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

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Just caught up again, magnificent progress and a pleasure to follow as always. 

 

One small criticism if I may, I think that your windows may have too much glass, it's a small thing, but I reckon it'd be down to jagged shards by this point in it's dilapidation. 

 

[Badder]

8 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Just caught up again, magnificent progress and a pleasure to follow as always. 

 

One small criticism if I may, I think that your windows may have too much glass, it's a small thing, but I reckon it'd be down to jagged shards by this point in it's dilapidation. 

 

Thanks Sarge,

Always a pleasure to read your penny's worth!😋

Seriously, I'm always happy to receive criticism! You are quite right about one of the window, at least. That one was has been removed for now and I'm considering what to do with it. I did end up thinking that a window surviving with all of the panes intact would be unlikely, especially for a ground floor window. I have thought about using it for the upper floor window at the rear, where possibly more glass might have survived. Whatever, it is a simple job to remove/smash some of the panes.

 

Other than that, I'm happy with the remaining window panes. I figure that there'd be few kids around with an eye for smashing windows, what with there being a war on and all that. This building is more in a state of ruin because of abandonment, rather than battle damage, so I figure most of the missing or damaged panes are due to more natural processes such as wood rot in the mullions, or falling debris.

 

Rearguards,

Badder
 

[Badder]

Base coat (plus a bit of plaster dust) added. As usual I tend to apply the base coats before the final 'carving/construction' of my walls. If nothing else they facilitate a better view of any further sanding/filing/carving of the stonework, showing bare white against a colour rather than white against white.

 

 

Hopefully this wall will be completed, fitted and blended in by the end of today.

 

TFL

Badder

[Badder]

BUT, by applying the base coat at this early stage, I also gain another advantage, and that can be seen below:

 

Here, I added some raised stones (the rectangles of white plasticard) and I pitted the surfaces of some of the stones (using a ballpoint pen) and, when I sanded he plasticard rectangles, I couldn't help but remove some of the base coat from some of the stonework. This then, is a 'freeby' bit of the weathering process. Had I left the basecoat until later, I'd not have gained this 'extra layer' of weathering.

 

Close-up of a raised stone and a pitted stone:

 

Another area, showing a raised stone, a pitted stone and a 'recessed' stone, the latter being the longer thinner stone almost dead-centre of the photo. The recessed stone was made simply: by depressing the slightly spongy surface of the FTINFBISS with the flat end of a file.

 

I will now have a closer look at everything and decide what else needs to be tidied up, maybe adding more raised stones, recessed stones, or pitting. Then I can add the window surround.

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

 

 

[Badder]

I haven't managed to get the wall fixed in place yet, due to having been distracted by an afternoon of Columbo movies. Gotta love Columbo, even if you've seen every film a hundred times.

Anyhooo, here's what stage I'm at:

 

 

I did end up adding a bit more pitting andrecessed a couple more stones before adding the window surround. I then cracked on with applying various washes of Antelope Brown, Black,  Antelope Brown with plaster dust, Black with plaster dust, and just plaster dust, in no particular order. At various stages I also took to rubbing the plaster washes back with a damp brush.

 

The raised stones were standing a bit too proud, I decided, so I sanded them down a  bit more. This took them back to bare white plastic, and since then they've only received a wash with Antelope Brown with and without plaster dust. They therefore appear redder than the rest of the stonework. This will be rectified with further washes.

 

All in all though, I am very happy with the result. I hope others will agree that this wall is much better than the old one?

 

TFL

Badder

[Badder]

Leaving the wall as it is, I returned to the brickwork section, improving the colour-match with the bricks used for the chimney.

They will be darkened very slightly with a final all-over wash.

 

I will be sinking the entire building into the plaster ground by about 5mm. For now then, the doors are postioned 5mm lower than when fixed in place, hence the gaps at the top. I had the idea to add a small window above the 'domestic' door. Apparently, such windows are called 'Transoms.'

 

TFL

Badder

'.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Badder

[RichO]

Beautiful wood work there!

[Prop Duster]

I would like to complement you on the "re-walling" (??) of the troublesome one. You were/are correct the new effort is much better looking than the previous one.  As you have pointed out many times, the first (or any number after that) attempt, will only teach what we need to know to get it to look like we want.

 

     My complements, sir,    on the correction of my previous grammatical error . I am humbled that you were able to find the truth, even though it meant long hours (no doubt) of eye straining endeavor, searching the cat ravaged, misaligned pages of your  Oxford English Dictionary.  

I shall now, repair to the library  to enjoy a fine cigar and a glass of port.  Secure in the knowledge that once again, all is wright with the world 

 

On ‎11‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 12:33 PM, Badder said:

Hi Steve,

Sorry for the long delay in replying to your totally sane post, but I had trouble deciphering the word 'labors'. It's not in my Oxford English Dictionary. Neither is anything between the letters 'P' and ''N'. Yep, the dog ate all those pages. And it ripped out the 'N' and 'P' sections, and carefully re-inserted them into the dictionary the wrong way round, which explains the non-alphabeticallness of it. Having said all of that, I don't have a dog. I have 3 cats though, so maybe it was one of them - probably Molly-I-hate-'O's-cat.

 

Feel free to steal any of my 'crafty-tricks-of-trade' (I assume that's an American expression, because over here we call it 'common sense') I'm always glad if anyone finds anything even remotely useful in my threads!

 

Rearguards,

Badder

 

 

[Badder]

22 hours ago, RichO said:

Beautiful wood work there!

Thanks Rich, always humbling to receive your approval!

Rearguards,

Badder

 

6 hours ago, Prop Duster said:

I would like to complement you on the "re-walling" (??) of the troublesome one. You were/are correct the new effort is much better looking than the previous one.  As you have pointed out many times, the first (or any number after that) attempt, will only teach what we need to know to get it to look like we want.

 

     My complements, sir,    on the correction of my previous grammatical error . I am humbled that you were able to find the truth, even though it meant long hours (no doubt) of eye straining endeavor, searching the cat ravaged, misaligned pages of your  Oxford English Dictionary.  

I shall now, repair to the library  to enjoy a fine cigar and a glass of port.  Secure in the knowledge that once again, all is wright with the world 

 

Thanks Steve,

I think 're-facing' the wall might be more accurate, but let's not quibble over semantics. I should have built the thing right in the first place!

I gave much thought to the idea of re-facing the entire rear wall, but decided that actually the vast majority of it is good to middling, and I'd really be going OTT if I were to replace it. The small areas which aren't good can be covered up with ivy, as I had originally envisaged. Cheating? Slightly. But there was going to be ivy on it somewhere anyway.

 

For now then, I am finishing off the brick wall section, adding the 'transom' and finishing off those barn doors. The latter means adding the diagonal braces on the reverse sides, adding hinges and painting them up.

 

I hope you enjoyed your time in the library - probably not the safest of places to mix alcohol and a source of ignition, but hey - an Americanman's home is his trailer RV 

20th century, faux-17th century castle.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

 

 

[Badder]

Right, I didn't quite get everything that I wanted to do today, dood. And it may seem that what I did do, wasn't a lot. However, I got the backs of the barn doors fitted with diagonal braces, and set about weathering them. The wooden 'planks' were pretty much covered with paper, if you remember, and whilst I wanted to keep some of this to represent flaking paint, I did remove the majority of it. There are some areas which need some more attention, just to get them looking consistent. Once that's done, there are hinges, nail heads, handles and latches/locks still to add. 

 

The observant will notice that I've given the 'domestic' door some more blue as well.

 

 

 

 

I also re-visited the other sides of the barn doors, weathering those a bit more. Some washes with antelope brown, some touching up with blue, some scraping back and more washes have got me to the 'I'm happy with that' stage - AGAIN, not that I was unhappy with them before. Hopefully I can do the final work on them without spoiling what's there, necessitating more 'repairs'.

 

 

 

On the brickwork front, I did apply 'the final wash' to darken everything slightly and better colour-match it to the chimney. I think this is close enough. Any differences can be explained away by the chimney being more exposed to the weather.

 

Tomorrow then, finishing off the doors and getting that transom fitted.

 

I plan next to make the remaining gable end wall and side wall for this building. These will be remnants of wall only, the rest consisting of rubble.

 

TFL

Badder

[PlaStix]

Hi Badder. Hope you are having a good weekend and your health is holding up! Just doing my usual catching up and it looks like you have been making more excellent progress. Mrs Stix and I have just been looking at the photos above and are both fairly convinced you are just miniaturising actual walls, doors and windows.........Badder, that is not modelling! Anyway - if you are really making them then you are perfecting the art beautifully - and your demolition skills are pretty good too............no doubt with all the practice..........here's a wall.....now it's gone..............now it's being replaced with another..............

Hope you have a good evening.

Kind regards,

Stix

[Badder]

15 hours ago, PlaStix said:

Hi Badder. Hope you are having a good weekend and your health is holding up! Just doing my usual catching up and it looks like you have been making more excellent progress. Mrs Stix and I have just been looking at the photos above and are both fairly convinced you are just miniaturising actual walls, doors and windows.........Badder, that is not modelling! Anyway - if you are really making them then you are perfecting the art beautifully - and your demolition skills are pretty good too............no doubt with all the practice..........here's a wall.....now it's gone..............now it's being replaced with another..............

Hope you have a good evening.

Kind regards,

Stix

Hi Mr and Mrs Stix,

Thanks for popping in. Always a pleasure to have you drop by.

A mixed weekend with my other half's birthday and an aunt's funeral (a rather large one as she was 1 of 13 kids - most people didn't have a TV back in the 40's) My health continues to continue as well as might be expected, which is good. Thanks for asking and I hope you are both well, as well.

 

On the model-building, or should I say model-demolition and renovation front, you'll be unsurprised to hear that I've re-visited all of the doors pictured above, again - aging them even more. And I also got that transom done.... see following post.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

 

 

 

[Badder]

Right. Those doors.

I always intended that they should be extremely decrepit, starting off with old, but complete doors, and gradually aging them further until I reached a stage that I was happy with. The thing is, at each stage, I'd 'stumble' across a  realistic effect and think 'that'll do nicely' and I'd not want to lose that effect with further work. In other words, they may have looked very realistic, but only as 'fairly old' doors. They never reached the stage of decrepitness that I had pictured in my head. I have to keep reminding myself that this building is a relatively OLD RUIN and that a large part of what's currently there, will be ruined further. The doors then, need to be even more decrepit.

 

So, I took a scalpel to the barn doors, and 'loosened up' the planking, making it a bit more gappy. I also scraped back some of the paint to make it a bit more 'peeled'. Some washes had to follow.  Inevitably, these took the edge of the brightest remnants of paint - just as time and weather would do.  Whilst I've lost the nice effects I achieved earlier, I have replaced them with different nice effects for doors at this stage of decrepitness. I THINK now, that they look old and rotten enough. IF they do get any further work, it'll be on the physical side, maybe loosening/removing a plank. Having said that, there may be a bit of green algae-mossyness added later.

 

Pics shortly.

 

Reaguards,

Badder

[Badder]

Apologies for the delay in posting the latest pics, only they have become not-the-latest pics due to me carrying on with the doors;  fitting hinges, fitting them in place and tidying them up with a little scraping, sanding and some pin washes. I did all of that while I was in the mood, rather than post pics.

 

But here's how things stood a few hours ago:

 

 

The transom fitted:

 

Pop back a bit later to see the latest pics of the barn doors with their hinges and fixed in place.

 

TFL

Badder

 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

Here are the doors, fitted. I'd like to emphasise the point that some of the photos are showing false colour tints, due to the poor lighting, or more likely, my camera settings. Here they look really yellowy!

 

 

 

I did try making the hinges from copper sheet to start off with, but then had trouble gluing them in place. Thin CA would dry too quickly, and medium CA too slowly. In the end I reverted to the old 'Paper soaked in CA' trick. That worked out just fine, soaking several square centimetres of graphpaper and allowing it to dry before cutting out the shapes.

I went for hanging one door 'on the wonk' where the uppermost and middle hinges have come away from the door frame.

 

In the photo below I used a flash, the result showing a truer colour image.

 

 

I do think the doors would look better in the closed postion, showing off the 'rotten' effects to full advantage, but it would be silly to close the building up. Obviously an open room will provide more opportunities when it comes to detailing and populating the diorama.

 

Here, a couple of the hinges look far too red and there's a reddish tint to the doors instead of the earlier yellow.

 

I do intend to add rusty nail heads to the fronts of the doors, and also screw/nail heads to the hinges. I will probably use an old hyperdermic needle to make the nail/screw holes and just paint the nail heads in rather than try to make them in 3D.

 

At this point, (particularly) I would welcome any criticisms, or suggestions, because I've been playing around with these doors for so long I think I have developed a 'blind spot' for them! Damn.... see... I just realised I haven't added handles, latches/bolts/locks.

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

For your general entertainment:

The colours here are true to life, unlike earlier.

 

Oh dear, that top hinge fell off the nearest barn door. Well, it was only just CA'd on. I will make a new one and fix it differently.... to the door frame, and let the business end flap free where the wooden 'plank' has rotted away. I'll make all the latches/bolts, the handles and those nail heads, as and when I have the inclination. The next stage though will be to construct the remaining wall sections for the part of the building nearest the camera. As I said in an earlier post, this area will be very much collapsed. I'll be using FTINFBISS to construct the walls, and will keep the offcuts as a source of stones.... therefore having an accurate volume of 'rubble' to play with.

 

 

TFL

Badder

Edited November 12, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

I've cut out 2 bits of FTINFBISS with which to form the other gable wall. I have yet to decide how much of this wall will remain standing. The excess will be removed and used for rubble. The last wall section will be treated similarly.

 

 

While work continues on the walls, here's a close up of the barn doors again, just for something to look at

 

TFL

Badder

[Badder]

As with the previous full height wall, the two pieces of FTINFBISS were not CA'd directly back to back, but were spaced apart using doubled-up coffee stirrers. Once the wall has been cut to it's final shape, the wall cavity will be filled with plaster and this will be worked to form the piff and paff.

 

 

I imagine that this gable wall suffered a catasrophic collapse, bringing down the entire roof and upper floor. Luckily, this all happened after the building was abandoned, because I believe the upper room was a childrens' bedroom. No, that's not the reason why it collapsed.

 

Oh, that funny looking light-blue thing is a disposable lancet, used by us diabetics to gentleman's parts our fingers and get a blood sample for testing. Instead, this one is being used to 'drill' tiny holes in the woodwork to emulate nail and screw holes.

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2018 by Badder

[Svedberg]

1 hour ago, Badder said:

...this will be worked to form the piff and paff.

Excuse me, but what is "the piff and paff"? 😲 Do I also need some? 😀

[Badder]

38 minutes ago, Svedberg said:

Excuse me, but what is "the piff and paff"? 😲 Do I also need some? 😀

I first heard the term 'Piff and paff', on a TV documentary about constructing a replica of a medievil French castle. They built inner and outer walls with a cavity between, and this was filled with loose stones, rubble, left-over mortar, and clay. It aided with insulation, but also helped to absorb canon fire. I did find it on the internet later, and it said there it was of French origin as well. However, I just had a quick search again, and I couldn't find it. Strange.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Svedberg]

1 hour ago, Badder said:

However, I just had a quick search again, and I couldn't find it. Strange.

Thanks for the explanation. I found sort of a reference here, but with another spelling: https://www.stone-ideas.com/13426/miscellaneous-pif-paf-pouf-in-the-woods/

[Badder]

6 minutes ago, Svedberg said:

Thanks for the explanation. I found sort of a reference here, but with another spelling: https://www.stone-ideas.com/13426/miscellaneous-pif-paf-pouf-in-the-woods/

Ah, that's the one I found the first time and why I couldn't find it just now! I forgot the spelling.

 

Cheers,

Badder

[Badder]

I pressed the stonework pattern onto the outside of the wall, only in those areas which would remain standing. The strongest parts of any building are usually found at the corners, and the weakest parts midway along walls, and directly above doors and windows, most especially if they are placed midway along walls. These facts influenced the 'design' of my collapsed wall and will  also influence the design of the last remaining wall section.

I then roughed out the wall, removing he excess FTINFBISS very... er.... roughly, as can be seen below.

 

I haven't added the stonework pattern to the inside of the wall yet, but have left some extra FTINFBISS there to allow for some variation in wall height. I fully expect to add the odd stone here and there as well.

 

The small section to the side, is there purely for.... well.... no reason at all really, so ignore it.

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2018 by Badder

[Badder]

After the initial washes with antelope brown and black, I added plasticard rectangles to some stones to make them stand proud, pressed the end of a file into others to indent them, and stippled over a few with a ballpoint to pit their surfaces. Here, I'd sanded back some of the plasticard rectangles to lessen the 'standing-outness' a bit:

 

And after several more washes including ones with mixed-in plaster dust:

 

 

 

 

I rubbed the last of the plaster-dust and antelope brown washes back with a damp brush, leaving the plaster-dust wash mostly in the mortar gaps. More washes will follow later, to colour-match this wall with the others.

But first, and because this wall is now structurally unsound, I will be carving more deeply into some of the mortar gaps to loosen some of the stones and make cracks that run down and across the wall.

 

TFL

Badder

Edited November 18, 2018 by Badder

[PlaStix]

HI Badder. Hope you are well. Just been doing my usual catchup and, as always, I am so impressed. I was looking at the doors and think you have managed to caprture the look wonderfully. I could well imagine being out for a country walk and coming across an old ruined building and that's exactly how it would look. The end wall looks to be progressing nicely as well - although how much it will have changed (or been demolished for thart matter) by the time of the next update is anyone's guess!

Kind regards,

Stix