Looking Good John… I like the idea of the foam bricks. Time consuming but would look great!. Give it a whirl John. Open up a new avenue for building skills… 
So having screwed up my first attempt, all is not lost…I’m making it a barracks for some of the miners. I resurfaced my botched building in foam and carved it into fieldstone walls, you can a close-up of how I’m painting them.
Then on to the tower. I rebuilt the first floor, which amounts to the base:
Then I surfaced the second cloor exterior with brick from brick model sheets I have laying around, started in on putting a floor in the second floor, and I have decided it will be a nice ponderosa pine varnished floor, with ponderosa pine panelling on the walls, and I started building the windows out of individual pieces of wood; cutting them precisely, and cutting so many of them, has been incredibly tedious to say the least. Then a coat of white paint.
I cut a core out of oak for the chimney, had to add a 1/16 of an inch piece of scale lumber in the middle because of mis-measuring:
And here’s how it’s starting to take shape, at least the second floor; I spent some time starting a fireplace, but to tell you the truth if I don’t stop working on the interior I’ll never get the tower built by the deadline, so that’s just about enough of that!:
Thanks for looking.
Good work there John
Geez John,
Where to begin. that is looking phenomenal. I love the field stone; that will end up in the files for later use right next to the Mueller family’s meat tray stones.
And the fire place. I want one in 1:1 for my front living room.
swanky diagonal floors! Cool fireplace. Nice realism on the stonework. Wicked awesome, bro!
Jim Rowson said:
Wicked awesome, bro!
Lol, you are on a roll tonight Jim. Every time I check in you have me laughing.
Wow, John. Looking good so far. You’ve got my interest up on that beautiful fireplace. Heck continue with it and add the chimney, rules don’t require an exterior (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)Love the flooring.
That stone carved into foam looks Sweet!.. After the challenge is over can you elaborate more on how you did it?.. The windows too, they look awesome as well!..
What an Artist, you never fail to please!
Watching all of the 2020 MIK threads but trying to stay out of them until voting. Bonus points for you John with hitting old pics on LSC and doing your research here !
I personally like Lemo or know as the J tower myself.
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Rooster ’ said:
…I personally like Lemo or know as the J tower myself.
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Russell, I can ony hope to live up to your example (no kidding)…
Having had some time yesterday (has anyone else noticed and felt a little guilty maybe that the Challenge takes up way more of your time than you expect?), I made some progress.
I’m using different woods on the interior, which take the varnish differently, so I had to add some color to the varnish to make the wood “stain” consistent:
Then it was on to just keep slugging away at the exterior, and figuring out just exactly where and how the chimney will fit into the build:
Then I moved to the roof. Roofs kill me. I don’t have the skill to make an actual roof support, so I improvised my own method of doing this; all I’m after is something that looks like a roof, not real construction! I cut a base out of SINTRA, because I know it won’t warp and won’t change shape on me like cardboard or wood or other materials. I got a big panel of Sintra for free a year or so ago from a sign printer. I think Dave or one of the other fellas here suggested it as a source. Anyway I improvised a height dead center and it gave me something to measure the pieces off of. Then I cut them out of a rigid black mat board (it helps that I have access to a nice cutter up where I paint these days…and the mat board, not the foam kind, solid, was a scrap laying around):
This is where I had a decision to make. I’ve decided to go away from my prototype model. I don’t think that flimsy grey asphalt shingle roof on the original would stand up to use in the mountains at 10,500 ft elevation where my yard and mining district are, so I looked through the vinyl sheets of materials that I got for practically nothing when Caboose Hobbies went out of business (by the way the owner of the new Caboose has been a disappointment, I think, to me, at least), and I decided on a hard clay tile. I debated between this and standing seam copper, but I already did the standing seam on a couple of structures and wanted to try something different. I know it’s stretching plausibility to believe a mountain railroad would have red brick and clay tiles to build with, but the owner of the railroad was visiting the Chicago Art Institute and quite by coincidence happened to run into a benefactor of the museum who also happens to be a building supplier who was willing to ship by railroad brick and tile out to the mountains at a great price. I hope the brick and tile turn out to be a good choice, but it’s his railroad…ha!!)
The thing is, I don’t want the roof to stand out and compete with the rest of the structure, so there will ultimately be very little weathering or anything else to call unnecesary attention. The reason why it’s glossy in the picture is because the paint isn’t dry yet; when it dries, it’s acrylic gouache and dries dead matte. I’ll deal with the seams, hips, later…no matter what I tried I couldn’t get the cuts to fit together well enough to be covered by one tile. Oh well. Later.
So here’s kind of an overview of where I’m at so far. Thanks for looking and if you don’t like something, or something isn’t looking right, tell me. To say this is a work in progress would be an understatement, and I’m improvising as I go along.
edit: Also, I picked Sintra because the entire roof sits on the top of the second floor and can be removed, the entire roof, in one piece so that in the future I can continue easily working on the interior because the roof comes off. Thinking ahead just this one time! I promise not to do that again!
If I’m being honest, I don’t like that red Spanish style roof. It’s nice and all, but it’s too strong, the color will kill off the rest of the scheme, there’s no way of believably toning it down in color, I have no way of putting any variety into the tile so it isn’t so perfect, and it’s just too far out of character with the build and my layout. Maybe I can use it somewhere else some day, on some smaller structure, maybe.
I think I’m going with a light grey slate that’ll fit in better. I have some I can salvage from one of my first builds and I found an extra clean sheet. You can’t really tell if it’s slate or shingle, but I’ll make it look like slate.
Oh well. Back to the fancy paper cutter; at least this time I have a decent pattern to go by.
Paint it light brown, the color is dependent on the clay from which it’s made. My sister’s house has a light chocolate brown look.
Who says you used the correct one? nudge nudge
Nicely done, John! Building the roof to be removable seems like a smart move (must be, cause I did that too! :-)).
Rooster ’ said:
Watching all of the 2020 MIK threads but trying to stay out of them until voting.
I’m a Hobbyist not a Lobbyists but the latter does work in evil ways at times!
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BTW …you forgot the rubber bands on the chimney !
John, I like the clay tile roof. you are correct that its current color is a little overwhelming to the rest of the building, but John C. brought up a good suggestion of how to tone the color down. In the end its your RR so you have to please yourself first. All in all its looking good.
I’m liking John’s idea, so I gave it a quick shot at seeing what kind of color I could come up with. I really like the results, a little crude, but with some time I could make it work nicely.
It still doesn’t work on the signal tower, I don’t think, but it’s perfect for the fieldstone building that goes with the tower.
John C., the check’s in the mail!
