The Imperfect Modeller

For various reasons, not all of them to do with modelling, this has been a busy week.  It’s also been a week in which I realised I have a great deal to do in the coming weeks and months and less time to achieve it in than I would have liked.  Failing to deliver on numerous commitments is not an option I want to consider so I’m  left with little alternative but to get my finger out!  With this in mind I managed to make progress on this diorama and, as an added bonus, managed to complete a vignette that had taken a back seat over the last couple of weeks.  Details on the vignette will follow as a separate post shortly after I hit the publish button on this one.

A few finishing touches were needed to the building itself, one of which was painting the filler that I had been placed at both ends of the “drinking straw” ridge tiles and had simply forgotten to do. I also completed the wire aperture for the tree which will feature and also managed to get the filler added to it along with the first few coats of paint.  Hopefully the tree will be completed this week.  A few figures have also been completed and all the others are well on the way.

The diorama when complete will also feature a small barn/shed.  The main significance of this building being to provide the “walk through” between it and the main a house for the British troops, something which will make far more sense when the diorama is complete.  I’ve managed to get the walls done, the roof made and the painting done but the door still needs to be attached which will happen once the building has been fixed to the base and the ground work has been built up around it.

The barn/shed itself was made using foam board on this occasion. The board was clad inside and out using coffee stirrers.  The roof was made using a tool I acquired from”Green Stuff World” for making corrugated panels using metal foil.  This was the first time of using this tool and it wasn’t quite as easy as I’d hoped.  In the end I found it worked better if you turned the key slower. Although I didn’t think I’d been turning it quickly the metal kept going off at an angle.  In itself this wasn’t much of a problem but it meant I had to square up each sheet that had passed through and that produced a lot of waste metal foil which wasn’t particularly cheap to buy. I shall definitely being looking at alternative materials to use In the future but the tool did produce a good result.

The nice thing about using the metal foil for the roof was when it came to weathering it after initial coats of paint had been applied.  Simply scratching away some of the paint exposed the metal beneath and produced a nice result along with the addition of a few applications of Humbrol Rust weathering powder.

If I’m lucky I hope to have this one finished in a couple of weeks.  The figures need to be completed along with the tree and numerous other bits and pieces but the assembly will undoubtedly take a while as it will need to go together in stages in order to access individual areas for  fixing and painting.  In the meanwhile I  need to get ready for the Plymouth Model Clubs annual competition on Monday (my first) as well as this year’s first show which will be at Bovington in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully both will prove to be fun.

Latest progress photos below.

TIM

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week saw the main building of this diorama virtually completed.

Before the outside painting was started there was a need to complete some internal details.  Clear plastic was placed behind each window to provide the glass and an internal wall was added.  I couldn’t be certain if it would be possible to see into the building through the windows but couldn’t afford to take the chance.  Once the building was stuck down and having decided on a fixed roof there would be no opportunity to do so later.  The internal wall was given some wallpaper and a couple of pictures were placed on the wall to be visible through each window.  I had also decided that the front door would be ajar and so I also added an internal porch and flooring for appearance.

The wooden shutters were painted and fixed into place as was the chimney and the front door.  For the rounded ridge tiles I used a plastic drinking straw.  A piece of drinking straw was sandwiched between two pieces of foam board to create the chimney.

The outside painting, walls and roof, was done using a variety of oil paint colours thinned with white spirit to create washes of various dilutions.  Darker colours were used for the brick pointing and lighter colours to provide highlights as appropriate.

Before fixing the building into place it was appropriate to construct part of the groundwork, specifically the cobbled area around the building itself as this was created using another Green Suff rolling-pin.  Milliput was used instead of DAS clay on this occasion.  Time allowed for some vegetation to be added around the building, primarily to cover up the joins between the bottom of the building walls and the base as well as to add colour and authenticity.

Next up is creating the small outside barn, a tree and a few other bits and pieces as well as painting the dozen figures which will feature.

Progress pictures appear below but suffer from too much shadow and so appear rather darker than the actual model.  I will try to do better next time but photography is not one of my strengths!

TIM

Progress this week has been slower than I would have liked owing to a major dose of Man Flu.  Apparently there is a strain which is doing the rounds which has been labeled Aussie Flu and is by all accounts rather nasty.  All of this has of course been wasted on “her who must be obeyed” who’s level of sympathy extended only to the words “Man Up”.  As every man knows, Man Flu is generally considered by 50% of the world’s population (mostly men it must be said) to be worse than child-birth.  There is of course a counter argument to this by approximately 50% of the world’s population (mainly women unsurprisingly) that this is of course nonsense.

Despite pointing out these statistics the level of sympathy from “her who must be obeyed” surprisingly went down!  Further more it was pointed out to me that when she had the same as me a few days earlier she still got on with the house work, cooking the meals and doing the shopping.  Proof, if indeed proof were needed I pointed out, that her viral strain was clearly not as bad as mine and hence why I had to stay in bed.  I can’t recall what she threw at me.  Women, can’t live without them but can’t shoot them either!

So, as I say, model progress not as much as I had hoped but a fair bit done none the less.

Having stuck the four sides of the building together it proved necessary to do a minimal amount of cleaning up and do some patch work on each of the corners.  This was done using Milliput and a cocktail stick to etch in the brick work where appropriate.  My next step was to start work on the roof.

As I mentioned previously I had already decided that the roof on this building would be fixed and because of this I chose cardboard for the base layer.  Had I decided to have a removable roof then I would have chosen MDF, the same base layer used for constructing the walls.  The other reason for using cardboard (in this case cardboard from a corn flakes box) was because in this instance I wanted to get the bowing effect that comes when the PVA dries out which doesn’t tend to happen when using MDF, hence using it for the walls.  Old buildings often have warped roofs and I was hoping to get this by using cardboard instead.

Having cut the cardboard to a length slighty longer than the building and with a little bit of an over hang front and back I then drew horizontal lines 5mm apart to indicate where each row of tiles would be placed.  The next job was to cut out each tile and glue them down.  To produce the tiles I used a tile cutter which was a Christmas present to myself from “Green Stuff World”.  Essentially it’s a hole punch and they do others in various leaf shapes.  Santa bought me one of those too.  Thereafter it was all about glueing each tile in place and as the finished roof took over 1100 tiles it took a while.  That said it was an ideal job given I wasn’t at my best and I had YouTube to keep me company throughout.  A little tip if you find yourself doing this.  Dip the tip of a cocktail stick into PVA every so often and use it to pick up the tiles instead of trying with your fingers.  Makes the job much easier and surprisingly speeds the process up a lot.

When doing the roof tiles I find it’s best to do so much and then let it dry before doing some more otherwise it can all become a bit messy.  It also helps with your sanity too.  So, while things were drying I set about making other bits and pieces such as the fence, log pile, five bar gate, water trough, window shutters and doors.  These were mostly made either from match sticks, wooden coffee stirrer’s or both.  For the doors I also used some metal foil to make the hinges and twisted wire for the fence.

That’s as far as I’ve got since last week.  This coming week I’m hoping to start the out building shed and begin painting some of the figures.  I’ll also give some thought to the inside of the building before permanently fixing the roof in place and attaching the chimney and ridge tiles.  I also need to finish the windows and then start on … (to be continued).

Progress pictures below.

TIM

Welcome to my first post of 2018!

Those of you who follow my blog will be aware that I have been keen to start a new building project and over the last few days I’ve managed to get things started.  The diorama when complete will be a further addition to my WW1 series.  I’m not sure I would describe it as the centre piece but it will be the largest piece in the eventual timeline.

Some modellers I know begin their next project by sketching out plans for the proposed build, I’m not one of them.  I’ve never really worked from sketches, mainly because I’m useless at drawing and so learnt instead to formulate and retain all the details in my head.  I can’t therefore share with you a picture of what the end result will look like until it’s complete.  However, the basic idea behind the model is that of a rustic type cottage/farm-house on the French/Belgium border with two or three civilians/farmer types watching as a dozen or so British troops pass through their land on their way to the frontline.  Not very exciting I grant you but the best excuse I could come up with for the type of building I wanted to construct.  In my head it looks OK!

One thing that I do though before starting a new diorama is create a written list following a brain dump of all the things I could potentially include in the model.  I then use it as a check list as I go along.  I then look to see what’s in my bit box and follow this by working out what I can scratch build and what, if anything, I might need to buy.  For this model the list, which will most likely be added to, currently looks like this: –

water trough, wheels, ladder, barrels, window shutters, chimney, tree, plants, chain, rope, fence, chickens, sacks, tools, fence, gate, cobblestones, puddles, wheel tracks, door thresholds, door handles/knobs, hinges, boxes, crates, grass, walls, furniture, wood pile, path, animals, shrubs, ridge tiles, roof tiles, weathering, shed with corrugated roof …

The starting place for all my buildings is the base.  Paul at “Just Bases” does some nice stuff and the biggest base that he does which has an acrylic cover measures 351mm x 201mm x 135mm high and is reasonably priced.  Someday I’ll do something bigger but storing it will be the difficulty and packing it away to keep the dust off of it seems a shame; for now this is as big as I go.  So, taking account of the base dimensions I decided to go with a building which measuring 190mm x 100mm x 100mm high.  I also decided that the walls of the cottage would be stone in appearance and that the roof would be fixed and not removable like some of my previous builds.  I also decided that the basic construction would be made using 3mm thick MDF which would then be suitably clad.  I have used cardboard and foam board before but find they both bow as the cladding dries out which doesn’t look great and makes it harder to assemble the sides and ends.  The MDF warps a little but it’s minor by comparison.

Having made these decisions my first step was to measure and mark out the sides and ends followed by the locations of doors and windows.  The first buildings I ever constructed were MDF kits produced by Sarissa Precision which were excellent but very two-dimensional.  My painting skills weren’t, and still aren’t, good enough to produce a 3D appearance so I went with cladding to achieve some relief for shading and highlighting.  However, what these kits did give me was an easy way to achieve 28mm scale measurements.  For this build the doors measure 40mm high x 25mm wide and the windows are 20mm square.  One door and window to the back wall and one door and two windows to the front.

My next step was to cut out the four sides and check assembly.  This was followed by marking out the door and window locations and then cutting them out too.  Once done I used match sticks to make window and door frames which were then glued in place and left to dry.  Once dry, each side of the building was in turn coated with DAS clay which was then levelled and smoothed out.  I had never used this clay before but was advised via a YouTube tutorial to add PVA to make a kind of dough mix.  The PVA apparently prevents the dried clay from future cracking.  Having only ever done this once I have no idea if this is true or not but I figured better safe than sorry and besides it did seem to make sense too.

Before the clay dried (the clay air dries and does so reasonably quickly but I thick adding the PVA slows the process down) I used my recently acquired “Green Stuff” textured rolling-pin to produce the stone effect.  This was another first and I was extremely pleased with the result.  It is best to wet the rolling-pin a little as this prevents it from sticking.  I also found that it worked better to roll the pin forward a little and then roll it back on itself again making small advances as you move along.  Rolling back enables the impression the roller makes to be more defined but if you go to far forward the roll back is less likely to line up accurately with the initial impression made (I hope this makes sense!).  Once done I cleaned the rolling-pin up using soapy water and a nail brush before any clay residue had a chance to set.

Having let everything dry overnight I then wanted to complete a couple of other things before assembly.  The first was to complete the door and window on the rear wall.  I decided the door would be in a shut position and the window, which would have wooden shutters, would have these closed too.  For both the door and the window shutters I used wooden coffee stirrers cut to length and glued in to place.  Holes were drilled in both the door and window shutters to accommodate the tip of cocktail sticks which were used to make knobs and handles.

The second item I wanted to complete before assembly was to construct and glue into place the internal window frames.  In the past I have tried to use all sorts of materials for this and haven’t been truly happy with any of them.  I think it’s the scale which has given me the difficulty as I just couldn’t get things to line up as I wanted or make them without breaking.  However, following a moment of inspiration I tried using some preformed mesh wire, the same as I had used to make railings on a previous model, and found this worked very well.  I rebated the MDF at the back of the front wall a little and inlaid the section of wire and then glued it into place and left it to dry.

Once everything was dried it was time to test the assembly before gluing.  A little sanding was required to ensure a smooth fit although it was evident that some filler would be needed at each of the corners once put together.  To ensure a stronger bond I glued small sections of foam board to each internal corner and then held everything in place with a few elastic bands to pull it all together before leaving it all to dry.

Next up is the roof, windows and shutters, the door and the Chimney and …… but these will have to wait until part 2.

Progress images below.

TIM