That is the best descriptive text I have seen in quite some time.
[:D]
The building is wonderful.
-Kevin
I don’t suppose I should tell you that my day job–more like, I hit it pretty hard 3-4 months of the year–is writing. I was actually got advanced degree in writing. I taught it for a while, and wrote a lot of articles as part of my business, but I didn’t really get into doing what I wanted to do until 2008 forced me into early retirement.
There was a time when I was quite a good writer.
Then about 15 years ago I took a position that required my to write 100% factual and use no unnecessary adjectives.
My writing became bored and mechanical. I am trying to improve, but it seems all my creative writing juices have fermented and gone sour.
-Kevin
Hi Chip,
The contrast between the fresh paint on the addition and the faded paint on the original building is superb! What a neat detail!
Can I make one small suggestion? Your fascia boards are on an angle. In reality, fascia boards are perpendicular to the ground. That is so eavestrough can be mounted on them. Perhaps consider mitering the ends of your roof trusses.
I scratchbuilt a couple of structures with the fascia on an angle before I realized that I couldn’t install the eavestrough properly. Even if you don’t plan on installing eavestrough, the roof line will look better IMHO. Not a big deal.
By the way, it’s probably not worth trying to correct them. I tried to do that on one of my buildings (styrene) and ended up with nine stitches and a permanently numb index finger tip as a result![D)][banghead][|(]
Dave
If you want to write, and you don’t have to by the way, you just start writing. It will come to you as you write and pretty soon you’ll be back on track.
Dave–Did they use eavestroughs on barns in the 1890’s? That’s not the facia, by the way, it’s the rim joist. The roof extends another eighth of an inch. I’m thinking since angling it was easier, that’s what this guy woud have done.
I’ll think about it until tomorrow.
That’s right-- Suprise! [:$]–I didn’t finish. I was going to hang in there 'tll the very end, but I didn’t want to rush some of the fun stuff. I have about 3 hours of work time before I have to make my weekly Wally World and other places shopping run.
No picture either. Anything I take will just be a spoiler.
Besides, I’m just burnt out for the day.
See ya tomorrow.
I’m not certain about barns specifically, but eavestroughs were pretty common at that time. They often fed into a cistern where the water was stored until needed.
Okay, I just learned something about barn construction! I wondered why it was so thick. I know plenty about residential roofing but I’ve never worked on a barn. I should stick to what I know.[:$]
Dave
[bow][bow][bow] You convinced me. Now I have to figure out what an 1890’s eavestrough looks like. I bet I’m going to be sorry I did. The guy would use the water for the horses.
I suspect that a small town livery stable would have had wooden eavestroughs, maybe with a liner of some sort to reduce the leakage. They could be tricky to make in HO.
Dave
I did a Google search of 1890’s eavestroughs and I’m not going to duplicate them anytime soon. Most are carved out of a single piece of lumber with a semi-circular channel running down the middle. I decided I wasn’t going to figure it out on this particular barn.
I hear you! I spent some time searching the scale wood suppliers to see if anyone still made ‘U’ channels in HO scale but I couldn’t find anything. The best I could suggest is to glue an ‘L’ shape of the proper size to a fascia board, but I could see that being a huge exercise in frustration.
Besides, who’s going to notice that there aren’t any eavestroughs?
Keep the creativity coming!
Dave
I’m declaring it done. I will probably take a couple of days to situate it on the layout. It will need a shelter for the horses, a trough, a tack shed, a fence, a buggy for rent in the front, and a dog peeing on the buggy. Plus it will need various pieces of rope and leather, a guy working leather on the workbench, and a a guy on a wagon handing hay up to a boy in the hayloft. Just a week of work, more or less.
I told you I found out I didn’t have yellow static grass and ordered some to make hay bales for the loft. It was due to come next Wednesday so I could not install the hay bales in the loft through the open roof.
Well, they came early, right after the roof was on. I managed to get one hay bale in and some loose straw.
Well, the next project will be a retail lumber outlet. This one was a fun build.
I like it and look forward to seeing your rustic scene come together. edit: Forgot to mention how deterioratingly nice I find your roofing material to be.
Regards, Peter
That is a nice piece of work. It’s impressive, and even more so since it’s made of stirrers and popsickle sticks!
Thanks John and Peter
I glanced through the posts, so if you mentioned this – sorry.
What material did you use for the roof?
It is black construction paper spray painted with gray primer. You sand the paper with 100 grit to scratch it and fray the edge. The tears are done by gently scraping with the side of your exacto knife.
Thanks! I’m learning how to do some neat things in your posts.
Hi Chip,
It came out really well! The added details will make a great scene!
Dave
Chip’s models are like those classic “Dollar Model” articles from back in the day. And if accounting for inflation, probably are no more expensive. Yet the results are amazing.
If eating so many popsicles is a bad idea for your waistline, you can buy boxes of them (and wood stirrers) and get a ton of raw material for cheap.
You really should write one of these up as an article. Probably not the Bear Whiz Brewery one though (or use a different name [:D] I mean, I like the name, magazine publishers might not). You have a knack for telling a story, and making it look like anyone could duplicate the project.
–Randy
[quote user=“rrinker”]
f eating so many popsicles is a bad idea for your waistline, you can buy boxes of them (and wood stirrers) and get a ton of raw material for cheap.[/railroad ties]
I got 1000 popsickle sticks at some art/hobby store in Pittsburgh. I got 2000 coffee stirrer’s on Amazon. What hasn’t come up yet, is that I got a bunch of yard stick thick rulers from that same hobby store for tressels, and I can thank Home depot for all the paint stirrers that are going to become railroad ties to use for filling out Fast Tracks turnouts instead of using their laser cut jigs.
I actually wrote an article for the very first issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist. Joe was probably desperate. I’ll think about it.