in on and off the layout. Although I did wise up a bit. I through some pillows down on the layout so I could lay over it in some comfort...

Re: the Science Fair. I got there and found that the particular sub-specialty that I was to judge had the son of our daughter's friends was in that group, so I went to the proctor and asked what should I do. After some thought they asked if I wanted to judge one of the overall awards; in this case, the Yale Science Award to the "most outstanding entry by an 11th grader in Comp Sci, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering. It represented about 50 entries (or more). This was my first time judging! I was a bit overwhelmed at first, but then I trusted the "force". My life experience was so eclectic in the technologies that I felt confident that I could grasp what each child was presenting and could do a reasonable job. Furthermore, there was no specific criteria beyond that quote. My main focus was looking at the entry as to its import. Was it studying that has potential impact to society and the world when extrapolated out. I then evaluated how the student grasped what they were doing, how they chose the topic and so on. 

I checked my reasoning with more experienced judges and they said I was on the right track. Some of the work was exceptional! The one I chose was two fellows who created a total system to autonomously evaluate the health of food crops plants at the individual plant level, and then apply fungicide or herbicide to specific plant. To go even further, they developed an AP for a smart phone to monitor and control the robot. It was very comprehensive and presents huge future development. When I presented my decision to the proctors, they concurred with my finding. 

I'm going to do it again next year.

It turns out that the DuPont Manual Magnet School for STEM is in the top five research high schools in the world.

That sounds like a neat project those students came up with.  Your experience judging made me recall our youngest daughter, the musician, has in the past served as judge for regional high school musicians at her alma mater.  The college is only about 20 miles away, but this year she turned them down.  She has more private students now and had a performance coming up which entailed many trips to Pittsburgh that week.  She said in the past she likes judging high school students, but the timing didn't work out this year.

I'm happy that she's gainfully employed doing something she loves. It doesn't get any better than that.

The only thing on Bronx I did today was get the remaining parapet cap tiles cast. Just in time too since the mold is starting to break down. I solved the "mushy setting" problem by shaking the compound A and B before using them, increasing my pour size just a bit to give more material to absorb any small variations in quantity, and being very diligent in getting the same quantities in each pre-mix cup. All of the ones I did today cured solid as they should.

Up next will be to paint them all and glue them in. For the half tile that's needed to completely fill the space, I think I'll add it just after the corner piece. It will be at the farthest point from the viewer and will be the least inconspicuous. I knew going into this phase of the project that I would have to be patient and just cast them one at a time, and before I knew it, they're all done.

Had a nice morning… my oldest grandson, is a rare thing. A teenager of his generation who's a bit of a motorhead. He had a good friend, who being an only child of a single parent of means (divorce), has basically been given whatever he wants. What he decided to do was rebuild a 1968 straight-6 Camaro and re-engine with a Corvette LS-3 V8. His mom is great and they rented a space and let him equip the shop with engine hoist, full tool set and a Miller MIG Welding rig. And he wanted my grandson to help him on the project.

Then, the private school they attend has a senior "Cornerstone" project where the kids can do whatever they want and have to present it to the school. My grandson and friend decided to build an engine stand, mount the now-surplus Camaro 6 engine and make it run. They did all the work and design themselves.

Today I got a call that the engine cranks and sounds like it's running, but when they stop cranking it dies. They wanted my help. Before I got left the house, they texted me that they got it running, but I could come and see it anyway. They had tied the ignition DC circuit into the starter circuit so when the starter wasn't engaged, no ignition. Once they knew what they did, the fix was easy. They did a beautiful job on the welding and their design was solid. I suggested that they make a control panel for it. I don't know if they will or not, but it would dress it up and make it safer to operate.

It brought back a flood of memories of my time being a Power Technology Industrial Arts teacher. Other than robotics, kids don't have much interaction with things that make the world go unless they're in Vo-Tech schools. That eliminates all the kids who are technically savvy, but don't plan on being a mechanic.

My grandson's dad knows basically nothing about cars, so I have to take some credit for him having a wonderful understanding of what make things work.

Big Day! Bronx is on the layout!

First thing was to clean up and fit the last parapet tiles. I soaked them in alcohol to clean off all the mold release and sprayed them with the Tamiya Red Primer which duplicates terra cotta nicely. It also has a bit of sheen which is true for ceramic tile caps. 

I had made one shorter one and on extended one to make them come out evenly at the end. I glued them all on with thick CA. This was a challenging part of the job, but the results were worth it. It's clearly not the typical thing you find on a scratch-built building.

Then I built the TV antenna. I went on-line and looked at some vintage antennas to get ideas for this one. I didn't want to duplicate the one on Nighthawks right across the street. I used a 0.049" brass rod for the mast, 0.032" for the main beam and 0.021" phosphor bronze for the elements. To keep the main beam from desoldering from the mast, I clamped on a hemostat to act as a heat sink.

It's hard to see, but I ground little divots into the beam as a saddle for the elements. I tinned the beam and each cross piece with the Weller conventional iron, and then used the RSU to hold and heat each element. I had a couple de-solder, but eventually, I figured out how long to apply the current so it melted that joint, but didn't affect others. I just drilled a #56 hole into the roof and inserted the antenna. It was a tight enough fit that it didn't need any glue.

The building was done!

I then took the building to the layout, fed the wires through the hole in the layout, and connected the leads to the vacated Saulena's junction block. Here's the building in final position. See anything wrong with this picture?

The exterior light was lit, but the interior was DARK! What was going on? Something happened. Luckily, I don't glue down my buildings. So I went underneath, unhooked the just-connected wires, and took the building to the shop. I attached my test power supply and voila, all the lights lit. The Problem? My under-layout DC power supply had run out of gas. The exterior light was in parallel to the 5 LEDs in series inside. It had enough voltage to light that one, but didn't have enough left for the voltage drop of the 5 remaining lights. I went into the scrap electrics box and found a nice 19 volt DC computer power AC adaptor from my long-dead HP laptop. I stripped the leads and put on some ferrules and tested it with the building and it lit it perfectly. So I tied it into the AC Outlet Bar underneath and threaded the wire to a new set of big brass buss bars used as grounding bars in electrical service cabinets. I wrapped some red and black electrical tape around the two bars to ensure I got their polarity right. I removed the Saulena's leads from the now-full buss system and transferred them to the new one. And there was light!

It's bright enough inside to grow cannabis...

If there was ever a reason to switch from using current limiting resistors in LED circuits to CL2NS LED drivers this was it! My previous power was 12volt DC. If I was using resistors, the switch to a 19 volt source would have required a different resistor which would have mean taking the building apart to revamp the circuit. With the CL2N3's they didn't care a hoot about the change. Anything from 5 to 90 VDC and they power the circuit with the required 20 milliamps. What a relief!

I took some status shots with the cell phone. I was going to use the Canon EOS, but the battery was low and I put it on charge. Real Scale Model is cutting the engine house tomorrow. I won't be building it until I finish the ThunderChief, and I want to finish the rest of the site next to Bronx (Now the Woodbourne Gallery), so the appliance store and parking lot will tie it all together. I can see some little punch list items in this pic… I need to landscape the bases of the crossing signals.

I took one image with the trains in the picture, and then realized that a train layout needs some trains so I moved them around. The S-1 monster is in the foreground and the UP U50C is pulling around the curve from the other direction.

Even with one story removed and the building foreshortened a bit, it's still a big structure. If I left it in its original size it would have looked very out of place. I was dreading doing all the moves necessary to get this building sited, but like everything else, thinking about starting is often more daunting that actually doing it.

So, what did I learn with this project?

1. Taking another challenging photo of a challenging building and making it into something special
2. Designing for 3D printing
3. More practice creating 3D images of complex buildings in SketchUp
4. Solving problems making Mansard roofs
5. Further sophistication in making brass gutters and downspouts
6. Making hand built TV antennas
7. Further experience with Surface Mount LEDs
8. Designing and modeling a Ceramic Parapet Cap system using silicone molds and resin casting
9. Mitering long edges without power tools
10. Making laser cut widows walk filigree

What could I do better?

First of all, I need to pay attention to how to put something together, not just the artistic design. I think I'm doing better at this on the engine house. I need to pay more attention to detail when I've made major modifications such like when I've removed that 3rd story and length. Too many dimensions were wrong after it was cut and it wasn't the cutters fault. By going to pre-stick laser board windows on the new building I'll eliminate all the glue contamination of the clear glazing.

Thanks guys for following along. I give you periodic updates on the plane kit and there will be lulls when I'll be doing some railroad work too.

 Congratulations Myles. The building is a work of art. Fantastic job. Thanks for letting us follow along.

Myles, The end results of the Bronx building are well worth the effort!  Thank you so much for providing such detailed descriptions of what you are doing, including mistakes and how you correct them.  I learned a lot of little items I will tusk away in memory and hopefully put some of them to use.  The town is looking great!

I hope you have a great time with the ThunderChief and that the parts for the enginehouse come back to your satisfaction!

Awesome, completely awesome. When do we move in? I really like the TV antenna, great job.