Dave's corner

[Junior]

That´s a beautiful rudder Frédéric!

Anders

[Frederic Testard]

Anders, Russ, thanks for your interest.

There was a need for a sanitary room in one corner of the main building to hide the electric wire and the connection between the too short wires (bad planning...) and the upper level of this building.
So I built this small room. I simply covered a two-folded piece of bristol paper with planks, made a door and installed the thing so as to hide the wires. The pictures below show the process and are, I think, self-explanatory.











I also played with photograph then. I suppose you can see what is unusual in this picture of the left side of the diorama.



The beginning of a ceiling. A part a bit complex to handle.



More progress on the ceiling and a view of the first floor with the ceiling.









A little more details added to the first floor. The storage area above the workbench. The wooden vice is in the middle of the bench, and on the right there's the curved plane.



A close-up on the workbench.



The shelves (not in their future location).



It was also time to work on wiring. Two miniatronics bulbs downstairs, a hidden neon light upstairs. Four small pieces of printed circuit board to connect the wires.





The way I concealed all this electricity (the cardboard crates still needed some weathering).





Fiat lux!



Almost everything had been glued in the next pic, apart from the Edgeworth crate and the rusted can on the left side.



It's the moment when I started to feel that I saw the end of the tunnel for the detailing of the inside of the building (still a few planes, ropes, one or two smaller shelves, a row boat being built).

[eTraxx]

Frederic. I thought .. "You are a master" .. when I saw the 'Rembrandt' .. I understood 

[finescalerr]

Not bad. I'd be more impressed if it were N scale. -- ssuR

[Frederic Testard]

Me too, Russ.

[Junior]

Frédéric, so many nice details every day. The picture with the shed in the distance is excellent!

Anders 

[TRAINS1941]

Frederic

Following this the first time was excellent.  It's better the second time around get to see how all this was done and seeing some of the details I missed the first time.

Jerry

[Carlo]

Fredric -
You are doing a wonderful job on the detailing, especially in such a tiny scale.

However, I am worried about your placement of that heavy winch/pulley support structure on the 2nd floor, without any support underneath. In fact, it looks like one side isn't even over a joist. I'm afraid that wouldn't lift much (even with it's heavy beams) without the whole mess dropping through the floor.

Carlo

[Frederic Testard]

Anders, thanks for the comment about the picture with the shed in the distance. This was one of my first attempts to use a software whose current version name is CombineZP to get a all focused image by shooting a series of pictures with different distances of focus and then letting the software pick in each frame the in-focus part. Compared to the well known HeliconFocus product, Combine has the clear advantage of being a free product, easily download and immediately working without even installing it.
Jerry, I may try to post it a third time if it really improves at every post...
Carlo, I'm afraid the building will have to stay the way you see it now since everything has been permanently glued several weeks ago. In fact, I think that the frame may be a little heavy considering the usual load it has to sustain. And I won't forget your advice for other buildings (I have a project of a detail wood worker in S scale that will certainly need many such comments).

It was finally time to add a boat being built to the shop. I happened to have a casting for a dory that perfectly fit the era and place.







After some filing, she was painted first polly scale concrete, then a mix of raw sienna and white. The colour is reasonably close from that of unstained pieces of basswood, even if it could probably be still improved.
A few sticks were glued below and inside the ship to emulate those shown in the real world picture above, and I think it gives a convincing rendition of a dory being built in the shop.








Then came the time to complete the wiring of the building.



There are 8 wires (the red and the blue go to the power source, two are for an outside light, two for the neon light visible on the wall in the picture above, and two for the first floor lamps). A bit afraid of soldering in a tight place full of details that don't like heat - and where rinsing could be difficult - I had built two connectors, each made out of two brass plates held together by two screws and nuts. To make the screwing step as easy as possible, the nuts were soldered to the plates.

Before soldering the nuts



After



... and finally I didn't use them and soldered the wires. It took no more than five minutes and the solder flux was cleaned with a wet cloth the morning after... The second pic below has been postprocessed with CombineZ5 to improve the depth of field.





The wires were then hidden using the junk available on the second floor. The circle shows where one set was soldered. The other solder is hidden behind the cardboard crates.



A wooden crate with its rear open has been glued to hide the wires.



From inside there's still something to see but from outside it looks fine, and nobody will be allowed to go inside the building when the diorama is done.



A few nocturnal shots. The color differences are due to different post-processings with Paint Shop Pro.

[Junior]

Frédéric, very nice job again - clean and neat job on the boat. I have used Helicon Focus for over a year with great results but will check out this other programme as well. H.F. is about $35.00 a year or $125.00 lifetime.

Anders

[Frederic Testard]

Thanks Anders. HF is certainly not very expensive, but you'll certainly agree that Combine is even less...

The making of the roof.

A first jig was used to sand the wood so as to have matching ends at the top of the truss.



Then, the parts were inserted in another jig and the bottom of the truss was sanded flush with the base of the cardboard.







I tried this system of double jig for the first time on this diorama and I think it easily leads to very accurate results.

With the trusses ready, the building could start. Two big clear timbers were temporarily glued and act as a jig to install the trusses, they were removed when the purlins were glued...



When this was done, I could start the dormers. Bristol paper base covered on both sides with planks.







When they were done, it was time to add the roof. Cardboard base, planked on the inside, covered with a thin sheet of styrene on the outer side, and styrene strips for the seams. Now it was time to become a real artist and make the weathering work.





The basic coloring was done with acrylics : a little amount of Hooker green and a good amount of titanium white. I made enough of the mix to be able to cover the whole roof. The first shot is before patina, and some places need little repairs (like removing the small green spot on one of the dormers). The styrene had been primed by brushing two coats of Polly Scale acrylic concrete.



And finally two pictures of the weatherized roof.





I chose to apply a relatively light weathering, conformal to the fact that's a building in full use (bad English, you're allowed to turn it into good one...).

[Malachi Constant]

I've enjoyed following this build on the "other" forum ... and it's nice to see it going again here .... like a favorite, classic movie.  The sets, lighting and cinematography are wonderful.  Just need some popcorn ...

Cheers,
Dallas

[finescalerr]

That jig series was very helpful to me. I have a lot of trouble with such things and those little tutorials enable me to understand better when and how to use a jig. -- Russ

[Frederic Testard]

Thanks, Dallas. I'll try to find some O popcorn - maybe in Mr Mudgeon's pantry between a few model ships and a plane...
Russ, it certainly is worthwhile to consider the use of jigs even for one time jobs. All the things that replace skill with 'automatism' tend to improve our models (and to keep us in a good mental state to go on).

With the roof almost complete, I started the little add-on on the left of the building. Some pleasant 3D carpentry work (the add-on hadn't been glued yet on the pictures below, it was just leaning over a vertical support on its left). The corrugated roof and the end of the inside detailing were still to be done. The chicken wire was done with wedding tulle. I preferred Dave's square pattern but I could only find hexagonal one.



A sight on the opened paint containers on the right side. They were made of Evergreen styrene tubing, thinned in one end with an X-acto blade, and partially filled with a conveniently sized piece of rod glued with MEK. The inside of the tube was painted steel (Vallejo), the top of the rod with the color of the paint, a few spill hints were added to the label and we're done. Very fast job (by the way, the other round containers are simply pieces of round balsa wrapped with a label, and with the top brushed with the color of the paint in the pot). Better being the best enemy of good, I didn't try to add a handle (I was afraid to ruin everything when drilling the holes). The brush on the plank is one of Dave's charming lasercut parts.



More details.

The first floor door. Thin planks of stripwood were glued on both sides of a piece of paper precut slighlty smaller than the door, with HO 1x2 for the extra thin strips. The acetate for the windows comes from Rusty Stumps and was dusted with matte medium. Other addition : the wheel on the wall (a sort of old-fashioned logo) and the derelict drum on the left (a nice gift from Larry - BigLars on RR-Line).



A stack of pallets near the big door, and a leftover piece of chicken wire. I'd also added small rings to the top of the posts. I cut the penultimate ring of a chain to have only one ring, then used some thin twisted electric wire inserted into the post to hold it.



More details added to the add-on. A table with Dave's tools (it looks better in reality than what the overlit photo shows), a few frames, another of Larry's drums, a piece of corrugated roofing.





With the add-on :



And finally, a sad view. The force of destiny...



A general view with the roof details added.





The corrugated roofing was then added to the little add-on. I elected to model it only partially rusted.



And the last metal beam with its hoisting mechanism was installed. The mechanism was essentially made of paper (round pieces were punched, square ones X-actoed), plus two small bits of wood, a short length of brass and two white metal castings for the hooks. Pictures show various steps of the process.









The last shot shows the double pulley being assembled.



Finally, a chimney and a Polarine sign were added.







With the main building essentially, done, next posts will concern the left part of the diorama.

[finescalerr]

Satisfactory. -- Russ