PIT STOP. click on link on my 'signature' for vids

[PlaStix]

On 12/08/2018 at 18:27, Badder said:

Those who follow my builds will know that I have a habit of changing my mind about things quite a lot.

Nope..........can't say I've noticed that about you................  

 

So far this sounds pretty typical of your projects so I know this is going to turn out brilliantly!

 

Looking forward to seeing more. 

 

Kind regards,

 

Stix 

[Badder]

24 minutes ago, PlaStix said:

Nope..........can't say I've noticed that about you................  

 

So far this sounds pretty typical of your projects so I know this is going to turn out brilliantly!

 

Looking forward to seeing more. 

 

Kind regards,

 

Stix 

Hi Stix,

I think the emojis were superfluous to requirements, but hey! INSERT NO EMOJIS HERE.

A little progress. In between making new rafters and laths I've had a go at.... wait for it.... a door!

 

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Badder]

Usually, when making wooden objects like trees, fence posts, telegraph poles and doors, I try to use real wood. In this case, however, I decided to make further use of the flower labels. I do have some balsa sheet though, and that's just the right thickness to use as the 'filler' in a flower-label sandwich. So why didn't I just make the door from balsa? Well, it's far too soft. I wanted to show the grain of the wood, and define the planks which made up the door. Balsa is rather spongy and a sharp blade doesn't always leave a visible incision. Likewise, sanding doesn't always leave its mark . So, plastic would be a better surface to work on.

 

The door was constructed easily then - a rectangle of balsa faced with a rectangle of flower label on either side. Again, I glued the labels on paper-side down as the plastic laminate would provide a better surface to take on the detailing - and paints and washes.

Next, I sanded the photographs off of the plastic, using an up-down motion only. The inevitable surface scratches would replicated the wood grain nicely. Next, I scored deeper parallel lines down the faces of the door to define the planks. To do this I used a 'beam compass' with the lead removed and a blade put in its place. Using the edges of the door as a datum, I simply slid the point of the compass needle down the door, with the blade held inward, on the door surfaces. Extening the length of the beam allowed me to score the edges of the innermost plank Yes, I know. I didn't measure the width of the planks and subdivide the door equally. But nor did the original door-maker. I was being faithful to his inaccuracies!

Now, I do plan to add door handles and maybe bolts or a lock and give the entire door a coat of decorative (but old and peeling paint) but at this point I thought I'd mess around with some colouring and weathering techniques for bare wood - more specifically, old bare wood.

 

First, a going over with Antelope Brown Acrylic Ink. My favourite colourant of all time. Once dry, a few minutes later, I brushed 50/50 Water/Black ink over the top and immediately scrubbed all of this off with a stiff brush. Friction took some of the underlying brown off as well, exposing the white plastic and incidentally, some 'red' which was a flower blossom which hadn't been entirely sanded away. This is just visible in the photo below:

 

- but prior to this photo being taken, I laid the door flat, made up a very thin wash of black and brown inks mixed with plaster powder, and slopped this over the surface. I let the wash air dry, with no interference from the brush and repeated the process on the other side.

 

 

I'm going to 'rot' the bottom of the door by deep gouging and cutting vertical lines into the planks and washing these with greens and black.

 

TFL

Badder

 

[Badder]

Some of my earliest memories are of The World at War documentary series narrated by Lawrence Olivier, this despite the fact that the Vietnam war was constantly in the news at that time. Being 3 or 4 years old it just seemed to me that war was an everyday part of life and always had been.

Of course, there were many graphic, disturbing, horrific and incredible images that implanted themselves on my young mind, but perhaps the strangest is that of a four storey bombed out building with a series of doors ascending an exposed internal wall.  Every door was closed. Yet camera-side the entire buildimg had collapsed. I thought about people, who, having miraculously survived the bombing, opened their doors, stepped from their rooms and plummeted to their deaths. But I also saw these doors and the rooms behind them as being places of safety in a hostile and crazy world. Yet there were no stairways to reach them, no levels to ascend. They were then, almost unattainable goals: things almost beyond my reach. If only I could fly, or at least levitate.... yes, I'm talking complete !@!@

 

Here's a door floating half way up a wall.

 

 

And the doorway itself.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited August 15, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

After constructing and nearing completion of the door, I digressed towards having a go at the staircase. I'd already thought about casting a staircase in plaster - with a stonework , supporting wall and a 'cupboard' under the stairs, but disimissed this as I thought this would be a bit OTT for such a building. A simple 'rustic' wooden staircase would be more fitting. I did make a start on making the stair treads and supporting beams from coffee stirrers but quickly realised that very precise measuring and cutting was required. Yes, I could go to all that trouble, using a drawing board, dividers, a set square etc, but again, I'm a bit lazy when it comes to precision engineering. Instead I had a stab at drawing all of the components on graph paper and using that as a pattern for the parts. Filing the slots in the beams (in which to fit the treads) was, again, one that required some precision work, and my fingers just aren't up to it. Then I thought 'why use graph paper as a pattern when I can make the stairs from the actual graph paper?

 

So, with no drawing required, I cut out a strip of graph paper and folded it up like this:

 

I'm not sure if this is going to work, but now I'm going to cut up coffee stirrers to use as the treads and runners(?) and CA them in place. I could make and add the risers in the same way, to make a 'solid' staircase, but I'm playing with the idea of an 'open' staircase. This would just require me to remove the graph paper risers with a scalpel.

 

TFL

Badder

Badder

Edited August 17, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

I CA'd coffee stirrers to the treads of the graph paper staircase and cut them to length. I then did the same on the reverse side, positioned where the risers would be. This made folding the stairs easier than if I had glued them all to the same side. I then made runners from balsa strips and CA'd them to the sides.

 

 

Obviously, the stirrers making up the risers are under the graph paper are not be visible, but their strength was required. On the reverse side, the visible side, it is the graph paper that is exposed. I didn't mind this as it would give a different finish when painted/washed and, being vertical surfaces, I reckoned they'd be less weathered than the treads. As it turned out, the overall effect was to make the stairway look as if it had once been painted white, and that now all of that paint had been weathered off, except for some patches on those risers. This is apparent in the photo below. Here, I'd used a scalpel to roughen up the woodwork and had given everything a wash with Antelope Brown.

 

But the woodwork was perhaps a little too rough, so I smoothed it down a little.

 

I also gave the stairs a wash with black ink, to give them a wet look. I will reinforce this with a gloss oil stain wash in the future

 

I will make the remains of a banister. I'm thinking of using the garden brush bristles as the balusters.

 

Meaniwhile, I've fixed the T-section of wall to the main building and am in the process of fitting the stonework 'veneer'.

 

TFL

Badder

 

TFL

[Badder]

 

Here's the two sections of building fixed together:

 

Firstly, the fixing:

This is not the first time I've had to join two sections of building together. Whilst making the building for my Ever Evolving Diorama, I had to join plaster cast walls to vacu-formed plastic kit walls. There, I found that the best way to join them was to pack the hollow kit wall with cardboard and rolls of paper and drench that with CA before offering up to the plaster walls. The 'packing' offered a huge surface contact area between the two parts - a million times better than trying to glue the tiny 'lip' around the kit wall to the plaster wall. The paper rolls especially, cured to a stiff plastic-like material and as well as providing a large contact area, also served to support and stiffen up the plastic and stopped any deformities during subsequent work on the surface. With the two parts joined in this way I could more or less forget about the joins around the edge (which are never good anyway, in MiniArt buildings) but could instead sand and file them down and/or fill if necessary.

And when it came to filling, rather than use plaster, I used plaster dust (that is set plaster, scraped back to provide dust)  As this has already been 'cured' it is no longer anhydrous and will no longer react with water. However, I find it perfect as an additive to CA, giving the CA more bulk for using as a filler.

 

In the photo below, where the vertical wall is laid flat, you'll see that I joined the two sections of wall by packing plaster dust into the joint and then trickling medium CA over this. (Bottom left to middle top) A bit of prodding and poking with a toothpick stirred the concoction up and made a paste. This cures like concrete and so now the two sections of building are fixed together very securely indeed.  I can now handle the building as a whole and work on it with no risk of the thing falling apart.

 

Referring to the top photo again, you'll see that I'm still in the process of blending in the stonework between both sections. The flower label 'veneer' with the stonework pattern is fixed in place and has been interlinked with the right hand section of building and I am in the process of blending it in with the left hand section of building.

 

TFL

Badder

[RichO]

Masterful work on the stairway!!

[Badder]

On 8/19/2018 at 1:24 PM, RichO said:

Masterful work on the stairway!!

Thanks Rich,

It looks a lot better in macro!

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Badder]

Confession time..... again.

I've removed the floor in the upper room!

Despite it's success in respect of a realistic look, there were a couple of things that bothered me about it. Firstly, I kept having to clean the thing every time I did some work on the surrounding walls as plaster dust gets everywhere. It also got 'dirty' when I applied more washes to the walls. It had in fact lost that patchy 'wet and dry' look. And I have yet to replace the roof, which will no doubt create more mess. But mostly what bothered me was the wonkiness of the floorboards. Sure, they started off all square and true, but got progressively off kilter across the width of the floor.

 

I had put up with this because the most 'wonky' floorboards were under the large area of tiled roof, and only visible to a seriously prying eye from the other side of the building. But now of course, I've removed that roof and will most likely replace it with one with larger holes in it. The wonky floorboards will therefore be visible to a casual eye.

 

So, I've made a new floor with nice straight and true floorboards. AND I won't be fitting it until after all the messy work has been completed.  The new floor is unpainted for now and is only dry-fitted. It can be removed and replaced easily thanks to my superb fitting skills with a pair of scissors and a file and a tap with a sledghammer.

 

Meanwhile, the old floorboards haven't gone to waste. Some will be used in the room next door, and the remainder as debris when the time comes. Unfortunately, I've used up my last coffee stirrer and will have to source some more!

 

Anyway, I am starting on the next room, setting up the basic layout and preparing to add details.

 

 

 

TFL

Badder

 

Edited August 20, 2018 by Badder

[PlaStix]

Good morning Badder. Hope you are keeping well. Each morning and each evening I catch two trains to and from work. During the times I am on these four trains in a day (and sometimes while waiting between trains) I make use of the time to catch up with builds, etc on BM. I'm on my phone to do this. This morning, on my second train, I thought I'd check on how Badder is getting on. Well I'd missed a few days worth of posts - and on East Midlands Trains Wi-Fi this page took a while to load. When it stopped loading the wording at the top read:

"Confession time..... again.

I've removed the.........."

It's almost as if the combination of Wi-Fi and phone summed up your projects!

Anyway - the photos again show some of the most realistic building effects I have seen. Awesome modelling.

Hope you have a good day.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited August 21, 2018 by PlaStix

[Badder]

4 hours ago, PlaStix said:

Good morning Badder. Hope you are keeping well. Each morning and each evening I catch two trains to and from work. During the times I am on these four trains in a day (and sometimes while waiting between trains) I make use of the time to catch up with builds, etc on BM. I'm on my phone to do this. This morning, on my second train, I thought I'd check on how Badder is getting on. Well I'd missed a few days worth of posts - and on East Midlands Trains Wi-Fi this page took a while to load. When it stopped loading the wording at the top read:

"Confession time..... again.

I've removed the.........."

It's almost as if the combination of Wi-Fi and phone summed up your projects!

Anyway - the photos again show some of the most realistic building effects I have seen. Awesome modelling.

Hope you have a good day.

Kind regards,

Stix

Hi Stix,

I am well thank you for asking. Hope you and yours are too.

As you know I'm always expertimenting and trying new things. In this project it's the roof and tiles,  floorboards and staircase, and apart from the tiles all were made with real wood. And whilst making such things I don't always have complete success first time. Still, I learn from the little mistakes and do a much better job the second time around.

The way I see it, with old buildings and ruins especially, is that most undergo numerous changes over the years; with repeated changes in decoration, replacement windows, doors, roofs as well as repairs, and new extensions and alterations to the buildings' layout and indeed function. So if I repaint, remodel, replace, repair and change layouts of my building, I am simply replicating the life of a real building and that SHOULD add to the realism.

I don't do it deliberately, of course - I'd rather get things right the first time - but I am aware from the outset that things will probably change and I'm not at all worried if they do. In all such situations things have always turned out better in the end.

 

I am sure that the new roof will be a case in point.

 

 

Rearguards,

Badder.

 

ps. Reading this on a train would make me.

Edited August 21, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

Very little progress today as I went fossil hunting. Here's today's batch of pyrtized ammonites.... they are over 150 million years old, were fossilized in liquid clay and from the moment of their 'birth' until today have never been exposed to air. Collecting them from the stream into which the liquid clay 'erupts' I transfered them straight in to pots of water to protect their shiny surfaces then gave them a coat of varnish once home. I have about 50 of these now and many are so well preserved that their floatation chambers are still in tact and must contian the same gas as they did when they were alive. Some of these ammonties actually float!

 

With regards to my building, I did get a new section of wall 'roughed out' in plaster and 'foam-board-which-is-not-foam-board-but-something-very-similar'.

TFL

Badder

 

ps CAPTION CONTEST.

 

My entry: 'Klaus? Wo ist mein Fahrrad?'

Edited August 21, 2018 by Badder

[Ozzy]

Nice job on the stairs Badder, your fossils look amazing. I think my caption would be Ich bin frei

[Badder]

5 hours ago, Ozzy said:

Nice job on the stairs Badder, your fossils look amazing. I think my caption would be Ich bin frei

Hi Ozzy,

Thanks for dropping by and having a look.

Yeah, the fossils are amazing. I am very lucky in living very close to their source. There's nowhere else in Britain where such well preserved ammonites as this can be found. The largest nearly complete ones are about the size of a 2p coin, but I've found sections of these ammonties which prove there are some down there in the depths that are 2 or 3 inches in diameter. I suspect that very few if any will ever make it to the surface in one piece though as they too will be hollow shells and incredibly fragile. Still, I live in hope.

 

Thanks for liking my stairs. I made them to a scale which LOOKED right. I will have to photograph them next to a set of MiniArt stairs to show how ridiculously large theirs always are!

 

Rearguards,

Badder.

 

PS, You are currently 2nd in the caption competition.😉

 

 

[Badder]

I was watching a documentary today and it coincidentally featured an old building capped with Cotswold stone tiles. Happily, it also showed the inside of the building and provided an accidental view of the underside of said roof. This was all rather handy because I've had no such luck from t'internet.

The roof in question had rafters and laths just like mine, but the laths formed and almost solid 'mat'. And the laths had been smothered with wattle and daub. Whether the wattle and daub was smeared over the laths and the tiles laid on top, or the tiles were laid over the laths and the wattle and daub was smeared on from underneath, I do not know, but either way the result is the same.

With all this fresh in my mind, I returned to my roof and set about making a replacement. This time however, I decided to get things measured and orientated rather than doing everything 'by eye'. And this time I will be constructing the entire roof BEFORE doing any painting/weathering.

 

Here then is the basic roof structure, made with balsa wood:

 

 

Here it is getting a test-fitting. A bit of snipping shortened the cross beams and got rid of the bowing.

 

 

 

With the structure at the correct size, I gave all of the beams and rafters a douse with thin CA, to strengthen them and lock them rigid. This also increased the CA bond with the graphpaper, but I had a plan for this:

 

Soaking the graphpaper in water softened it up enough to enable its removal, BUT I didn't remove it all. As I said, I will be replic.ating the wattle and daub roof and this will be exposed wherever the tiles are missing. In some of those 'holes' I will be damaging and removing the wattle and daub as well. Hopefully, the tatty graphpaper will look like the remnants. If it doesn't look right, I can of course remove it.

I also made sure to add the rafters to the tops of the walls. I'm not entirely sure if my roof follows the best architectural practices, but it looks feasible to me.

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

Well, I did experiment with the wattle and daub, but once I'd put all the 'wattle' on I suspected I done it wrong. I'd only seen the underside of the roof so it is possible that roofs were only 'wattle and daubed' from underneath, between the rafters, rather than on top of them as I did. So I pulled it all off, damaging the balsa wood rafters as I did so. But that was fine as I was intending to damage them anyway.

Having replaced the 'wattle' with simple 'laths' again, I got things painted and weathered using antelope brown, a black wash and then a dabbing over with antelope brown mixed with white in various ratios.

Unlike last time, I've made sure to extend the roof so that it slightly overhangs the 'dividing wall'. I've already glued some laths to the dividing wall end, and will do so at the gable wall end as well. The central (main section) of roof is a separate piece at the moment and is only dry-fitted. 

 

 

TFL

Badder

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

The other side of the roof is ready for the laths. More care had to be taken with the rafters as they had to line up with those on the other side.

 

 

I added a lintel above the window and also the wooden (balsa) beam that supports the rafters.

 

TFL

Badder

[Badder]

Most of the laths have been fitted to this side.

Just to reiterate what I said some time ago, I prefer to make a whole roof and then damage it, rather than try to make a damaged roof from the outset. So, a fair few of these laths and some rafters will be broken and removed.

 

Again, the woodwork here is only dry-fitted. I have yet to paint, weather and fit the new floor and the roof must be removed in order that the floor can be inserted into the building. I am still pondering over the fireplace/chimney - another reason why I can't fix the roof in place. And with the prospect of further handling and test fitting, I think it wise to leave the fixing of the tiles until much later.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited August 27, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

I've been playing around with 'the room next door' - trying to work out how much of the floor I should build, what state the surrounding walls should be in, how it will all look if I build some of the 'front' ground floor wall and how much rubble and roof should be collapsed. It hasn't been straight forward because I still want a fairly unrestricted view of the staircase, and the wall it ascends, without having to 'dump' a load of debris into the upper and lower floor rooms.

 

Originally, I had intended that the wall opposite the staircase would be a dividing wall, and although it reached the roof it would not be load bearing. The upper section of this wall was going to be collapsed - the resulting rubble and the collapsed roof falling into the upper room and smashing through the floor. And then there was the problom of the 'front' wall of this section of building, its roof, and where to put all of THAT debris as well

 

The solution, I realised, was to change the dividing wall into another supporting wall. In other words, to thicken it and to extend it upwards to support the roof. With this wall being almost 'whole' there'd be very little rubble to worry about. I could instead collapse the front wall only, and in an outwards direction. This would cause part of the floor and this side of the roof to slide outwards too. This would give an almost unrestricted view into this section of the building (from the 'front') with only rafters and tiles littering the remains of the upper floor, and floorboards, rafters and tiles littering the ground floor.

 

So, to change the dividing wall into a supporting wall:

Firstly, please forgive me for currently suffering an intense aversion towards making plaster casts! I tend to make what I think I'll need at the start of a project, and alll in one go. If additional walls, or extensions are required at a later stage I usually use 'left overs'. Here though, I'm going for a different option because I've been meaning to try it for a while now. It involves using a material I used during the construction of the foundations to the buidling in my Ever Evolving Dio. I realised at the time that it would be the perfect material for making walls quickly, accurately and with minimal mess. Unfortunately I have very little of it left and it will ALL be used.

 

 

I picked this stuff up from a supermarket - a 'foam-board' type material which was part of a display stand and was about to be thrown out.

 

It's NOT foamboard, being instead a fairly dense but slightly spongy plastic. In the photo above you can see that it has a shiny smooth surface and can be cut very easily with a scalpel. The cut was made to half depth (approx 2,5mm) with one pass of the blade, leaving a clean and smooth edge. I then bent the board back on itself, snapping it off to leave the rougher bottom to the edge.

I did this purely to show that it's not foamboard, which would behave differently. I could have easily cut straight through, leaving a nice clean edge.

 

Which is what I did here, whilst squaring the board up:

 

And this is where it will go:

 

The top of this wall will be angled to support the roof, but the roof here will be lower than the existing one. Another section of this board will complete the ground floor section of the wall. A doorway will be cut into it, and it will be here, and at the front wall that the collapse will have occured, opening up the rooms to view.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention.... this material takes a stonework pattern SO EASILY: requiring nothing more than scribing with a toothpick.

 

TFL

Badder

 

[Badder]

One of the issues I create for myself by my 'play it by ear' approach to making buildings is 'adding unplanned parts and getting them all lined up, square and true' when the buildings themselves are made up from imperfectly dimensioned parts in the first place.

Plaster casts shrink during curing and also have a tendency to warp, and so the buildings' walls are never perfect. An approximation of squareness and trueness must be made when fixing them together. Also, few walls are of a consistant thickness across their widths and heights. Filing and sanding can help, as can the occasional bit of filling, but again, nothing ends up perfect.

 

I do use a spirit level, set squares, steel rulers and graph paper as aids wherever possible, but sometimes I have no option but to judge things by eye.

Having decided to create and add a new supporting wall I am now faced with cutting it to shape and fitting it to an imperfect wall whilst orientating it as near as possible parallel to another imperfect wall, and of course assuring as best I can that the apex of the new wall is square, level and true to that of the latter, So, I am going to have to employ many of the aforementioned methods.

 

The obvious starting point though, is to define the  new roof's profile on the existing wall, like this:

 

The two angled beams above were postioned by eye, The angle at the apex is immaterial. But now I can use these beams as a pattern for those on the opposite wall. Once I have a copy I can use that as a form for the top of the new wall.

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

[RichO]

I'm just in love with the texture you have achieved on the inner walls in post #120 and #121!!  Beautiful work!

[Badder]

5 hours ago, RichO said:

I'm just in love with the texture you have achieved on the inner walls in post #120 and #121!!  Beautiful work!

Hi Rich,

Thank you very much. 

I have to confess that it came about 'by accident'. That wall was a plaster cast and it warped slightly across its width. That exposed side was bowed out towards the camera.  I was only going to scrape it flat after gluing it in place as then I could get it square and true. I also painted it beforehand as that helps to show up the areas which are bowed and how the flattenig is progressing - much easier to see white against brown than white against white! And during all that I realised that I rather liked the white that appeared, looking like old peeling paint or whitewash.

 

And I like it so much that I want to leave it exposed as much as I can.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

 

[bzn20]

What a job , riven timbers , terrible brickwork, buildings an absolute wreck and peeling paint . Should be ashamed of yourself...…………………….

Well done it's ace Thanks for showing . I'm a bit late seeing this , glad I did !

 

Persimmon Ho(vals)mes charge a fortune for their builds. You might have a fortune in the making .

Edited September 3, 2018 by bzn20

[Badder]

2 hours ago, bzn20 said:

What a job , riven timbers , terrible brickwork, buildings an absolute wreck and peeling paint . Should be ashamed of yourself...…………………….

Well done it's ace Thanks for showing . I'm a bit late seeing this , glad I did !

 

Persimmon Ho(vals)es charge a fortune for their builds. You might have a fortune in the making .

Thanks, @bzn20

Much apprectiated.

Joking aside, I would love to design and build model buildings for some company and have kits made from them. MiniArt's buildings, for the most part, are pretty poor. I think I could help them improve. I don't fancy moving to the Ukraine though!

 

Rearguards,

Badder