Custom Grain Mill

Spent pretty much a whole day taping off the brick building to prepare it for painting the pop-outs.

I started with dark gray

Then I dusted with Caribbean Sand

Finally a dusting of Dessert Bisque.

I had turned the roof upside down to paint. Now thew customer has his choice of which side he wants to show.

The windows and doors are going to be a 'camouflage' green over black.

I am going to need to do some touch up painting where the tape lifted off some of the dull red base coat. I let the building cure for three days but it was not enough. Usually after the paint cures I spray with Dullcote and add mortar but this time I want to try a technique called '?stippling?'. I am going to take a sponge with some dark brown paint and daub it on here and there to hopefully make the brick stand out more. I am going to be adding an India ink wash after the mortar. This should darken things up some more.

Joe

Below are some photos from the initial assembly of the building using Korber factory walls.

I used Squadron White Putty to seal up the edges where the panels met, and sanded it down before paint. The walls are different colors since I was using both new and old stock. The wood stock on the inside is both for support (warping) and for attachment of the flooring. The overflow bin building will fit into the hole in the bottom photo. I want to add lights to each floor but since all but the roof will be glued in the customer is going to need access to get to the lights. I have an idea about a pull out channel that houses the LED strips.......................

Joe it looks like a very interesting grain mill.  I'll be following along.

Did some painting this week.

The windows for the brick building are flat green over black. The windows for the concrete building and conveyor houses are dull aluminum over black.

The concrete buildings are my normal 'concrete' mix (black, red oxide, dark gray, light gray)

I will post some more photos today so everyone can get a better idea of the overall let out.

I also started a two stall loading/unloading shed. I will have photos next week.

Looks GREAT!! Will be following the progress.

A photo of the three buildings together

I had a chance to put pretty much every thing together and discovered an glaring error. The center of the first bay of the two - bay loading/unloading shed is supposed to be 9 inches from the building. This means the conveyor house from the building to the silos is too short. I will need to add an extension. I also don't like the 'down spout' to the top of the shed so am re-thinking that design. My plan is to either run a rectangular spout down the wall of the head house then straight out to the top of the 'spreader' on top of the shed or if I have the parts stay with round tube and maybe encase it inside some small truss beams. To me right now it looks like the pipe is just 'hanging out in the wind'.

Incidentally all the details you see are HO scale either Walthers or Faller. Once I fix my errors I will need to build docks for both sides of the brick building plus add mortar to it.

Joe

Much better on the down spout

Very nice work! I wish that I had the room for such a large project.

Me too on the room!

Joe, you're right, the downspout looks much better now.

I glued in all the floors (except the roof) to add strength to the brick building for shipping. This lead to an issue on how to mount and let the customer change out lighting down the road. Since one end of the building is open I came up with a idea making a 'sliding' light bar.

I used a C-20 channel (Black ABS part) that would slide into a BFS-20 white styrene I-beam. If I had an approptiate C-channel I would have used that instead. To keep the C-20 inside the I-beam I glued some A-6 angle supports along side the I-beam. I then glued strip styrene to the bottom to act as a glue surface. My plan is mount the lights and wires on the C-channel and glue the I-beam to the floors. When the customer needs to change out lights all need be done is to slide the C-channel out.

Once everything was glued I painted the light bars black.

Very impressive work, Joe.

Never would have thought of anything like that for lighting.

Matt - thanks

Joe - perhaps for a typical situation this may be a little overkill but I can still see it being used even with removable floors. The C-channel can be removed easily - LED light strip peeled off and replaced on a work bench.

Just finished cleaning up the mortar on the brick building. I have two coats of Dullcote sprayed. Will spray another coat then start weathering. First up is the India ink / alcohol wash.

Finished weathering the brick building

Korber makes a great building but one of the things that frustrates me is there are areas of brick that will not take mortar. I have even tried rubbing in Spackle to no avail.

Joe, is it because the mortar joints aren't deep enough or some sort of chemical rejection like remnants of mold release agent or imperfections in the plastic?

Joe:

I wash the walls before paint so my opinion is inconsistent depth in the mortar joints. Sometimes if one looks at the walls at an angle one will see undulations in the surface as if the walls were pulled out of the molds too soon (too hot).

I guess the area(s) is (are) too big to deepen the grooves.

I tried mixing acrylic paint and water to form a wash. It looked great and dried lousy. For another project I am going to try mixing acrylic and joint compound. Meanwhile some weathering neatly masked the 'un-mortared" regions. Below is a photo of the main building and elevator building with the lights on

The grain mill is complete. Some home made decals topped things off. In the first photo the overhang is sitting on the dock along with the posts. You can also see some of the weathering up close. All the details are HO - mostly Walthers and Faller

Joe, that's a very impressive structure, size, design and construction.  It must be going on one very large layout.

Thanks Joe

Very nice Joe. An ambitious project.

MELGAR

Great work Joe!  I saw the Framed WM print, and also the 4th photo in your original post.  Where is the prototype structure, and is it still standing!?

Ted - honestly don't know. I was going off a print the customer sent me. The 4th photo was something I find on an internet search. If I can find it again I will see if there is any info.

Ted:

http://teamtrack.soforums.com/...ED-MILL.htm?start=15

Original link but in French. won't swear to it but looks like a Robin Hood flour mill circa 1909.

Joe looks good can't wait to get it.  Do the silos have Western Maryland on them like the print?  I might have missed the photo showing that but didn't see them.  Thanks again can't wait to see it in person.

Scott

Hollsc posted:

Joe looks good can't wait to get it.  Do the silos have Western Maryland on them like the print?  I might have missed the photo showing that but didn't see them.  Thanks again can't wait to see it in person.

 

Scott

No sir - I thought it would look better having them on the conveyor house. If you want to add them to the silos I can print the decals and mail to you.

If you’d do that I’d appreciate it.  I’d like to see how they look but I do like them on the conveyor house as well. Looks like it will be here Monday can’t wait.  Now I’ll need to decide what to do on these ice houses for the next project.

scott

That's amazing. When I first seen the pics I thought about the General Foods plant in Kankakee. They made Dog/Cat food, Jello and glue. The silos contained grains and sugar.

Excellent photo!

Received this building today and Joe does great work if your looking for reasonably priced buildings that look very realistic.