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Comments
With the initial wood chalked, it's time to start the walls of the main building. Quite a difference in construction compared to Foss Landing. First a little background on how I laid the boards. First consideration - how long should each plank be? A single plank across the full face of the left or right walls would be are 156 mm across, equivalent to 44 ft at full scale - much too long for a single board. With a little research, I found that typical lengths for wood housing planks are 12 ft (HO 42 mm). Longer lengths offered would be 16 ft (56 mm), 20 ft (70 mm), 25 ft (87 mm). Not sure if this would translate to a building such as this but I decided to go with it. I felt that 42 mm was a bit small so the longer lengths were used. Any space on the wall that was at scale 10-12 ft or less would not have any butt joints. With this in mind, here is the left wall with the planks laid out but not glued. Per my previous post, full length planks were initially treated with chalk. Once cut to size, they were finished in a manner described by Dr Grunge though damage to boards such as splits, cracks, etc. were kept to a minimum. To quote Brett, "this is a working shipyard and repairs would be made quickly..."
Notice the solitary plank sitting on the scribed area. It has a visible grain that does not take chalk or AI stain very well. Several of the full-length boards have areas such as this so one has to be vigilant that none find their way onto the wall. It was interesting to note that the visibility depends on the orientation of the board as well.
So once the boards are laid out, each was marked on the reverse side with a sharpie. The number on dots indicate which row it goes to.
For the second floor boards, using my rule from above, no butt joints were added as the length was 38 mm (full scale 10.8 ft). I also added some chips and gouges to a few of these boards, figuring they would end up a bit more weathered than the first floor, but nothing too severe.
Final result:
There are a few butted board on the rear wall, none on the front.
Dormers are next.
Jeff
Again thanks for the kind comments. Brett's instructions (and this forum) makes it look easy, especially for someone like me who is doing this type of model for the first time. Now onward.
Construction of the dormers was pretty straight forward. As I've stated before, I won't go into all the details as the log by grant covers this quite well. I did add some beams across the back to add some rigidity to the structure.
The flashing on the right wall dormer sides is to be removed, painted then glued back, flush with the back of the wall. To give this delicate piece a larger surface for the glue, I first glued a piece of paper to the back of the side wall then glued the flashing into its space.
I also noticed that when the dormers are placed onto the left and rear walls, the lower part of the scribed inner wall is visible.
I did not like this look so it was covered with the same planks used for the walls.
I think this looks better. BTW, the white of the window frames still looks a bit stark as I have not yet toned them down with some grey chalk.
Completing the doors and windows that go on the walls was a breeze thanks to the kit's construction methods. Here is a photo of the freight doors.
And before applying the "SHIPYARD" stencil, I did a practice run on some scrap wood. here is the result.
And finally, my thoughts on adding nail holes. I've read many of the comments on the forum and decided to only place small "holes" where 2 boards butt. In researching what kind of nails are used on wood siding, I came up with a nail size of 8d. This has a nail head size of 9/32 inch. At HO scale, converting to metric, this is ~ 0.08 mm, which is the approximate diameter of a human hair. The smallest nail indent I could make, even with the finest sewing needle, is 0.2-0.3 mm. I did some nail holes on the Foss landing building and looking at them now, they are barely visible after the building has been finished, and only from very close up. And if we are looking at the model at a distance of 1 foot, this would translate to 87 feet - how visible would nail holes be at that distance. So with all this in mind, I decided to forgo the nail hole rows.
So far this has been a great kit to build, and I am only on page 20!
Jeff
Stencil looks spot on...nice work thus far!
Keep up the pictures. It is fun watching what you are doing with this kit.
Rear wall construction now complete. No significant issues encountered. As noted in Grant's log, the rafters were a bit long when cut out using the template. It was easy enough to fix though. Regarding the signs, the instructions mention that several copies are supplied on a single sheet. I had just one copy on a template sheet. I made a few copies before working on them. Glad I did as the first try was not acceptable. The awnings were a bit delicate - too much bending of the side pieces or the scalloped edges and they would come off. Each one was stiffened with a light coating of white glue after they were bent in place. First photo shows the larger awning placed using 2 wood spacers to ensure it was centered in the correct position (sharp eyes will see that one spacer was turned the wrong way when I took the photo). Next 2 show the finished rear wall.
The left wall was much easier as only the dormer, landing and sawdust collector had to be fixed to the wall. Having the pre-drilled holes to locate the correct position of the dormers made this quite easy.
One question about the sawdust collector. what exactly does this do? If it is a vacuum that collects sawdust from the shop, wouldn't there be a hose or tube at the open end (see red circle below photo) that would lead to a barrel or container to collect the sawdust? Otherwise, sawdust would spray all over the place. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any similar contraption on the internet. I am thinking of making some sort of tube that would lead down to an oversized barrel. Thoughts?
Next post I will show the stenciled wall and right wall.
Jeff
Good information Jim, thanks for sharing.
Jeff
Right wall and front stenciled wall now complete. I was not entirely happy with the cardboard awning, so I decided to replace it with a wooden one using boards from prior ship models. I used the cardboard template to mark the tar paper lines on the new awning (pencil lines can be seen on the top photo). Marking for the supports and the middle were also marked. One side was stained, the other will be tarped.
Final wall:
Here is the front wall with the Shipyard stencil.
Gluing the walls together is next. The rear and side wall were glued together first, using a metal right angle to keep things lined up. I then glued on the front wall, using graph paper to line up the walls as well as the supplied internal cardboard supports and several square beams (each beam was the same length measured to .01 mm). This makes the structure quite solid. Note in the second photo the missing awning on the rear wall, knocked off during the gluing process. It was easy enough to repair but illustrates how delicate some areas are.
I have decided to add some lighting to the diorama. I plan to put some LEDs in all the main buildings of both Foss Landing and the Shipyard, pendant LEDs in the saw shed, goose neck lights over some of the doors and hopefully some streetlights. I even found some small LEDs to simulate a fire in an open oil drum! So, while waiting for the LEDs to arrive for the main building, I decided to build a billboard for the flat roof of the Foss Landing Launch Co. not sure what sign I will put on the billboard but here's what I came up with using some ideas I found online.
Jeff
It's time for the roof and shingles. A long beam is first glued between the end walls to give the cardboard base some support. I decided to add some vertical beams for additional support.
You might be wondering what the painter's tape is for. That is covering the wires of the LEDs that have been placed hanging down from the cardboard roof.
Once the roof is glued in place and some strips are added to roof ends, it time to begin with the shingles. But first, the dormers are glued in place. As the first 11 rows are broken up by the dormers, it was important to correctly place the shingles between the dormers so that when full length strips are placed beginning row 12, the offset from row to row will be consistent. I first placed 3 rows on the left, then placed a full length on row 5. Rows 1,3,5 will have full width shingles on the end. The pencil line (blue circle) marks the edge of a shingle that was used to line up row one. The same process was used to line up row one on right side of the roof.
I may have been overthinking this but last thing I wanted was to get to full length strips and have the shingles misaligned. After row 3, the dormer roofs are added, then flashing added to dormer - main roof interface and then more shingles. Grant's log has some nice photos of this process so I won't repeat here. Here are some photos of the progress.
A small triangle has to be cut out of the shingle strip on row 12 to accommodate the peak of the dormer roof. This took a few tries to get it right (one loose strip can be seen in the photo above. After row 12, it was pretty straight forward up to the cupola. As 2 strips were a bit too short to cover the length of the roof, filler pieces had to be used. To keep the offset consistent, on occasion a very slight amount had to be removed from an end shingle here and there. Once up to the cupola, shingling was paused to construct the cupola. The walls are lined with strip-wood, window frames painted and placed, and the wall glued together. Trim is added to the base to accommodate the black paper flashing. The instructions called for the trim at the base to be a 0.02 in strip (0.5 mm). I felt this was a bit small to run the flashing onto this trim so I doubled it for a trim of 1mm. The cupola is then glued to the roof and shingling completed. The same process was used for the other side. Here is the completed roof of on the side with the dormers.
Once the roof is complete, rafters are added - full length at the ends of the main and dormer roofs, extensions elsewhere. Here is the roof complete.
I decided to paint and place the chimney at this stage as I was eager to see how it looked. I may do some weathering of the roof below the chimney to represent soot.
Also, the capping shingles used were cut from the paper border of the shingle sheet, ~4.4 mm in width. Instructions called for using single shingles for this process but I though they looked too small. Here's a photo with both for comparison.
And lastly, before the roof was placed, LEDs were placed, one each in the large dormers, 2 in the main building and a swan neck over one of the freight doors. The dirty windows and shades limit views of the inside.
Next up is the warehouse. But first I have to go through my scraps to find enough wood to line the walls.
Jeff
Jeff
This is my first post and my first time building one of Brett's outstanding kits! His instruction booklets are absolutely amazing and every time I've called him with questions, he has been extremely helpful. But, mainly, I want to thank those of you that have posted your builds on this forum. They have been extraordinarily helpful! You might notice my roofs look different. I destroyed Brett's paper shingles in the painting process and had to substitute. I also used the paper signs instead of the dry transfers, which had become unusable. This has been a fun build and I've learned tons along the way. Thanks again for the great posts and suggestions!
Both roofs look great. And I know what you mean with the rub on decals. I found a method to get them to work, if you have any left. Details can be found on an earlier page.
Jeff