I have been slowly building a Korber Models #304 roundhouse. It's a nice model that is going to look great sitting next to my Millhouse River Studio turntable.
Gluing the beams
- A Wolfcraft right angle clamp made easy work of gluing the beams
- I glued the beams first, then weathered
Weathering the beams
- a single coat of light brown stain (golden oak)
Weathering the walls
- smeared artist gesso over the walls
- removed excess with a paper towel
- the end result is gesso filling in the mortal lines
- there's also a little bit of gesso on the "bricks", which I think looks pretty good
- lightly sprayed the walls with Rustoleum flat brown spray paint
Building the base
- I am building a custom base (per the optional instructions provided with the kit)
- not much progress on this yet
- My local Lowes was kind enough to cut a 4x8 sheet of 1/4 plywood into roughly three 32x32 squares
- just big enough for a three stall roundhouse (and to fit my layout)
Gluing the walls
- I used Gorilla glue (the one with the blue cap)
- dries pretty fast and seems to attach to the resin castings well
- I used some small clamps to hold the pieces together until the glue dried
Building the roof
- The kit comes with black plastic panels
- I plan to build a custom roof because I am not a fan of the black plastic pieces
Overall, the kit is really nice. It currently sells for about $250 (three stalls). Additional stalls are about $50. The provided templates don't seem to be to scale, but I don't think it really matters. For example, the wood beam template outlines are slightly bigger than the physical wood beams. The total length of the wood beams are exactly 29 inches (which I believe is correct). The template is slightly larger (about a quarter inch or so). It could be a printing issue, or it could be that the templates are simply "try to get it as close as possible". I did a lot of dry fitting before gluing.
I am also adding a few additional beams to increase the strength of the roundhouse. The kit instructions mention this detail. I picked up some 3/8 inch beams at Michael's for a few dollars.
Brian
