Waiting for the night bus

I've been fiddling now-and-then with adding finishing touches to the natural history museum as sort of an exercise to easing back into model building stuff. I've posted some photos over at Instagram. When I set up an account there a month or so ago my goal was to post all my staged photos to see what sort of patterns appeared. I thought that the tiling arrangement they enforce on photos might be useful for seeing patterns. I'm still thinking about those patterns, and haven't yet come to any conclusions.

The museum gets lights.....and a roof!

I continue to work on odd jobs. I think I'm avoiding starting a big project. Maybe I'm trying to get my nerve up or something.

Anyway, I decided to add a lighting unit and a roof to the natural history museum. Both were rather simple projects that I've been putting off for a long time, but now seemed like the time to give them a go.

The light isn't anything sophisticated. It's just a couple of pieces of styrene, a tube and an I-beam, with an LED light strip glued on.

Off in a corner of the building the manufacturer had already provided a hole in the floor, likely for some other type of lighting unit. What I did was glue a short piece of tube over the hole that my lighting unit could slip into. 

I didn't glue the unit in place because I wanted it removable. One of the problems I have with some of my buildings is that wires from lighting units prevent the models from sitting properly when they aren't in use: a side-effect of the PortaCabin Problem. 

The light bar stretches across the building's main diagonal and provides a fairly good uniform light. 

The roof is a piece of 0.060" styrene sheet cut-to-fit. It's removable. And it's detail free. I'm starting to develop an anti-detail roof agenda :-) When I'm out-and-about, walking and riding the streetcar and whatnot, I'm not confronted with a maze of roofs as I am with a typical model layout. I like street-level views, and I see me spending even less time trying to make roofs look real.

I still need exhibits and a name over the door. I'm on the hunt for some tiny dinosaurs, and the above door name plate needs to be inscribed with some hodgepodge of Latin and English letters. Iter prosequitur !

The Natural History Museum Gets Doors

The doors only needed a little sanding and fitting to get them neatly installed.

I also added some baseboard along the bottom inside wall edge. It's just some 0.02" x 0.04" styrene strip. I left it white, and surprisingly it makes the interior pop. 

The doors out to the patio don't look too bad either. It turns out the door window frames don't have an inset edge for inserting the glass, so the glass has to be neatly glued to the door frame, as you can see in the leftmost door.

The digital camera highlights the misaligned brickwork in the corner. In-person, when looking at it with my own two eyes, it doesn't look too bad, but zoomed in with a digital camera, it's horrible. The digital camera is a harsh mistress.

Outside the Natural History Museum

I did a little bit of clean up after gluing the walls together, and then took it outside for a couple of photos. It was hot and sunny, so all the shadows are strong. You can see there's a rather nice patio out back.

Walls Up!

I spent a little time here and there over the last few days to finish off the walls. I figured if I could glue them into a box, I might be encouraged to speed things up on this project.

Mission accomplished! The walls have been glued together, and are awaiting clean-up before proceeding on to finishing interior detailing.

I had to take a picture after all the window 'glass' was installed and the lower wall trim was in place.

This is the only photo I took during wall assembly. There was considerable trimming, adjusting, and fiddling to get good alignment and passable corner joints. Still, there's going to be some cleanup before moving on to detailing.

Inside trimmings

Galen asked me how things were going with the Natural History Museum and I said something weaselly. So, to redeem myself I took a photo of what's on the table.

To trim the unsightly lower portion of each window I'm adding a thin styrene strip across the lower window edge, and then gluing a strip of brick paper below. This adds a ledge that will go all around the inside of the building.

The brick paper strip is a slice of self-adhesive aged brick from Micro-Mark. I wanted something a little thicker and newer looking than the brick paper used on the walls and this filled the bill nicely. Things are moving along and hopefully it will be done well before Christmas :-)

"That would drive me crazy."

Over the last week I've worked on this project for only about 30 minutes or so. At this rate it's one of the slowest projects I've ever worked on, and might not finish until around Christmas if I'm not careful :-)

What have I been doing? Lining the window bars. 

The first thing I did was trim the glass pieces to fit the frames. As we saw earlier, they were too long as I think the manufacturer used windows from some other kit and didn't make properly sized ones for this kit.

I applied a piece of Tamiya masking tape to mark the cut line, and then used a razor saw to trim the piece along the tape's edge.

Black Sharpie pens were used to ink the moulded on ridges that delineate the window bars. I inked both the front and back so the interior view would look ok, and to give the bars a little extra feeling of solidity.

Side note: I bought a green Sharpie oil pen as I thought I'd try for green bars. I couldn't get the hang of using the pen and went back to using the black ones. 

After inking, the windows were glued into the frames. You can see the lower edges are rough and unfinished. Although the manufacturer provides some power equipment for the inside, it's clear it's just a rudimentary interior, and wasn't meant to get the scrutiny this one will. 

I've started to trim the lower parts of the walls to make everything look neat and plausible on the inside. Next time I'll post some pictures on trimming the lower sections.

A bit of base

I'm trying to keep this project going and spent a little time preparing the base.

It doesn't have a nasty piece of sidewalk to cut off as is common with this sort of kit, but it did have a circular mold indentation in the centre of the floor that needed filling. My puttying job is a little rough, but there'll likely be a dinosaur standing on that spot, so it won't be noticeable :-)

That hole in the upper right is part of the kit, and it's for inserting wiring for lights. I plan on building an overhead light fixture, so that will come in handy. That concrete coloured square in the upper left is the patio area. Yes, the stock kit has an outer area that will come in quite handy as a patio - as I've said before, this is a rather nice kit.

Semi-circular windows installed

I buckled down and cut and fit the semi-circular windows. I was having some sort of psychological block with these because what needs to be done is to cut the window shapes from a thin sheet of acetate and carefully glue them into those quite fine frames without blobbing glue everywhere. 

I wasn't sure how to do this.

Late on Sunday afternoon I threw caution to the wind and jumped in.

I took a scrap of graphite paper, placed it carbon-side up over the window opening, then put the clear plastic sheet that came with the kit on top, and carefully rubbed the window sheet along the frame with the blunt end of my X-acto knife until a thin outline appeared on the window. From there it was just cutting and trimming along the outline until the 'glass' fit in the frame. A little Micro Kristal Klear spread thinly inside the frame holds the 'glass' in place. Repeat for all windows and presto! One of the smaller frames has a little too much glue, but I'll use it on the back patio wall. The other windows should be easier.

This kit is quite decent until one gets to the window stage where it jumps from being a beginner/intermediate level project to an advanced one. 

Contemplating windows

I glued the remaining window frames into the walls, but left the door frames free because I'll need them to make the curved 'glass' inserts above the openings. Believe it or not, the only fitted 'glass' shapes provided are for the large, arched windows. The others have to be cut from a skimpy piece of sheet plastic. 

Also, I'm playing with ideas for painting the molded-on pane dividers on the large windows. I think I'll colour them - back and front - with a Sharpie permanent marker. The model needs 10 of those windows, and there are 12 in the kit, so I can do a little experimenting.

Installed some window frames

After spraying with green paint, the brick sections at the bottom of those large windows were painted to match the rest of the walls. Once dry, I eagerly installed the frames in one wall to see how things were shaping up. So far, so good. Although, I see some annoying glue threads that'll need to be cleaned up.

Painting Window Frames

There are a lot of windows on this little model.

I've been spending some time clipping, sanding, and test fitting the window and door frames. After, I taped them to some cedar shims in preparation for painting.

I sprayed all the parts with Tamiya TS-91 Dark Green - in the setting sun the colour doesn't look much like what comes out of the can, but trust me :-) in normal light, it does.

Both sides were sprayed since you'll be able to look inside the building. 

I'm thinking it's going to be a little tricky gluing the glass into the door frames, and into the doors, because they are so fine, but that's a task for next time.

Windows are too long!

I've been doing some test fitting of the window frames and clear 'glass' inserts. Much to my surprise the main 'glass' pieces are too long for their openings, although the frames fit just fine. I suspect these windows were made for another kit, and were assumed to fit this one too.

It's no big deal, just a little annoying. I'll cut that bottom portion off each and they should then fit quite well. I'll also probably need to add a thin styrene panel in the bottom section of each window to make the interior look clean and logically constructed. 

Brick paper installed at the Museum

It turned out that gluing the brick paper to the inside surfaces of the museum's walls wasn't as tough a job as I thought it would be.

I'd say for inside surfaces that will likely only be glanced at through the windows, or when the roof is off, they don't look too bad, but I don't think I'd use this material for exterior surfaces.

Bill suggested I use a roller for spreading the glue, so I went out and bought one so I could give it try.

It did improve glue application, but I think I need more practice as I fumbled around a bit with it before I got the hang of things.

This is a snap taken midway through the action. It was a pleasant little activity. I only worked on it for 10 or 15 minutes at a time over several days.

If you decide to do something like this, my only tip is to make sure you are always using a new, sharp blade to keep your cuts clean.

And on the inside it's brick

The museum's inside wall surfaces are going to be covered with Superquick brick paper. I bought a package at a train show a few years ago and it has been just laying around in the parts box waiting for a project. Wait no more!

But before the gluing got underway, the plastic walls had embossed numbers and ejector dimples that had to the sanded off to smooth their surfaces. 

White glue was used and spread on the wall as uniformly as I could. A piece of brick paper was then applied. After drying, the arch was sliced out with a brand new knife blade. The brick paper is quite thin, which makes application and cutting openings easy.

There's a lot of walls and cutting ahead, so it could be awhile before this job is done.

A little more painting at the Museum

I applied some thin, light washes of grey and black to bring out the mortar lines a bit, and tone down the wall colour. I didn't apply too much because I didn't want the museum to appear to have been neglected, just a little used.

Painting the Museum's Exterior

The walls were taped to a couple of cedar shims and then painted with Model Master aged concrete acrylic paint. I didn't prime the walls with Tamyia fine white surface primer as is my custom, but simply washed them with a mild soap and some warm water prior to painting. I was ok with having the uneven, grey, black-washed plastic as the undercoat as I thought it would give the walls a little more age. 

But, even before any paint was applied, I glued a styrene ledge on the back of each wall, 4mm down from the top, so that the flat roof would have some support. 

So, once the ledges were glued on, and the walls were washed, 2 coats of paint were applied to each piece.

Cornice installed

I glued the cornice to the walls. I know this seems like something that hardly needs mentioning, but it involved cutting up the triangular end pieces to free-up their base sections, and trimming back some of the long, straight sections to fit the new wall lengths. Sounds boring when written down, but was quite interesting because the new building shape slowly revealed itself as each piece was cut, fit, and glued in place. Once done, the walls were taped back together to see how everything fit. 

This is a used kit and it looks like the previous owner gave all the walls a thin, black wash to age them and make the details stand out. I'm going to paint the whole thing an aged concrete to unify the pieces and bring the colour inline with something I might see here.

Looking for a Natural History Museum in a Power Station

I was puttering around the house over the weekend, and for no good reason decided to have a go at the key step in converting Pola’s power station into a natural history museum. I rather like the Pola kit’s walls, but the roof is of a design that wouldn’t be seen here, or at least not in the Alta Vista TC’s world. From the box art it looked like the kit’s roof could easily be replaced by a flat one. After a lot of study, I got out the sharp tools and proceeded to cut. Over there is a tilt-up after the first round of slicing and sanding. I loosely taped the walls together to check the fit, and after some staring, decided to also remove the remnant overhead strips that came together inside near the main entrance. They didn’t appear to add anything to the strength of the model, and their removal would simplify construction of the new flat roof. It was rather fun to do some hacking, and I hope to find time to continue.