Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Up To Scratch?

Having finished the basic structure of my first scratchbuilt building in the previous post, I got on with doing the roof and painting it. For some reason it didn't seem worth doing separate posts for each stage so I'll just take you through the whole process in a single post. Anyway, lets start at the end with a shot of the completed building (remember the gap under the door is so I can sink the building).


Hopefully you'll all agree that this looks a lot better than it did in the previous post! So how did I turn the rather tatty looking shell of a building into something that while not perfect I'm still fairly proud of? Well it all started with a triangular needle file.


One of my main concerns, which I didn't mention at the time, was that at the corners the brick courses didn't match up very well, especially where you could see the edge of the plastikard sheet. I'd tried to fix this using a scalpel to cut the courses into place without much success. Fortunately Martin picked up on the corners in a comment and pointed me in the direction of a triangular file. Quite why I'd not thought of this myself I don't know, but just two minutes with a file and the building looked a lot better.

Once I'd sorted the corner joints the next job was the roof. I started by fixing a piece of cardboard in place to form the base of the roof before I moved onto figuring out how to add the tiles. My approach to covering the roof in slates was to follow the ideas described by David Wright in his book Making Rural Buildings for Model Railways. Unfortunately I made a couple of mistakes which would come back to bite me later. Essentially the approach involves drawing out slates in strips onto card and then cutting part way into each strip. This means you can lay an entire row of slates in one go as the join between them is hidden by the next row placed on top. I decided to use Princess Slates which are apparently 24 inches by 14 inches in size. Now I don't know how much overlap there usually is between two rows of slates but the book suggests a third. Unfortunately I misread this as a half so the rows are closer together than they should be. I also made the mistake of using normal copier paper for the slates. The problem with this became obvious as soon as I sprayed on some primer. Essentially because I'd applied the tiles as strips and the thinness of the paper the gaps between adjacent slates kind of disappeared. I carried on with painting but we will return to the slates later.

Basic painting followed a fairly simple pattern; a base colour followed by some dry brushing and a black wash. The roof used dark sea grey (Model Color #991) followed by a black wash and then dry brushing first with a little Dark Blue Grey (Model Color #904) and then black. The walls were painted first with Weathered Stone (RailMatch #2426) before a black wash and then dry brushing with khaki, brown sand, dark sand (Model Color #988, #876, and #847), and black. At this point you can see the problem with the roof tiles quite clearly, but I carried on regardless.


With the basic painting done I turned to the details, specifically the door and window frame. I was originally going to go for a dirty white for the window but Bryony suggested a worn and faded blue paint used everywhere might look better. The base coat was a 4 to 1 mixture of Flat Blue and Dark Blue Grey (Model Color #962 and #904) with then a light dry brushing of more Dark Blue Grey before a black wash to really make things look dirty. I think this has worked really well, although in retrospect the window sill maybe should have been modelled as stone rather than painted wood. Having essentially finished the building at this point I came to the conclusion that I really wasn't happy with the roof.

Unfortunately because I'd built the model as a single piece it wasn't possible to remove the existing roof, certainly not without damaging the painting I'd already done. So instead I simply laid another layer of slates over the top. This time I made them from 220gms card and ehile they are much better they still aren't perfect. Next time I might do separate slates instead of fitting a row in a single go.

The problem with the extra layer of slates was that the roof was now quite proud of the side walls. To hide this I decided to add barge boards which I cobbled together from some 0.5mm plastruct strip. I used a file to roughen the surface slightly to try and imitate wood grain although I'm not sure how successful that was. They were then painted in the same way as the door and window frame before being super-glued into place. Annoyingly after fitting them I realised they were possibly a bit short; the cowboy builders have struck again! At this point I also added a sill above the door from a short piece of right-angle plastruct which I think adds a nice little touch to the door and helps to hide the edge of the plastikard sheet.

Now usually I leave glazing windows until the very end as I want the "glass" to be nice and shiny. In this case I wanted the windows to end up looking as if they hadn't been cleaned in years, so I used Micro Kristal Klear to add the individual panes before I wafted over a light layer of matt varnish to seal everything in place. Looking at the final model I decided that the guttering was too pristine so toned this down by dry brushing a little London Grey (Model Color #836) over the metalwork and then a second coat of matt varnish made sure the windows were nice and frosted and the paint well sealed.

As I said at the start of this post the building is far from perfect but I'm really happy with how it has turned out and the amount of things I've learnt along the way. The next building is bound to be much better given my experiences here. This building was never destined for my layout so I think I'll build it a little diorama as an excuse for more scenic experimentation rather than simply throwing it away.

13 comments:

  1. Bingo, Paul! Very nice job and I'm pleased you went for faded blue for woodwork. You really do see it (and even more faded green) everywhere. I can tell you're hooked. Hurray, another scratchbuilder in the dwindling pot of we hapless scatchers away.
    I had a friend who called what I did Nyerpsing. Don't ask where that came from, but being a Nyerpser has paid the mortgage and raised a family, so it's fine by me!

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    1. Sorry, I meant Mark. I do get confused with all the names on blogs I follow.

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    2. Thanks Martin, glad you like it. I wasn't sure about the blue to start with but once it was on and weathered it does look the part. One thing I wanted to ensure with the layout (when I get there) was that it wouldn't use off the shelf buildings or well known kits so I could really say I'd built it. One of the reasons for choosing OO9 (apart from that I like 4mm scale but don't have the space for OO) was that I'd have to build pretty much everything including the locomotives. That has of course now changed with a number of RTR locomotives due to soon be available, but I'm going to stick to building things. I know you're not really a fan of the 3D printing but even this I think is better than simply opening a box and plonking a wagon on the layout; at least I have to design, assemble and paint the things.

      No worries on the name confusion. I often have problems remembering the names of people I work with or meet on a regular basis. Remembering the name of every blogger whose posts I read is well beyond me!

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  2. This is really rather fine, Mark. The slates look great, your work is sharp and everything has been painted really convincingly. The slates look really good and your re-slating adventure looks like a leaf out of my book! I like the way you looked up which slates you were going to use and chose princess...a slightly more manageable size than the Duchesses I normally use. Anyway, looking forward to lots more structures now!.

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    1. Thanks Iain. Clearly not a patch on your work but I'm happy with it for a first attempt. Out of interest, given you've added slates to innumerable roofs, how much overlap would you suggest between rows? The book I was reading suggested a third which I misread as half, but I've no idea how it would work in real life either. Any thoughts?

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    2. Mark, your slates look totally believable, so no worries on that score, or any other for that matter. The book you were reading is right in general terms, slates are usually overlapped by a third. However, I generally follow the look of the prototype to get the appearance right; so I always try to show a slightly less than square aspect to the individual slates, allowing an overlap of slightly less than a third. It really depends on your prototype...my real roof here has a mixture of slates (some Duchesses and Countess slates and varous others lol) which overlap differently...the Duchesses seem to have a more square aspect. So, find a roof pattern that you like for the building you are modelling and copy that...you can't go wrong when following the prototype. There are other factors, like bevelled or curved corners to gable courses and extra width closers, and I will cover that in my next blog post. None of which you need to worry about as your hut roof is excellent as it is.

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  3. I rather like the finished article and I agree that white would have looked very much out of place. I can't remember of believe that white was ever used in buildings in industrial or semi-industrial situations. In any case blue looks very much more authentic and visually pleasing.

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    1. Glad you like it. Interestingly the idea for white came from a building on one of the platforms in Sheffield. I've no idea what colour the frames were originally, but now the outer frame is dark blue with the two main parts (the bits actually holding the glass) painted white, although that is now a mucky grey.

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  4. Hi Mark. Are you sure you're not me - this sounds exactly like the adventures I have in modelling - right down to a tee!
    That's a very splendid looking model, and the stonework is just perfect - just the right amount of weathering. The window colour looks great, although my only slight criticism would be that the frames look a little clunky - but hey, don't take offence - it just depends how fine scale you want to take your scratch building to ;)
    I know what you mean with the roof - using the slitted tiles method there is a danger of "planking" I used this method for my earlier buildings and whilst I think they're ok, I think they could be improved on - although extremely tedious and time consuming, I've started using the individually applied tiles method now and I think it works wonders for the appearance of a model!

    Keep on scratch building - A goods shed next?

    Lee

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    1. Hi Lee, thanks for the compliment! I agree that the window frame is on the clunky side. Both the door and the window are from the PECO buildings components pack #LK-78. The mouldings while crisp are very thick. With the door this didn't matter but as you say it does show up on the window. Not sure if I'll go to the trouble of scratchbuilding a window frame but I think in future etched brass frames will be the way to go; I've used 2mm scale ones from brassmasters before so will probably use their 4mm scale range as well.

      My current layout plan has three buildings, a factory, single story workshop and a row of cottages, so I think next up will be the single story workshop but knowing me I may well get distracted along the way!

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    2. Well my current layout plan didn't have any buildings (as there wasn't really a plan) but now I've built a Station building, waiting room, Goods shed, row of terraced cottages, and am now on my second set of terraces (although this project has taken a back seat as I just don't have the time at the moment) . I look forward to seeing your take on a workshop in future posts

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  5. That's a nice little model there Mark, far better than a plastic kit built rent-a-hut. I do like the way you've used matt varnish over the windows, a trick that I shall no doubt steal one day.
    The style and colouring of the stonework looks very Yorkshire, and I like the finish of the slates.

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    1. Unfortunately i can't claim all the credit for the matt varnish over the windows trick. I can't remember where I read that it causes frosting, but I think it was one of the scalescenes.com kits that warned you to cover the windows before varnishing. I just subverted that idea for the effect I was looking for. Now all I need is to work out how to add obvious cobwebs on the inside corners!

      Fortunately I see a lot of Yorkshire stonework so I knew what I was aiming for, although I think there is still room for improvement with the slates. Next time I think I'll do each one individually rather than trying to cheat by doing a row at a time.

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