Queensland Miners Cottage 1:24

[JohnTolcher]

Hi folks, or perhaps G'day

This is new ground for me, it's a diorama I'm working on. A lot a of scratchbuilding but at least it's mostly square joins and flat surfaces. I love the style of old timber house you find here in North Australia, built about a century ago. This will be a miniature of a small example.

Here's a ref image showing typical features: open frame external walls, verandas, corrugated iron roofs, on stumps.

[JohnTolcher]

Large houses are usually known these days as Queenslanders, smaller ones Miners Cottages.

[JohnTolcher]

Small timber for this was hard to source here and I was not sure I could make it do what I wanted so I opted for styrene. I painted some styrene test pieces first to be sure there was a chance I could pull it off. Looked okay to me so I carried on.

[JohnTolcher]

I started with the sash windows. The chopper was very handy.

[JohnTolcher]

The Dupplicutter seemed pretty expensive for what it is, so I made my own version which has been okay.

[JohnTolcher]

Grain was added using course sandpaper, splits were scraped into the members with a hobby knife at right angles to the direction of motion. The resulting fuzz was cleaned up with a kitchen scourer.

[JohnTolcher]

Chamfers in the weatherboards were scraped into the styrene. Using my homemade dupplicutter as a guide.

[JohnTolcher]

At this stage most of the 'wood work' was done.

[JohnTolcher]

It's not going to be a whole house just one side as a backdrop to the side yard.

[JohnTolcher]

Most of the main elements are not glued, but held together temporarily with wire dowels. This image also gives an idea of the size.

There's a bit more to show, but I haven't resized the images yet. So that's it for now, cheers.

John

[finescalerr]

Most satisfactory. Very neat construction. But how on earth will you create the (rather tricky) finish with all that exterior framing? Is every part pinned at this point? -- Russ

[Barney]

Being a plastic type man - I just love it - superb plastic engineering
Barney

[Ray Dunakin]

Great job! Interesting prototype too.

[Bill Gill]

Very nice construction and convincing wood from styrene.

How do you align the holes for the wire dowels? I have a couple buildings (HO scale) that I'd like to pin the facade onto the thin sidewalls with wire dowels so that the front can be removed to see & photograph the interior, but can't drill through the face of the facade into the sidewall and don't have a drill press to align measured marks on back of facade and edge of sidewall.

[marc_reusser]

Fine I'll  repeat myself...."just fab and lovely"