Acquisition - Finally!

I have been trying to lay my hands on a Bachmann On30 2-8-0, at a reasonable price, for years. Well, it finally happened and I managed to lay my hands on one. Granted it was not in the original box so all the little extra pieces were missing and it had a load of lumber in the tender instead of coal. I can live with all of that. What I might have trouble with is that it appears to be a DCC locomotive which I was not prepared for. Now I'm going to have to do the work and convert my smaller locomotives (a 2 truck Shay and a couple of Porters) over to DCC. Nothing like a challenge!

Cartoon Wednesday (Very Late)

 

Victory Over Gold - Gold Box LImited Edition

Not only do I enjoy the process of cutting out wood jigsaw puzzles I also enjoy putting them together! One of the puzzle cutters that I follow is Mark Cappitella. He owns Pinnacle Puzzles (also MGC puzzles) and I really admire his work. He definitely has had an impact on how I cut my own puzzles. I have always wanted to get a puzzle from him but he is a bit out of my price range (similar to Stave Puzzles). However, he has cut a couple of puzzles for Victory Puzzles out of the UK. They take his master cut and translate it into a file to create a laser cut version of his design. He showed some of his work cutting out Victory Over Gold (celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings) on his youtube channel. Victory announced this as a Limited Edition puzzle for $135 dollars, still painful but doable and I put in my order that puzzle.

I received this back in November but hadn't had the time to pull it out till last week. It was everything I hoped for. A fantastic image cut by a master puzzle maker and it had me scratching my head for about a week. I loved every minute of it. Definitely one of the hardest puzzles I have put together (probably just edges out the D&RGW Colorado Map image form Liberty Puzzles). The multiple bands of colors combined with the free form pieces made for quite the challenge. I didn't even bother trying to pull edge pieces out, as is the case with most wood puzzles the designers go to a lot of effort to hide the edges and the corners. If you are looking for a challenge for your next puzzle this is a great one!

The colors are a bit off but they are pretty close.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building #1 - Mounting windows and Doors

This is step that has been a long time in coming and I'm reasonably pleased with the result. Before I started mounting the windows and doors I took a hard look at the sills and lintels. I think the original pieces were to thick and some where decidedly less than "square". I opted to try and reduce the width of each to 3 "bricks". Of course cutting caused some issues with the paper and there were a number of tears, mostly shallow but in one instance I ripped out almost the whole section between the 2nd & 3rd floor windows. I was able to take some of the leftover paper and cover these offending sections up and you really can't see the patches. It was certainly tedious and I'm facing the same situation on the street side wall.

I used super glue to mount everything in place and putty (vallejo in this case, because I had it) to fill the gaps from the backside. I need to find something to impress some detail into the sills and lintels, still scouting through my parts box for something at this point. That is the nice thing about this particular PVC sheets it takes impressions really well.

At this point I had finished trimming all of the lintels and sills to be a bit narrower (3 bricks or about 9"). While most of the ripped paper is pretty small, you can see the large tear on the right side between the 2nd and 3rd story.

At this point I have finished the "patches". I simply took some of the left over brick paper and either replaced the entire area or just cut single strips of bricks and glued everything in place. I'm pretty sure that it will pass muster at this point as its hard to pick out the patches even when you are looking for them.

At this point, I have shortened up all the lintels and sills a bit, they just looked to wide before.

Just another view of the mostly completed wall. The only other thing I could add at this point is the decorative band between the first and second floors. Everything else will have to wait for final assembly.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building #1 - Painting Doors and Windows

Another week of trying to fit in modeling makes progress very slow. With the walls basically finished I felt like I could spend time getting the windows ready. While I tried to be as precise as possible I figure there will be some shimming necessary to get good fits. There are 30 tall 12-Pane double hung windows, 12 short 12-Pane double hung windows, 2 display windows, 1 double door entrance and 3 sets of warehouse doors.

Most of the components are from Tichy, but the smaller 12 pane windows are Grandt Line. I cleaned everything up and headed to the spray booth. I mounted everything with double sided tape to popsicle sticks and then glued those popsicle sticks to the top of the cheap lazy susan I use as a spinner in the booth. I primed everything with Badger Grey Stynylrez grey primer, followed by a brown (Vallejo Panzer Aces but the label is to worn to read the actual color) and then an off white (Vallejo Panzer Aces German White Tanker Crew).

Now everything is ready to install into the walls, just need to find the time to do it.

Popsicle sticks glued to the spinner. There is so much paint built up over the years that they can be pried off without to much effort

Everything in place with double sided tape.

The final color an off white, I would almost call this an antique white.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building #1 - Sills and Lintels

Work progresses slowly. Over the last few days I cut out sills and lintels for the rail and street side walls. There was frustration there as I simply could not get my NW Chopper to cut accurately. Cutting all those small pieces took longer than expected. Everything seemed to be going okay as I glue the pieces into place but for some reason everything seems to be just a bit off kilter. I'm not happy with the result at this point, but I'm going to continue to move forward. My next step, before I do anything else, is to apply a layer of dullcote. As I was cleaning a brush a large drop of water hit the street side wall in the upper right corner, I'm beyond upset with myself at this point. So when I get to another working session the airbrush is coming out. Hopefully that will stop any other water accidents from taking place. My new rule for working with paper is to seal it before I glue to to a substrate, both sides of the paper!

Rail side

Street side

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building 1 - Exterior Brick Finished

I was able to finish getting the rest of the brick paper glued on and the windows and doors cut out. This was on the creek wall and the street wall. I'm not happy with the creek wall right now. Somewhere an error crept into the measurements and the buttresses are not centered correctly, that is going to bother me a lot. Hopefully I can disguise it a bit with some exterior details and weathering. On top of that it looks like the buttresses are not straight up and down. I have checked it with my square and measured the gap between them (9' in HO scale) and that measurement is the same all the way up and down. Right now I'm chalking that up to a perspective issue. On a positive note the creek wall cannot be viewed straight on, it will be angled away from the viewer so whatever mistake has crept in shouldn't not be noticeable to the casual viewer.

Creek wall before cutting out the windows. Looks pretty good here.

Creek wall after cutting out the windows. This is where it starts to look out of kilter.

Street side wall ready for some decoration.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building #1 - More Brickwork - progress

Lots going on around here and I haven't found a lot of time to work on Building #1. This is the accumulation of more than a few short build sessions.

There is still an awful lot to do and I'm trying not to rush to the finish so some of the little things that have cropped up aren't as frustrating as they could be. First off running out of blades, this thing is eating blades so I broke down and bought a big pack of #11 blades, it should be enough to see me through this build.

Here are where things stand a the moment:

Rail side wall. Needs sills, lintels and a concrete band,

Alley wall, just needs the lower brickwork, stonework and a door.

Alley wall from the inside.

Inside of the street wall, cuts are pretty rough at this point. My blades were starting to get dull. Not to concerned since viewing the inside will be tough.

All four walls, in this shot I'm gluing the buttresses on the creek side wall.

Looking at the street side wall before the windows were cut.

The rail side with everything cut out at this point.

A sanity check that everything is still fitting together.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Warehouse Row - Building #1 - Railside Windows #2

Its been a couple of weeks and progress came to a complete halt over the holiday season. I finally found some time to cut out the window and door openings and fold the brick paper to the sides to form the brick edge. Overall it looks pretty good but variations in cuts in the PVC didn't give that really nice straight edge that I was hoping for. The flaws are pretty evident to me at this point. I'll reserve judgement till the building is finished. Here are a couple of pics just to show that progress is being made.