Building the Barbose Mining Co. Stamp Mill - Office and Boiler Room - Part 2

We continue on with the Barbosa Mining Co. Stamp Mill build. After the main building its time to build the office and the boiler room. The kit is designed for the office to be on the left (as you look at the front) and the boiler room on the right side. You can swap them but that would put the door to the boiler room on the back of the building instead of the front. If you do the swap keep in mind that you will also need to swap the location of the water tower and the walkways and their supports (which filters all the way down to the ore bins by the way).

This section is very bare bones in the booklet. It simply tells you what length to cut the timbers that support the deck and to brace the interior of both structures like the main building. Six pictures are provided to help you figure it out. All of which is fine, these are pretty basic little square structures after all.

There is one thing that I would change. When you cut the timbers they are basically sized for a walkway that's 5/8" of an inch wide which scales out to 30". That's pretty narrow even with a rickety railing to hold on to. I went ahead cut mine to extend out 3/4" for a 36" wide walkway. This does eat up more 5/32" square stripwood as well as stripwood for the deck itself. I just felt like it looked better with the wider walkway.

Let's just move to the photos and you can see what I did, first the office:

The bracing begins. I framed it the same way as instructed to for the main building.

I used the front as a template to build the roof support for the back side (this will butt up against the side of the main building)

Since there isn't a wall, as such, on the back I added two additional braces across the back to keep everything square.

Here I started adding the support timbers. I didn't measure anything I just sort of eyeballed their placement. Mine buildings tended to be on the quick and dirty side as far as measurements were concerned anyway. You may or may not need the support timbers depending on how you intend to install the building on your railroad. Note; the support timbers extend out beyond the edge of the office on the right (non-walkway) side. You can get away without this extra bit of length and simple go flush with that side. Then measure again...twice...to get the proper length. The timbers should extend at least 5/8" (30") away from the walkway wall for the walkway itself, I went with 3/4" (36") instead.

One thing I discovered is the need for an extra beam to support the walkway on the door side. You can see that extra beam in the FMM photos as well. The instructions basically tell you to cut five beams and I ended up with 7. And what the heck supports that beam just sitting out in space?

The answer is the decking itself. Again important to keep this stuff square especially the decking on the door side of the office. I started with the long boards on the window side, then got out the chopper to cut the shorter boards for the door side. In this shot you can see the floor, not to provide a floor for detailing the interior, but a floor to keep interior light leaking out, well except through the windows (which will likely be frosted)

Here is the decking all in place. Before you start to glue on the short deck pieces, find the door frame from the parts bag and test fit it. With the door frame in place draw a line on the top edge and glue your decking in place. Now you don't have to adjust the fit later when you permanently install the door. Now, using the line as a reference shave off the portion of the battens above the door. This way the door frame will sit flush with the wall rather than flush with the battens.

I do plan on painting the floor black. It is a scrap piece of foamed PVC sheeting that I cut to fit. Also note that my walkway on the window side is five boards wide instead of four. Also note the addition of a roof peak brace.

That wraps up the office, let's move on to the Boiler room:

The boiler room goes together the same way the office did. One caveat, if you are looking at the FMM pictures the window side is flipped, i.e. the bottom of the window is closer to the ground than the top. I didn't like that look so I flipped it the other way, so the window is closer to the top than the bottom.

Simple internal bracing, again added braces to the back and the roof rafter is not quite all the way to the top. I didn't want to trim it.

In theory you only need four support timbers. The spacing is off because of the door location.

There is machinery that rests on the back side of the boiler room so you do need those supports to extend out beyond the back wall.

Added another roof rafter across the middle of the ceiling, an additional support bean, the decking and a "floor". Like the office I pulled out the door frame and temporarily put in place to make the mark for where to shave off battens and to cut a slot in the walkway board where the door frame goes. 

The Boiler Room is simpler than the Office. Both will get a goose neck exterior lamp and one light in the room. There is no intention to add interior detail so windows will be "frosted" and likely, for these smaller extensions, window shades.

Despite instructions to the contrary, I have not done to much weathering at this point. I'm working on the process to get those nice brown/orange patterns in weathered wood. I'm closer to that, picked up a few more colors and I think I have everything I need. Just need to do a bit more experimenting.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Building the Barbose Mining Co. Stamp Mill - Main Building - Part 1

We start with the assembly of the main structure. This is a straightforward assembly, six pieces that make up the sides along with a dormer section with three pieces. This dormer section would cause me problems later. A little foretaste of things to come.

Next its time to apply the bracing. There are two long pieces, long enough to brace the top of the longest wall. After that its just a matter of working your way around the edges. Don’t waste any of your 5/32” square bracing wood use only what’s necessary. Short pieces will come in handy later. While the instructions are good at describing the bracing for the main structure the dormer section is a bit on the light side and this would bite me later.

Each side consists of pieces that have to be glued together. There are two pieces labeled joint supports that are glued across this joint to them together.

Why does this brace extend across both pieces? As mentioned above it help keeps the wall from flexing.

Trying to keep everything square while the back wall is glued to one of the sides.

Examining the photos in the booklet there appears to be quite a bit more bracing than what the instructions might call for. You may or may not need this extra bracing. The type of finish you are considering for the outside will determine if you need more bracing (there is literally no spare bracing in the kit, so this is out of your own stock. I didn't feel the need for extra bracing in this area. Time will tell). The basswood used for the main structure is thin so it is going to warp if you are going to use a finish that has a lot of water in it. Keep that in mind and apply more bracing if your finishing/weathering could potentially warp the building.

You will also need to add bracing for the dormer section. Beware there are critical dimensions here. The instructions have been pretty good to this point. It does a good job of showing the bracing for front wall of the dormer but glosses over the bracing for the two side walls. There is a picture and it appears that you don't need to add much bracing to the sides. Don't believe the picture! At the very least the bracing for the top of both side walls should run the entire length of the wall. Don't worry about cutting the angle at this point. Just make sure the brace extends a bit beyond the top corner. Once the glue has setup you can you use the bottom edge of the side wall as a guide to trim the brace to the correct angle. The other critical element is the roof rafter that the dormer section rests on. This fit is critical, to short and the walls will bend in slightly. To wide and the walls will bulge out. You are looking for a snug fit, that also has room for glue. Do not attach the dormer wall to the rafter until you have a good fit and then cut six of them to the same length. One is for the dormer rafter support and the others are your rafters to be installed a bit later.

Once you have finished with the bracing, assemble the walls and do your best to keep things square. Keeping things square is important with something this size. There is mention of an optional tailings house addition that could replace one of the two large freight doors. I didn’t find anything like this on their website but the concept stuck in my head so I left both the large freight doors off. I’ll install them much later in the process, probably when I’m down to final details. I’m going to run a track from the freight door on the office side of the building to the tailings dump.

The main structure has been glued together and the dormer section is in place. What's missing is the extra rafter at the peak and the four other rafters called for in the booklet.

Now you are coming to the part that had me scratching my head a bit and I reached out to Foggy Mountain for clarification. The response was prompt and cleared things up quite a bit. The confusion came from the fact that there is not a diagram or good picture of where to install the roof rafters. As you can see in the last two photos I have installed the dormer section. Before you do this follow these steps:

1) When gluing the dormer to its rafter (this happens before you install it on the main structure) do your best to make sure its centered. I scratched my head a bit and did my best but mine is a tad bit off center. The easiest way to do this, which is not what I did, is to find the center of the dormer front wall and make a mark on the bottom of the wall at this center point. Then find the center of the dormer rafter and make a mark there. Then you can glue them together and line up the marks and you should be pretty darn close to even on both sides.

2) Take one rafter to be the roof peak. Draw a line down the length of the rafter 1/16th of an inch down from the edge that will form the peak of the roof. 

3) Glue another rafter to the front edge the roof peak rafter. You don't need this for strength but you will need it to provide enough area to glue the top of the dormer side walls to. I didn't add this second piece till later after I had broke the glue joints...twice. With the bracing extending to the top of the dormer wall and the extra width provided by the second peak rafter you have enough surface area for a good glue joint (that you can actually get a clamp on).

4) Install the combined roof peak rafters in place first, remember to keep the line you drew at the top, that's important for the roof to fit correctly later. One of the issues with this install is you are gluing end grain to edge grain which, inherently, is a weak joint (glue doesn't penetrate the end grain as well as it does edge grain).

5) Now you can install the dormer section. Don't panic during this install. The line you drew on the roof will determine the location of the dormer rafter. The sharp edge of the dormer side wall should touch this line. [Once you know the approximate position of the dormer rafter you could add the other two roof supports at this stage rather than waiting to install them all at once.] Use that line to determine where the dormer rafter needs to sit. The dormer rafter is going to be 45 degrees off from the wall brace you are attaching to so it looks a little odd, but its only job is to support the dormer wall rather than the roof.

6) Now we come to the vague instruction of installing the other four roof rafters with no real instructions or pictures of where. This is what I did after my email with Foggy Mountain. The first rafter was installed halfway between the front wall and the dormer rafter. I installed two rafters under the dormer walls, more or less, equally between the roof peak rafter and the front dormer wall. The last one went halfway between the back wall and the roof peak. I'm not sure you actually need this one but at the very least it will stop any sagging.

All the roof rafters, with the exception of the dormer support, should be flush with the bracing on the side walls

Yes, the inside has been painted black to make sure light doesn't make the walls "glow" when the lights are on. I'm sure I'll be finding light leaks all over the place but black is the start.

At this point you are done with the main building structure. The only things left undone are the rear door, where the ore comes in, and the two freight doors at the bottom. I want to leave myself some options and these doors can easily be added later if I need them.

This is how I ended up before I started making modifications to better support the dormer sides at the roof peak.