Oh boy, well, it's not a failure! I used drywall compound, and put a few drops of Vallejo Concrete Grey and Dark Grey to tint the compound. Made one mistake though, I completely forgot that drywall compound dries a lot whiter than when wet. So it's maybe a little more white than I really wanted. So far I've done the little shed, the two columns and the chimney. The main building hasn't been touched yet. Technique is fairly simple, where I put a small blob of tinted drywall compound into a paint palette well, and slightly dilute it with a drop of water or so. I then "paint" it into the cracks, and I use my fingers to wipe off the faces. I tried with cloth stretched over my finger, and even with a makeup sponge, but those usually wiped away the "grout" from the cracks as well. When I get to the main building, the concave corners are going to be a bit of an issue - my fingers won't fit I'll have to go slowly and very lightly with the tip of the makeup sponge I guess. As for colour, I figure maybe I can try a very very light black wash when I'm done. Applied a few times until it darkens the mortar. Anyway, so far so good, it's not a failure, even if it's not quite there yet. I can live with that!
I wonder if a small squeegee, like for the shower or mirror, would work, if used at a diagonal to the brick courses? Maybe you could even take the rubber 'blade" out of the handle, cut it to a shorter length, and just hold it in your fingers?
In the end, I used my fingers and a makeup sponge wedge. Once dry (next day), I ran the model under the tap and rubbed a bit more to remove some more "grout". It's still too white, but I'll fix that tomorrow with a thin black wash. Unlike the smaller shed, the building proper has a more uneven look, but after the washes and weathering it should all tie together.
Ah, here... quick trip to take a picture and post it... I messed a bit with it about 20 minutes ago with a wet brush and a hair dryer to try and even out where some places there was not enough mortar, made it even more "uneven" on the building. It might even out a bit more as the model dries fully (darker areas will become slightly more white). Still, I'm really hoping a dark wash will darken the mortar lines and make it all blend in and look old and weathered.
Oh wow.. awarded a trophy? I've been in this hobby for three years now! This entire thread is basically my entire journey in this hobby!
New update! I finally got the Vallejo Wood effects paint kit in the mail! I had to order from the US, man is it difficult to find this paint kit anywhere, sold out pretty much at every store I could find. Well except one in Ontario, but inexplicably, would not ship to Quebec So, with the kit now in hand, I went ahead and scratched the double hockey sticks outta the base! Started with a small square of 160 grit sand paper to scratch up the boards. Just scratched in the same direction as the boards. Then, tried and true method of scraping an old razor saw to make deeper gouges. You know, this was scary at first, but quickly I found that I was getting exactly the effect I wanted. However it makes a lot of "hairy" plastic. I found that using a really fine steel wool (0000 or so) helped smooth it out. A coat a primer later, and I could still see a bit of fuzz, but some 600 grit wet dry sandpaper smoothed it further. Honestly thought, the kit is useful, but the instructions are incredibly vague. In the end I sort of partially followed the instructions. But it still got me in the right direction... The main difference is that I used some light grey paint to dry brush in the end (none was called for in the kit). But I'm really happy with the results. The one thing I would do differently is the razor saw, instead of scratching from one end of the board to the other end, I should have made shorter scratches. Still, super happy with the result! So yeah, the roof is now glued on, and I've started on the interior. This end will have no interior lighting. Since the windows are really clear, all I did was add a ceiling and some wall partitions to prevent anyone from seeing from one window through the other side. I guess I could have used black cardboard, but oh well, over engineering is me. The little "room" with the small window will be the bathroom. It's only implied really, since I'm not detailing inside there (that window is waaaaaay too small for that), but the main passenger station room will have a door drawn on the wall with a bathroom sign (if I can print that small). However, the real reason that I closed off the "bathroom" is that I will drill a large hole in the ceiling and this is where the wires for the lighting will drop down below the layout. Finally, the last part I made was this ceiling out of styrene. It's currently removable, and will be where I install some LEDs for the interior lights. I figure three LEDs will work fine. My next step is to print out some "wallpaper" to pretty up the inside. A friend of mine sent me this link of Canadian passenger stations turned into museums. I'll be modeling the interior space musch like the Caledonia station, just one large room with a telegraphers office. As I mentioned before, the walls with wainscoting and fake doors will be printed on photo paper and adhered to the inside walls, and the telegrapher's office I'll 3D print. I'll probably add some benches and must have a pot bellied stove 'till next time!
I've been busy, just not really quickly So, the first bit I wanted was to start furnishing the interior of the station. I mean, why bother adding real glass panes if I put nothing in there?! So first things first, I designed a telegraphers/station master's office based on the Caledonia station (I posted a link to this in a previous post). Then I needed furniture, and those I didn't bother designing, I went on Thingiverse and grabbed anything that would make sense. Church pews for the station seats, park benches, an HO caboose wood stove, table and chairs, desk, etc. I had some swivel office chairs, but those failed in the print. None of the objects were n-scale, but I use Meshmixer to resize and adjust material thickness where necessary (i.e the church pew seats had to be thickened). I mean seriously, how cute is that wood stove??! Then came the lights. This took a lot longer than I thought it might. See, over the last two years, I've bought SMD LEDs from digikey and ebay, and I made myself a test of each light using the same resistor value just to see which white values I had. The ebay 0603 "white" was basically blue. The ebay 0603 warm white is really nice, but I didn't want warm white. The 0603 digikey (Brightek I think) "white" is too cold (but much better than ebay). And finally, the digikey (Brightek) 0402 white was perfect, a natural daylight. It's also the smallest! eek! Now I took a hint from some one on youtube and arranged all the resistors for the lights on a prototype board, and soldered the 32 gauge magnet wire to both the leds and the board. Then used thicker wire for the leads that exits the building and goes under the layout. The board sits inside the ceiling. Up above we see the ceiling is glued in place. Notice that the walls are also decorated. For this, I used the GIMP image software and used free seamless textures and door images to create some wainscotting and wall details. Even the little office on the right got that treatment, but honestly, the effect is lost, I did not light the office and the windows are too small to see through. But I know it's there I also carefully painted the office and installed the office grille, I was super excited when I got this printed and installed. Very very delicate! Yes, out of scale, but I don't care, I love the little opening at the bottom. And yes, I added glass windows to the side windows. The floor was printed on my Epson photo printer (r2280), oldie but this printer has worked great for years. I glued the furniture down using CA. The tricky bit is that I have to judge where to place everything, because I can't get inside when the walls/roof are in place. The roof is NOT removable, and the walls either. Finally, I couldn't take a good picture of the completed inside, so I made it into a video instead... I also have two more picture to show, but Wifey is calling to help with dinner, so that's gonna come later! Enjoy!
Thank you! you're being very kind, and well, comparing my little interior to that bowling alley is being entirely too kind! I wish there would be more progress on that project, haven't seen anything there for so long. So, last two pictures for tonight, and I apologize for these pictures being so terrible, but my cell phone's macro always results in grainy images with terrible resolution. I did try my dSLR, but while I've done a lot of macro, I only own a 200mm micro-nikkor for insect photography, which isn't well suited for this, or reverse lenses for 2:1 to 3:1 enlargement, too much work! I spent the better part of my late afternoons after work this week working on printing a janitor for my passenger station! The printing part wasn't difficult, it printed perfectly on the very first try! if you squint you can almost see the pockets on the cargo pants The difficult part was in finding a model and then preparing it for print. Understandably, there are very few quality printable models available for free online - people work hard on their models and they want to sell them. So the next thing is to find just really good 3D models that are suitable for prep work. This is where 3D Warehouse comes in. This is a model repository for Sketchup. You can find loads of really nice 3d models there! However, in the majority of cases, these are NOT 3D printable. The models are non-manifold, made of layers of thin polygons to build up volume. However, with patience and a bit of know-how, it's possible to use, say, Meshmixer, to solidifying them into useable models. In this case here, when I looked on 3D warehouse for "Janitor", I found nothing. For "Worker", I found a woman construction worker with a shovel. Perfect pose! So I downloaded the model, converted to STL, and imported into Meshmixer. Okay, time to ditch the construction hat, so I found a model by the same author, a man with a paint roller and a cap. Cut the cap off the painter, and grafted that to the woman, replacing the construction helmet. Finally, delete the shovel, and replace with a broom. A trip to "Make Solid" with a offset to thicken the limbs to printable size, and done! Well, yeah, that's the gist of it, but that took a lot of experimenting with the tools (Meshmixer and 3D Builder) until I found the correct workflow. Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to attempt painting miss pony-tail here; my wife finds it funny that I demoted her from construction worker to cleaning lady. Original model by H.L on 3D warehouse
Nice! There is a lot of cleanup in construction work as well. Not just after either. Those boys do make a big mess. They need the ladies to clean up after them. And keep there minds on there work.
Fantastic work there Stephan! Really like how that station and interior came together. The lighting, furniture, pot belly stove, and cleaner are all nice touches.
Thanks guys! I printed six of the janitors, basically I tried three different supports, and then made two of each. I was a bit skeptical that it would print and wanted to give myself some chances f getting at least one of them out. Turns out that all of them printed, and the one with the fewest supports was the one to come out best. So now, for painting, I only took two of them off their supports, and painted those two only. I'll be using the one with overalls... They look much better in person without the extra magnification of the camera! It was a nice experiment, I know I can print pretty much any of the figures I want with my 3D printer, and spend a bit of time painting them with good enough results. I mean this janitor with broom has to be the most complicated figure to support; most figures will need only one or two supports. I got sticker shock when I saw the price of Woodland Scenics n scale figures at 20-25$ (CAD) per pack of six! So yeah, why not use a 1100$ machine and hours of hobby time to make my own!
oh, turns out taking non-macro shots with my cellphone is actually a bit better after cropping, looks more natural.
I am done! At least for now I even took out the dSLR, tripod and an castoff square of white fleece for this For now I'm done with the model, and I'm going back to work on the layout itself, back to the mountains where I left off. When I finally place the model in it's right ful place on the layout, I will add more details to the outside (people, mailbox, some light poles, electric junction box, benches, etc. If I added them right now, I feel I'd likely damage something during installation. Enjoy!
