Updated 4 Sep 16: Misc Projects -- Detailing Flats, Building a Giant Roof, Corner Building, Palm Trees, Hopper Rehab & a Flower Shop!

As Monty Python would say "And Now For Something Completely Different"...

The Acme Beer Building on the AGHR layout serves as both a viewblock and a partially removable means to cover an access point.  It's a neat building (more to come on that) but it needs (1) a roof and (2) detail in the open windows/doors.  I'm starting with the roof.  The roof must remove easily, must be very light (so as to be easily handled), must be self-supporting, and must fit the character of the rest of the building.

Here's the building in question.  It's big, clocking in with an interior length of ~41" and width of ~19":

Here's the side of the building with open windows.  The plan is to eventually add shallow, lighted box vignettes here so the building looks like it has an interior:

On the inside, here's the lip and the trim that runs around the outside.  The plan is to make a simple shallow pitched roof that will sit on this interior lip.  Note that I'll have the work around the pins (shown below) that allow for removal of walls when layout maintenance is required.

The first thing I made for the roof where 9 cross-sections to hold it together and provide rigidity,  I used 1/4" x 2" scrap wood I had on hand.  They are taped together so I could cut them to the exact same length:

I

I also measured and cut these 4 roof supports from scrap MDF.  The height at the center is 5", and they are about 19" wide:

Here is the roof skeleton, glued and screwed together:

For the ends of the roof (which will be visible), I sheathed them in model wood "siding" made of basswood.  You can get wood scale wood siding in bulk on Amazon:

It's not often that every small and medium clamp I own is in use at one time, on one project:

Nice work; these will be good improvements when completed. Thanks for posting and I look forward to following.

Thanks for posting this - very informative.  I really like the idea of using the large building to hide an access hatch.  The roof design and execution is excellent and the building looks great!  The vet clinic turned out very nicely as well, although I don't think the fruit squeeze "ventilators" enhance the appearance.  Whose goose neck lamp did you use over the door?  Voltage required?

Again, nicely done!

George

G3750 posted:

...although I don't think the fruit squeeze "ventilators" enhance the appearance....

George,

Thanks for the candid feedback.  I think you may be right - I debated on whether to add them, but decided that to roof needed something.  I don't dislike them enough to remove them, but will be thinking on other ideas for future buildings.

-Dustin

Great stuff as usual. I hadn't heard about the silver paint for the interior light block...Thanks, I'll be trying that on the next build!!!!

DUSTIN  --- YOU'VE DONE IT AGAIN!   THANKS FOR LEAVING A LEGACY ON THE LAYOUT!

Wow thanks for sharing, looks great!   I think the fruit lids are a good idea, I do think they would look better to the eye if they were shiny tin metal color.  I have a few of these I will liberate when the younguns are done with the fruit.

Whoa! Outstanding work, again Dustin. I think the brick building is part of an Atlas roundhouse we briefly had on the layout. I like how the roof for the Acme brewery warehouse is shaping up. I had planned to put in car doors when I built the building but never got around to it, but your idea about interior "pockets" is much better.

very nice work and great set of pictures

Bob C.

Thanks again for all the compliments!

Here's the latest on the Big Roof for Acme Brewing.  I cut some cardboard to size for the roof (it has paint streaks because I had used this piece as a painting surface), then added some tape to serve as "roofing material".  Thought it might be fun to try something with a little more texture, so I picked-up a 10 yd roll of medical tape:

Here's the first row down on each half of the roof:

...and here's what the roof looks like so far, sans detail and paint:

Next project was to do some work with figures.  The first up was a police dog to go with this scene at Candie's Donuts:

The dog now has a donut in his mouth, and is ready to join his partner above.  One of our club members suggested adding the donut, and gave a suggestion how to do it.  His idea (using thin wire) worked out great!:

Keeping with the crimefighting theme, Superman and his changing room are now ready to head to the club:

I also needed a veterinarian to go with the vet office.  I took Lois Lane and painted her coat white, making it a suitable lab coat.  She looks upset about something:

Since the vet looks upset, I gave her something to be upset about... a difficult patient on the way to the door.  Whether it's shots or a dental cleaning, this isn't going to be easy:

-Dustin

Frizzinbee, I like the vet building. May I ask what did you kitbash to make that structure? Also did that gooseneck lsmp come from eBay? And as the other poster eluded, those sqeezebox fans don't do that structure justice. Imho would have ordered the rotating ventilator fans from modeltech studios to get some action in.

prrhorseshoecurve posted:

Frizzinbee, I like the vet building. May I ask what did you kitbash to make that structure? Also did that gooseneck lsmp come from eBay? And as the other poster eluded, those sqeezebox fans don't do that structure justice. Imho would have ordered the rotating ventilator fans from modeltech studios to get some action in.

Thanks for the compliment.  I tend to agree on the roof fans, especially since they seem out of scale on the small building, but hindsight is 20/20   The brass lamp did come from ebay - checkout seller "locomotive joe"  He has several lamps listed in O and G scale, and I've been very pleased with the ones I've purchased.

-Dustin

Let's see... been a while since I did an update, so this one is overdue.  I'll cover the giant roof first.  I ended-up painting spray painting the ends primer gray, while painting the roof itself with a brush and black rustoleum.

The paint is pretty porous, so it took several generous coats:

Here is the cardboard and tape roof, fully painted.  I'm pretty pleased with how the texture and color came out:

Test fit of the roof on the frame, with frame ends now painted:

Gluing the roof in place on the frame:

I know.  Fruit squeeze lids again.  Apparently I just can't quit these.  I think they look better, and more in scale, spaced along this large roof and in silver.  IMO, the roof looked too unrealistically clean and plain without some kind of venting:

Finally, I used some chalks to weather up the roof some.  I think this roof is done - next step is to install on the club layout and hope I got the measurements right. 

That roof looks great, Dustin. We had a good laugh at the club over the dog with the donut in his mouth. Priceless. See you at the Open House.

In addition to the work on the big roof, I'm also wrapping-up work on the flats and fronts.  The vet office has been placed on the club layout:

Here, the mortar is in and cleaned-up on the flats, I've starting painting the concrete bases a darker gray color, and I'm outlining some of the trim in the same to make it less generic.  This time around, I mixed tan acrylic craft paint and water 50/50 to do the mortar, and that's my favorite method so far. 

Here I've completed the painting and done some light weathering with chalks.  I also painted the interior of the shorter front (brown one) with silver, in case I/we decide to light it at some point.  For the time being, it will be unlit.

Here's how the look standing up.  I added some texture to the rooves using painted masking tape, but its not really visible from this angle.

Signs added to each.  They are just printed paper, mounted on thin wood strips to give depth.  Calder is my son's name, and he loves popcorn... so that's pretty straightforward.  The other building retained its original name (it's named for our esteemed club president), but received a new sign with updated graphics.

I didn't think the buildings looked quite right, so I went back and added some green and white to the window panels to give them more of an industrial, random look.  Now I think I can call them done.  Should have these at the club this weekend, if not before.

-Dustin

AGHRMatt posted:

That roof looks great, Dustin. We had a good laugh at the club over the dog with the donut in his mouth. Priceless. See you at the Open House.

Thanks Matt!  I can't claim too much credit for the dog.  Dave thought of it, supplied the dog, and gave me an idea how to do it. 

I grabbed a couple pictures of the police dog in place at the donut shop last weekend.  Since you reminded me I might as well post those too:

Superman is also now in place on the layout, ready to patrol the harbor area while the local lay enforcement grabs breakfast:

I ran over to the Club this evening and installed the giant roof & flats on the layout.  Figured we might as well have them in place for Open House this weekend.

Here's the roof in place on the Acme Bottling building:

Here's the refinished flats in place:

...and here's a broader shot with the Acme building further back:

Fantastic work.  I wish I had a 10th of your talent!

Love watching what you do!

Peter

Great work once again! You make things look so easy. But it sure is nice you share all this information with the rest of us. I know it will help me out and save me money! I can't wait to see what you have next!

Well, it's been a while, but I knocked out a couple more misc projects over the last several weeks.  First was another MTH building re-do.  I took a corner building, added mortar, removed the base, added an interior, added lighting, re-surfaced the roof, and added additional details.

Here's how it started:

This building is pretty easy to disassemble to work on:

If you've ever bought a Walther's café, you know they come with a nice set of signs.  You only need one for the Walthers... so the others are all extras!  I used one of them for this project.

Here's the building all mortared-up:

Using masking tape to make a tar paper roof:

Sanding off the old posters/ads made a neat weathered effect which allowed me to layer on new sign later:

Painting the roof:

Test fitting the sign after drilling holes:

Turned this black coffee stirrer into roof vents:

Made a foam board floor -here is the test fit!

As per usual, I glued in a wood block with pre-drilled holes so I have a place to mount the wiring (and so I can knot it behind the block, preventing a firm tug from ripping out the mounted LED strip:

Updated and re-installed the roof sign:

Here you can also (almost) see the interior installed.  Note that curtains and blinds have also been added.

Lighted!

As a finishing touch, the building got some light weathering.  I also "boarded up" one of the windows to add some additional character (and because I lost 1 piece of window glass):

Back on the AGHR layout!

The next misc. project for AGHR was to make palm trees because a SoCal layout with no palm trees is just wrong.  My preferred method is to buy cheap trees from China, then dress them up so that they are more convincing.  It's a pretty affordable way to go...  I've done 50+ for my own layout & am slowly refining my technique.  Here I'm only doing about 20, but made an effort to do 4 different "types" of trees for the sake of variety.

Here we see the first type of tree.  The major drawback with these is that they're all the same height.  To rectify that, I cut them apart and glued the pieces back together to make some taller and some shorter trees:

Here are the tree parts lined up:

When gluing them back together into differing sizes, I drilled a hole in the center of the trunk, and reinforced the assembly by gluing a metal "rod" inside.  I've used paperclips and cut-up sections of lawn flag.  Lawn flags tend to work better as they are more rigid.

Here are a couple shots showing how the pieces come together:

New, reassembled trees are over 10" (40 scale ft) tall!  There will also be by-product trees that are extra short (think Danny DeVito in "Twins")

Here I've added the other two tree types to the mix (tall and short coconut palms)

In an attempt to make the leaves less pastic-y, they've been painted with 3 shades of green and dullcoted below:

Now the trunks have been painted with a base color:

...and now the trees have been fully painted.  The extra tall trees also got "palm tree scruff" to simulate a more realistic, unkempt look.

The palm tree scruff is actually cut and glued rooster feathers (from ebay):

Here's another shot of the completed trees:

Excellent tree bashing. 

What did you use for the tree trunk?

prrhorseshoecurve posted:

What did you use for the tree trunk?

I just used the plastic trunk that came with each of the trees.

-Dustin

Next project up is for my personal layout.  I recently bought an already assembled plastic model on ebay (I think it was a walthers kit at one point), with the thought that I would repaint some of it and add an interior.  Here's the building as I received it:

I liked the way the roof was done, but decided to apply some changes to the rest of it.  I stripped it down most of the way, then got started.  Below, the building is painted silver inside to block the light, then repainted tan on the outside,

The next step was to paint the red trim:

Currently empty interior:

Parts popped off for ease of painting:

After adding "mortar", the chimney is also re-installed:

If you notice in previous pics, the "foundation" of the building is not painted.  Usually I paint it a nice concrete color, but wanted to try something new here with brick paper:

I like the brick paper foundation!  IT may even look cooler if you randomly paint some if the bricks Black to give it that "aged look!"

Dang!  Somebody's been busy.  Great stuff!

Thanks for sharing.

Very nice work!

those palm trees have me reaching for a Mai tai!!!

Here's some pics of the most recent progress on the building.  I painted the underside trim on each of the roof pieces, and also painted and re-installed the loading dock/deck on the front:

Very nice work!  How do you apply your 50/50 acrylic mortar and how long do you let it dry before wiping off the excess?  Thanks.

BT

BruceT47 posted:

Very nice work!  How do you apply your 50/50 acrylic mortar and how long do you let it dry before wiping off the excess?  Thanks.

BT

Bruce  - Sorry for the very late reply, didn't see your question.  I applied the mortar mix with a paint brush, and wiped off the excess almost immediately.

I paused on the warehouse (above) for a few weeks while I worked to knock out other projects (including the lighthouse, covered in another thread).  One of the little projects I did was rehabbing a broken hopper and painting some "graffiti" on the sides.  For a little extra fun, I themed the drawings to my kids' favorite characters.

First thing I did was glue the body back together.  Then, I had to make a replacement part for the bottom of one hopper bay,  I painted all of those parts black so they match:

Next, I used paint markers to do a little "graffiti" on each side.  Side 1 has Rainbow Dash, whom is ridiculously hard to color in miniature:

...and Side 2 has Dory and Nemo, who are much easier to draw (especially Dory):

You may have noticed that the car is missing all 4 stirrups.  I stole somebody elses idea and replaced them with staples:

New "stirrup" in place:

Stirrups painted back,  Car lightly weathered, then dullcoted, to try to hide some of its faults and blemishes:

frizzinbee posted:

BruceT47 posted:

Very nice work!  How do you apply your 50/50 acrylic mortar and how long do you let it dry before wiping off the excess?  Thanks.

BT

Bruce  - Sorry for the very late reply, didn't see your question.  I applied the mortar mix with a paint brush, and wiped off the excess almost immediately.

Thanks!  I'll give it a try.

Bruce

What a talent!! 

Dustin:

You do some excellent work.

Joe

This had been a great read! I cannot stop watching. Thanks for sharing...

Thanks again for the compliments!

Here's a quick project I just finished.  I dressed-up & re-themed a building on the club layout, made an interior & sign, and lighted it.  Don't think I have any "before" pictures for comparison sake, unfortunately, but here's the end result:

WOW, Dustin!!!!

With all these projects and your fine family, I am sure you neither sleep nor eat lunch.

I am up in Bakersfield. When is your club's Open House? I'd like to see it sometime.

Thanks for sharing,

ALAN

Excellent work a usual, Dustin. Looking forward to seeing the building when I get back.