Country strore redux

[michael mott]

Nicely done Sir!

And is this work and time spent applicable?


In all seriousness an amazing attention to observation of what happens to infrastructure. When we pay more attention to profit than community. Our infrastructure crumbles

Michael   

[Ray Dunakin]

Chuck, how did you model the nails (on the screen door and elsewhere)? What size brass wire did you use, and how did you make the holes to put them in (drill or punch with a needle)? How did you get the ends so flat?

[Chuck Doan]

Ray, I size the heads to be about 3/8", so .015 wire for 1/2" scale. I use a .014 drill which usually makes a light interference fit.

I fire up the disc sander and touch the end of a length wire to square it, then nip off about a 1/4" length and then square off the wire and cut again. Tedious.  Then batch blacken, press partway in, and color head either rusty or wall paint color and press allaway in using a squared off piece of styrene strip.

[Mobilgas]

Ray, what screen door ? am i missing something?      Chuck,  Looking good

[Ray Dunakin]

Ray, what screen door ? am i missing something?

Sorry, my question was in reference to Chuck's 1/24th gas station, and I thought that was where I had posted the question. Not quite sure how it ended up here.

Chuck, thanks for the info! I want to give that a try on my current project.

[Chuck Doan]

Ray I did try some nails on this one....008 wire. They are too hard to see to be worth it.


I added a light and the front sign for my store. I found a nice large weathered straight on view of a Coke sign on the internet and imported it into Photoshop Elements to resize it and brighten and clean it up a bit. I then opened a Word document and found a nice type font for the name and typed it out. I saved the document as a PDF and then saved that to a JPEG. I imported the name image into PSE and weathered it with brush strokes to simulate a faded brush-painted sign. I then combined the two edited images (name and Coke) in a Word document and did the PDF to JPEG thing to create a single unified image. I cropped the final sign image and imported it into Word, sized it for my sign (5/8" x 1 ¼") and printed it onto Epsom presentation paper.





I took the printed sign and burnished Scotch Magic tape over both sides, and then trimmed it to final size around its edges. I epoxied it to .005 styrene and soda blasted it to dull the surface of the tape. I then added additional fading and weathering with gouache and Bragdon powders. I carefully butted .015 x .030 styrene strips up to the image edge and attached them to the .005 styrene sheet with Testor's cement to create the "metal" frame. I then trimmed around the frame to finish the sign. I sanded the face of the frame smooth and weathered it with powders N gouache.  A final light soda blasting unified the weathering.
I made full page width images in Word so the shrunk down image would be crisp. Of course this requires a large source image which I fortunately had. I used an Epsom dot matrix printer, best photo setting, presentation paper setting, and I turned off the high speed setting to get the best printed image. For weathering reference, both Flickr and E-bay were good sources for old Coke sign pics.












The light shade is a brass stamping from the scrap box. I turned a cap and a mounting bracket from styrene and attached them with .02 wire. The brass was blackened and then painted with thinned Polly scale white (underside) and green gouache and weathered with powders. The mounting post was weathered to represent an old galvanized finish.

[Malachi Constant]

Well, sh*t ... there I was enjoying that nifty, realistic, clever new sign ... then I get to the last photo and see that some bugger has already stolen it.  Nice while it lasted!    -- Dallas

[MASIGMON]

Chuck, I know this is for the Country Store Redux however my question is on Groveland.  I know you said you used "O" scale lumber for the clapboards. in 1/2" scale would that be 2" x 12" or 2" x 14" "O" scale lumber to make the clapboards.  I have alot of "O" 2" x 12" also if I was to upsize from 1/2" to 1:20 scale I also have plenty of 1" x 6" & 1" x 8" in true 1:20
As always the "Groveland" is better than the real thing if that sopunds right

Thanks,
Mike Sigmon
Jacksonville, Fl 

[Chuck Doan]

Hi Mike,

I used O scale 1 x 12's to simulate 1/2" x 6" clapboards. I don't know the most common true thickness prototype size, but I would guess it to be between 3/8 and 1/2. If the 2 x 12's look good to you, then use them, I have seen pictures of some pretty thick prototype clapboards too.

Dallas, it must be those TV pickers again!

[TRAINS1941]

A lesson in how to make realistic signs.  As usual a beautiful job.

Jerry

[Gordon Ferguson]

Well I suppose when you break down the amount of work that went into a (5/8" x 1 ¼")  sign you start to realise why the total model looks that good !

I do like the lamp, colour and weathering on it are just terrific


that JPEG PDF stuff sounds horribly complicated

[fspg2]

Chuck, I admire again and again your miniaturization of the nature!
I can not get enough to see from your modeling!

[finescalerr]

Superb.

If you had Photoshop you could have chosen the Type tool, picked your font from the drop down list, and added it to the image (after enlarging the "canvas" size). It would have been unnecessary to go to Word, save the text first as a PDF, and then to re-save it as an image file.

Note to everyone: Never save an original image as a JPEG. That format is only for use on the Internet. It is destructive; it adds artifacts and removes important image data. Save as a TIFF or BMP or any other uncompressed format. Then, if you must have a JPEG for some reason, save a copy of the TIFF image as a JPEG.

Similarly, you could have sized the final sign and printed it directly from Photoshop (with much more control over the printed image) instead of importing it to Word for that step.

I've never used it but maybe Photoshop Elements would allow you to do one or two of those things.

It is impossible for me to improve on the artistry I see on this forum but sometimes I can help with an aspect of technology.

Russ

[Chuck Doan]

Thanks All! Yes Russ I am still a bit of a caveman with image stuff. Thanks for the information. I suspect PSE can do a lot of this; I am still learning it and the Word process is quick though apparently destructive. I also print a bunch on a sheet so I can choose the best one that prints.

Gordon, the term horribly complicated is probably one of the first taught to computer programmers (as a goal, not to avoid)

[finescalerr]

Chuck, please feel to e-mail or phone if you want any tips about working with images. Same for anyone else who wants a quick primer. -- Russ