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Comments
Beautiful work on the castings and I'm quite pleased that some of my ideas helped. The gold ochre is definitely one of my go to colors. It is great for a general dusty look on just about anything. Keep it going!
OM
Karl & Kevin--nice to talk to both of you. I WILL get to a convention at some point, but I'll expect each of you to host a clinic! (on modeling, not golf OM)
The pile of unfinished castings is getting smaller. Here's what's left--mostly metal parts:
I almost forgot...does anyone know what these castings are?
They look like drawers full of gears and cluuter, but they might be something that mounts on a wall someplace (particularly the 2 small ones). Any ideas where they go?
those are just boxes of spare parts for the floor of the mill...
I concur with other comments posted above, really great work and I look forward to all the pieces coming together in the final model...I think it will be outstanding.
Great work.
Regards from downunder,
Chris
JT, we can't do a clinic at a golf course. It'd be just like taking an alcoholic to a tavern! (Kevin has quit golf cold turkey so he can focus on improving his modeling.)
Couple things I've been working on. Here's the boiler:
And the little mill engine. I made a couple mistakes on this. One, I drilled the hole for the axle too low so now the drive wheel and flywheel touch the ground. I think if I glue a few pieces of thin strip wood on the bottom I'll have just a little bit of clearance (like the prototype in the manual) when I add the belts. The other screw up...I drilled a hole for a toothpick in one of the resin pieces so I could hold it while I paint. Then I realized it's in an area that would be seen. Grrr. I plugged it up with a small piece of toothpick and it looks like part of the machine (I hope). Can you spot it?
I also put together the flat car. There were some discussions in a couple other threads about color & texture and board edges so I took some pics as I put the wood deck on this car and thought I' d post 'em here. First, I added some grain to a couple pieces of 2x10's with a steel bristle brush then cut them to length and glued them onto the metal casting:
If you look close at this next picture, you can see the fresh cuts from the razor blade (most of them are upside down--picture the blade cutting from the bottom up, and then breaking through the wood):
The manual says that these buggies spent a lot of time in and out of the water as the haul giant logs. So the wheels need to be rusted and the wood needs to be weathered and beat up. First, I scribed in deeper grain on the surface with a dull exacto blade and an awl. Then, I used the exacto to split and cut the edges of the boards.
Next, I gently touched the top and bottom of the edges with a wire wheel in my Dremel to further wear down the "fresh cut" look.
Then I scraped some raw umber chalk onto the deck and worked it into the grain with a stiff brush. I also polished the wood a bit with some fine steel wool (to help get rid of any fuzzies).
All that's left is adding alcohol & india ink by dabbing it to the edges and letting it "wick" toward the center. I went back and forth adding a little chalk, a little A/I, a little brushing, steel wool, etc. until I had a look I liked. Here's how it turned out:
I have to confess that I played golf yesterday and Sunday (83 & 84). I did do some modeling (working on the Woodcutters shack) today however so don't yell at me, ha ha.
You are really doing some nice work on Twin Mills!! I have a few suggestions if you don't mind.
If a white metal casting is something that is metal in 1:1 then Blacken-it rather then priming it with paint and work from there. Paint tire castings with flat black, dust insides with a little burnt sienna (represents a little rust from old rims), dust with a little yellow ochre and lightly dry brush tread with some off white. The mill engine looks great. I would like to see the bricks on the boiler more orange to start out with (you can tone them down from there). I think the contrast would really make the boiler casting stand out a bit more.
OM
I'm glad to see you're down to 2 rounds per week! This is a good sign and I'm proud oif your progress!! Ha Ha
Thanks for the suggestions. Yep...like a nit wit, I went and primed ALL the metal castings that I had left. Then, I read the part about "go ahead and blacken the blah blah blah part." That's when the hot flash hit me!
It comes off fairly easy with that little nylon buffing wheel, but it's one more thing to do.
I'll go back and hit the bricks with some orange, then work down in color. I started with boxcar red and worked down by adding browns and a little black chalk to the paint, but the contrast obviously isn't there.
Or, do you think I'd be better off to start over coloring the bricks, then add mortar in between (with a little wet water, thinned acrylic gray of some kind, then blot off the excess that gets on the brick)? I went mortar first, then drybrushed the brick color (with pretty thick paint so it wouldn't run into the grout lines). I think if I try to spot paint a few here and there, it's gonna look sloppy.
This is enough to make me wanna golf!!
miniM
Before:
After:
My next hang up was trying to insure the track positioning will correctly align with the future trackwork on the layout. After a bunch of trial and error, I think I've got the main and the spur to converge to a #7 curved turnout just off the left side of the diorama. I laid the track (code 70 for the spur; code 83 for the main) and secured it to the foam. After that, I had to come up with some sort of bridge for the two lines to cross the stream:
Yikes, what a mess I created! I did some research and looked at a bunch of pictures and came up with a plan: 2 "bridges" simply made of stringers and ties supported by log beams and wooden step terraces to support the beams. First I removed the foam and roughed in the terrace steps. I made sure to leave enough space for the logs plus the stringers that will go on top:
Since the tracks curve, the ties had to be angled on the stringers:
I cut the ties off the flex track in the locations where the bridge would go:
Then, I glued the bridge with ties to the rails and fitted the logs underneath. I used pieces of scrap wood or foam to shim the logs so they were flush to the foam base. The retaining walls were made from scrap stipwood and square stock.
I did some scenery work with Sculptamold, loose dirt and gravel. Nothing's been secured yet and I haven't added vegetation, but here's how this little area looks so far:
The dirt is from a rock cut I spotted on the side of the road in southern Wisconsin (near Boscobel). Nothing special...I just liked how it looked and the way the rocks fragmented.
Got lots done over Thanksgiving. I cut in the area for the creek leading into the log pond and lined it with some stones, twigs and debris. It's all held together with Sculptamold...
I thought it looked pretty good, until I got a glimpse from this angle:
The areas where the rocks overhang prevented the dirt from getting up and into the Sculptamold. So, I've got spots with white poking through that I'll have go go back and hit again with dirt.
To avoid that problem on the next sections, I added some powedered pigments to the Sculptamold. One spoon of brown and one spoon of black turned it into more of an earthy tone. It looks awful here:
But with more rocks and dirt added, it turns out pretty natural looking and eliminates any white spots. (I purposely went light on the dirt in a few areas in the next picture).
There's an area next to the log brow where an optional retaining wall can be built. I carved a few logs out of balsa, put 'em together and backfilled it with some ruble and tallus.
At this point, all of the shoreline has been roughed in with Sculptamold & dirt. I did a little detail work in a few areas, too!
It's all starting to come together!!
At present I am working on a diorama for my brother for Christmas.
Fantastic detailing on, and within the scenery, the whole area is turning out stunning thanks to your work.
Great tips on the ropes and wire details, I'll be using them on future projects to be sure, so's you know..
Karl.A
The sorting and transfer tables are now in their final position with the first layer of dirt added. The secions of track still need to be added where you see the stripwood on the left.
I recently got a copy of the Pino Grande book. It features great pictures of the prototype which Twin Mills is based on. That helped give me a better idea how to finish detailing the area around the log brow. It was really a messy dirty area with bark and wood scraps everywhere from the logs being unloaded off the cars. So, I tried to model it that way using mostly mulch from my front yard. I sifted it down to 3 or 4 grades and built up the debris along the track and the log brow similar to what was in the pictures.
I also played around with some more detail stuff--weeds, grasses, and bushes.
The burn area is next to be roughed in, then it's time to start fastening down the buildings.
Using plain water, blend the paint right into the dirt, dragging upwards.
For the deeper areas of the pond, I used Ceramcoat Black Green:
Blend the two colors together while both are still wet (again using plain water). Then, immediately panic and blurt out a string of expletives when your pond bottom looks like this:
Actually, by blending from the lighter color into the dark and adding a little more paint and a little more water, followed by some trial and error, it'll form a pretty convincing transition from shallow to deep:
Since the Envirotex in the log pond is going to be 7/8" thick and tinted a brownish color, most of the pond bottom will never show. However, on the slight chance that it does or, in the areas closer to the shoreline where the resin is thinner, I'll be able to sleep at night knowing I've got a seamless transition.
Never really any need to panic or be intimidated by a step like this. After all, the worst that can happen is you have to paint it all brown again and try it over, no big deal.
Your scenery looks better and better everytime I look at it !! Are you changing the pictures?? ;~)
Karl.A