Cameron Apartments Building Prototype Complete

Here's the complete lineup of Cameron Apartments shadowboxes between 5- and 8-stories. All can be produced with either clear or translucent windows. All can have LED lighting added on a per floor basis. And now all can be produced as 6" deep buildings with side and rear variations, and LED lighting added on a per floor basis.

Looks Great Doug!

ToddModel posted:

  

Doug;

Looks great... we’ll have to talk about this when I pick up my other pieces. One question - do the sides/back have “brick” detail or are they just plain???

Thanks.

Doug,

They look fantastic!

Dave

Doug,

Great looking building. I suggest you need to add a personnel door and maybe a double loading dock type door on the backside ground floor. A building this large needs some kind of backside access for people and equipment. Also what do you intend the sides to be - stucco, not brick?

Ken

Thank you for the back door suggestions. Ken- I would love to see a picture or two of what you have in mind. Will do that for sure.

As for the side and rear walls, they can be lasered with our without a brick pattern. The prototype has floor levels scored in. If the building is an "inner" structure, in my opinion the side walls would be parting walls and would be finished in a stucco manner. The rear can be done to match or in brick. The bottom line is the way the structure is designed, the buyer can specify what he wants. 

For some of our shadowboxes we have lasered the brick pattern into the side returns and then oversprayed that with textured Krylon. It gives the look of stucco on top of brick as some of the brick patterning shows through. We need to find a finer texture spray for the 6" building depth as the product that we have used on the shadowboxes will produce a stucco look that is a little overkill.

Doug,

The Ameritown Building rear is an example of a ground floor with a personnel and loading door. In this case the loading door looks like its a roll up door.

Ken

Alternate building rear elevation with and without four fire escapes.

ToddModel posted:

Alternate building rear elevation with and without four fire escapes.

That looks fantastic, Doug. The fire escapes are an interesting detail. Definitely going to need one of these.

Nice work!

Peter

Thanks Peter! Email me your mailing address and I'll send you a card of the fire escape pieces for you to give me feedback on.

Doug,

Rear doors look good!

How do you attach the fire escapes to the building? CA glued directly to the wall?

Ken

Ken-

I used Tacky Glue, found in the glue section of your local Michael’s or other art supply store. Application was with a 060x060 piece of Evergreen Models styrene strip. It takes very little to do the job and the name speaks for itself- it is initially tacky so things tend to stay in place as the glue dries (note that the building was flat when I put on the fire escapes). I prefer not to use CA because it is easy to wind up with a shiny spot or two. Tacky Glue dries clear and matte.

For assembling the fire escape, I dabbed a little thick CA on one surface and a little Tacky Glue on the other (the corner vertical railings), then pinched them together and held them for a few moments. Water is a catalyst for CA so it sets up pretty quickly. Again the applicator was 060x060 styrene strip.

For the record I also don’t like to use CA in any enclosed element of a model that wants to have clear windows. CA offgases and sometimes the next morning you come down to your bench and there is a white haze on clear windows.

We also use Tacky Glue to glue up the Taskboard that is the material that makes up the inner structure of our shadowboxes and buildings. For a 6-story shadowbox, there are six floor plates, six ceilings and a roof plate that all slot together with the front and sides. The tackiness acts as a third hand as you glue up the shadowbox or building. Otherwise the pieces flop around a bit. In this instance we use a Testors nylon hobby brush because the application is smooth and the brush cleans up easily in water.

Here’s a picture of our soon-to-be-available carded fire escape.

And that’s a trackside warehouse loading door. We’ll make up a vertical rolling door.