Happy Holiday Modelling

It’s lovely to have a few days off and get some modelling in. I’m feeling better so modelling is great recuperation…

I’ve lost track of all I’ve been up to but I’ve been cracking on through Treadwell and Ware.

I put the canal walls in place and glued them in.

They sit under the main mill building.

I put the walls under the ell too.  It’s a bit wonky do they are too to match.

I had to chop the near wall off to fit on. That’ll be a useful spare bit of wall left over.

The mill has an outflow for the mill race that comes out in a circular hole. It has a gate that can be opened and closed. Bob VG modelled it closed but I fancied a bit of gushing water. There are NBWs on the outside.

I put it in place. The wall was a bit high and I was bored of cutting foam so I melted it with ambroid, a solvent. I propped the walls with squares whilst the glue was drying.

I put a piece of card coloured black behind to block the blue out.

I’d not cut the dam so I must do that soon but first I put on a coat of Tamiya Buff.

Here’s the first coat. More work is needed. That’s the piece of card too.

The good thing about large kits is that whilst one thing is drying you can be doing something else.

I have also been doing interiors. Ware has a raised floor with a basement so I put the floor in, added walls and interior doors where needed.

The brick extension and concrete extension interiors also got done. This is the concrete interior with a back wall. I used some cheap plastic doors I had knocking about from an old kit.

This is the final result.

I put blobs of glue over the LEDs that I’m using. They’re 1.4mm x 1mm so I now buy the pre-wired versions. So much easier.

I bought some jewellery thingymajigs in the U.S. which I’m using as lightshades. I painted the interiors white and left the outsides in the bronze colour they came in.

Because I’m doing interiors with lights, it’s always good to make the roof removable. I braced the apex of the main roof with some card off cuts and then trimmed it as per the instructions with wood.

I always prepaint the strip wood in batches.

The roof underside is trimmed and there are eaves returns. The eaves wood trim is glued to the building and the rest is removable.

There’s so much strip wood that I keep a running total of how many pieces are left.

The next thing up was the dormers. There are fronts and sides. The sides are clapboard which Bob VG uses the best technique ever to weather. Rubber cement such as Copydex smeared on with a cocktail stick. I painted a sudgy grey base coat over the top.

I then used masking tape to pull the rubber cement off.

I would normally colour the wood first but I was being adventurous so I stripped the paint off and then weathered it with Mig Aged Wood wash.

It dries ok:

I trimmed the dormer fronts (don’t worry, the white will weather down).

And then added the corner posts. I sand a lot of the corners to just even up things but you can see the difference it makes here.

Bob VG says to glue the fronts in place on the roof and line them up. Then to put the sides in place. I did that. It didn’t work. I think the important thing is if something isn’t working for you then stop and try it a different way. This wasn’t working, the dormers were sanded to a 45 degree angle but it just wasn’t lining up. I ripped them off and am trying a different method.

It left a few rips and tears but I’m much happier.

The mess afterwards:

Quite a few bits were broken but nothing that glue couldn’t fix. I sanded off any dried glue and went to plan B: gluing the dormers together on the worktop and then installing them.

When they are rock solid I will sand the bottoms on line with each other.