Walls and Windows and CURRENtoons

In the last instalment of the 30Squares HQ build I stopped at the point where I needed to think a bit about how to proceed with the interior.

I thought and thought and thought.

Eventually I settled on a two floor arrangement with an elevator between stories. 

Picking up where I left off, the next step was to glue a styrene ledge on the walls to support the second floor. For this I used 2mm x 4mm Evergreen styrene strip.

The ledge was set 2 scale feet below the second floor window sills. I think this makes the windows a little too close to the floor, but there isn't much room as some space needs to be left for gluing the first floor window frames to the walls. 

Once the ledges were installed, 0.125" square styrene verticals were glued to the inside of the wall pilasters to give some dimensionality to the wall surfaces. Verticals will also be installed on the second floor after the second floor is glued in place. 

One thing to note about the vertical pieces is that the surface that abuts the wall needs to be slightly notched so the vertical will fit into the base when the wall is glued to the ground floor.

The second floor is cut from a sheet of 0.040" styrene. 

The square grid I've penciled on the piece is a projection of the grid formed by the wall pilasters. I used them to help me think about where to place the elevator shaft, which will be a square section column placed in the opening. 

The elevator shaft will only fill the back half of the opening, and will leave a square opening in the floor so that persons on the second floor can see down to the ground floor - and vice versa of course :-) I'll need to add a second floor railing for safety's sake.

At this point I decided to move on to painting the walls.

The insides were painted with Tamiya XF-76, Gray Green.

The floors were painted with Tamiya XF-80, Royal Light Gray.

The outer wall surfaces were painted using a procedure similar to the one I used last summer on the Weekly Herald project.

Although, I did make a couple of modifications to the process. 

First, on the Weekly Herald I primed the walls with a spray of Tamiya's white surface primer, but I didn't do that here. This kit's walls are a light brown colour instead of an acid yellow, so I thought it was ok to work directly on the pieces (recall that I had washed them in the last instalment in order to remove any traces of mould release). 

Second, I mixed the brick colour using Revell Aqua Colour instead of Model Master acrylics. As you may know, I'm trying out new acrylics since Model Master paints have been discontinued.

The brick colour mix I used was Revell's 36137, Reddish brown, and 36162, Mossy green. The green is to dull the brown to a more weathered bricky colour. I mix the paint on my palette to keep the colour loose, and the ratio is about 3 reddish brown to 1 green. Once the base brick layer colour was painted on, some thin washes of gray, reddish brown, and flat black were applied for further weathering. The result isn't superdetailed bricks, but something more impressionistic. 

I haven't trashed my remaining Model Master paints. I used their Aged Concrete Flat for the window sills. I use this paint a lot in my practice and bought what my local hobby store had left. I'm sorry to see it go, but I think I can mix a substitute from Revell's 36189, Beige. Who knows, it might be even better than what I've been using!

Finally, the window frames were sprayed with Krylon Colormaster Hunter Green Satin. I don't know if that product is still available. I had a can on the shelf, and when a 10C day presented itself, I gave the window frames a spray. The thought of brush painting them all seemed a little too masochistic. 

Speaking of windows, the kit comes with clear pieces that have moulded on window mullions. These are good pieces, but I thought the mullions were a little too closely spaced for an HO-scale model, and once painted, they would obscure the views inside, which sort of defeats one of the main features of this project. 

I decided to replace the kit's windows with ones cut from some clear plastic sheet I had on hand. I don't recall the plastic's specifications other than its from a huge sheet I bought in 2019 at an art supply in Syracuse, New York, when John, Gail, Debra, and I went to the city's train show that year. Little did we know it would be the last train show for who knows how long. At the time I thought the giant sheet would last the rest of my life. I've used more than half of it, so either the reaper is nearby, or I need to get more - I think it's the later :-)

To each piece of 'glass' I inked in a border with a Sharpie pen. The border helps to neaten the interior, and hide the bond to the window frame. They were glued to the frames with Weld Bond.

The individual window panes seem a little too big for HO-scale, but they afford good views to the inside.

After painting, and then gluing in all the window components, I really wanted to see how this thing looked. So I decided it was time to get hammered!

No, not that, this: I glued the entrance wall to a side wall, and then glued that assembly to the ground floor, using strategically applied hammers to hold the thing while the glue dried. 

Once dry, it was time to glue on the back wall. 

I don't use these old ball-peen hammers for hammering much these days. They're relics from my father and grandfather, but they come in handy at times. Although I wouldn't recommend this technique if animals or small children are running around, as these are precariously balanced.

Left: A stack of '70s CARtoons; Right: A few of today's CARtoons

While glue was drying I popped out to a hobby store I hadn't visited since well before the pandemic began. Restrictions had eased back a bit, and I wanted to get out. I found an AMT '72 GMC Jimmy kit that looked like a full sized restoration of a GMC pickup a friend has underway, but the biggest surprise was seeing the new incarnation of CARtoons on the magazine shelf. 

For awhile in the '70s I bought it and its sister publication, Hotrod Cartoons, almost as frequently as Model Railroader. CARtoons has been modernized - in a good way - but it still strikes a chord. Looking back, I think it's because a lot of its stories have to do with people building cool custom cars from junk and seemingly odd combinations of stuff. I was a plastic car modeller, influenced by CARtoons and Car Model magazines, well before model train stuff grabbed me, so I think that the 'kit-mingling' and 'make stuff from odd components' vibes, which were themes of those publications, followed me into model railroading. Maybe there needs to a CURRENtoons magazine to honour the master of kit-mingling, Art Curren :-)

Anyway, once the glued had dried on the walls and ground floor, I slipped in the second floor to see how it looked. I didn't glue it in place just yet. 

The fit is pretty good. 

I then carefully press fit the fourth wall onto the base. No glue was applied, I just wanted to test the fit and see how things looked. 

I was happy that it fit quite well. The kit is precise and well moulded, so maybe this shouldn't be a surprise. 

Ok, the roof isn't on, the place is filled with light, but the views inside are quite good. There'll be lights installed, so even when the roof's on, you should be able to see inside rather easily.

Although, one thing I realized I could have done better was the arrangement of doors on the back wall.

For awhile I thought the building would house two tenants, so I'd have two delivery doors, one on each side. But, when I changed it to one tenant, I should have placed a single delivery door in the centre, with brick inserts on the sides. And I should have left the door open, or at least made a moveable one. That way a pickup could drive inside and back up right to the elevator in the centre of the building. That would have added the potential for some interesting scenes. Oh well, maybe on the next one :-)

You can see the doors and associated openings are big enough to drive in automobiles or pickups, so there's potential for a variety of businesses to be supported by other minglings of this kit. 

That's it for now.

Next up: detailing the interior.