Mik 2022 - Hale o Waihona Lanahu

[Bruce_Chandler]

@Eric_Mueller

I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the look, as it was too smooth. I believe it was @Devon_Sinsley who mentioned using a knife to carve the “rocks’” texture. That failed for me, and I calculated I don’t have the time to make it work. Instead, I ran a wire brush over the “stone” surface.

You really don’t need to carve anymore - it looks good. If you WANT texture, press this down on your ballast and you’ll get texture. When it comes to painting, use an acrylic paint, first paint the mortar and then just use several colors or shades - you don’t need to clean the brush between colors - just paint the rocks individually.

Here’s my styrofoam “stone” bridge before the squirrels decided that it wasn’t going to be all that great for sharpening teeth…

Later, I removed the bridge as the squirrels had basically ruined it…

[JRad (Jon Radder)]

Very nice so far! I like the stone.

For future reference, when building with the pink foam I have used hot glue to attach pieces. It cools/cures fairly quickly and I’m pretty sure it will hold up outdoors.

The craft store hot glue guns are a lower temperature than the ones sold at hardware stores. The low temp is safer for kids, the pro guns get hot enough that the glue will burn skin.

[Devon_Sinsley]

Eric,

It loos great so this is just for future reference. I don’t carve the texture in with a knife. All I carve in with the knife is the seems between blocks/rocks. For their faces I use a dental pick (but a pointy #11 blade or even a toothpick would work) to pick and tease little chunks of foam out of the face. Its a pit time consuming but not horrible. I certainly wouldn’t want to literally carve it out. You just make little pricks at it and it pulls away in little balls and flakes .

Another interesting technique to texture your pink foam is spray paint. Living in a volcanic region it maybe of interest to you. To me the effect looks a lot like lava formations. The spray paint actually melts the foam and it takes on some cool effect. The reaction only last so long and then it stops, presumably when the solvent in the paint is used up chemically. But at any rate it can be even formed with the fingers almost putty like as it is melting. You can pinch and push features into it and then the whole thing hardens up.

Give it a test try on a scrap and see if you like it.

[Devon_Sinsley]

@JRad

The craft store hot glue guns are a lower temperature than the ones sold at hardware stores. The low temp is safer for kids, the pro guns get hot enough that the glue will burn skin.

This is what i use also. Not outdoors yet but I don’t see why it wouldn’t hold up. The craft store glue guns are plenty sufficient and one thing I like is it almost welds the two pieces together by melting into the two pieces of foam.

[capecodtodd (Todd Haskins)]

I think your “stone” work looks great. I made a bridge out of foam in 2014 from a 2" thick panel that I stuck together with tightbond3. It has held up very well and is still solid. Luckily unlike Bruce the squirrels in my yard have ignored it. There was a worry about ants moving in, I read that on the interweb, but that hasn’t happened either. The bridge sits on gravel not dirt so that may have helped with its longevity to this point. Something I cannot remember is if I used spray paint or craft paint but it was multiple coats of different shades to make it work. The grout lines would have received a wash of diluted plaint with the excess wiped off with a rag. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It will all blend in. Keep up the good work.

[Devon_Sinsley]

Thank you Todd for showing that. I have wondered about the longevity of foam outside. I am considering using it to core my mine build.

But I doubt you used spray paint. Spray paint eats foam, I know from experience. Now it produces some cool effects but it would have ruined that beautiful block work. Unless there is a way to seal it that I don’t know about.

[Bruce_Chandler]

Can’t you use acrylic spray paint?

[Devon_Sinsley]

I never thought about that. I am thinking you could because it is not solvent based. I have only ever used rattle can paint on it.

[Rooster]

From my experience if you wanna go cheap you can use a latex base paint (brush on) then you can spray it with a rattle can in light coats no problem.
Or just brush on plain old latex paint that you have laying around the house. Nobody said that you couldn’t have a painted stone (color of YOUR choice) Hale o Waihona Lanahu at least I didn’t?

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Eric, as usual, you and your gang are doing a great job. Always enjoy following along with your family builds.

[Eric_Mueller]

Thanks to everyone for your tips. I really like foam. It is very forgiving of mistakes, weather resistant, bonds to many materials via TiteBond III or pinning, and doesn’t need a lot of specialty tools. I have a plan for later this year to make a little pumphouse for my father-in-law’s water tank entirely from the substance, just to see how far I can go with it.

For the MIK, O.S. and I agreed last evening that the wire brush texturing would be sufficient. We worked in “reverse,” giving the whole a wash in black latex then dry brushing grays over the top. The wash was still sort of wet, and it was neat to see the grey sort of fade back into the crevices. It was too dark to take a photo, so I took one this morning:

That came out a little dark relative to the other stones, even for a coaling station, so we will have to drybrush some more gray to lighten this a bit.

Today was not the day to address that, however, as I need to get this core clad and ready to hand over to the detail team! I did layer on a band of concrete patch 1.5" high along the base. This will give the tower a concrete base similar to the nearby mill. More practically, this will mean the wood cladding will be over an inch about the ground, which should help preserve it over time. Later, O.D. helped carve the angle for the roof.

I did some sanding while she cut an abandoned campaign sign to shape. This will be the subroof, in time. I gave it a dash of black primer to obfuscate the origins…the individual happens to run at a variety of offices every other year or so!

The last step today was to put the basswood sheathing on one wall. I used TiteBond III, then weighted it down with whatever came to hand.

Tomorrow, I’ll flip it and sheath the other side. With that done, we can trim it to size with the Dremel and commence with the battens, a door, and some blacked-out windows to light the interior stairwell. We also have to figure out how to turn plastic egg crate into tramways for the coal carts! The clock is ticking!

Happy Building!

Eric

[Eric_Mueller]

Update.

Progress occurred in fits and starts over the course of last week. At one point, Kid-zill and I cut off the top of the planking to make it level with the core…

…but, as he points out, the wood curled as it dried.

Uh-oh…I had no really good idea how to fix this, so I decided to focus on what we could do.

To that end, at some point Y.D. helped me dry-brush the “rock” walls to lighten them up a bit.

The results help blend this with our terrain, I think.

I am actually very pleased by this effect of roughing the foam for texture then using a combination of washes and dry brushing to get the effect I want.

Today I cut some left over shingle material to serve as our “tar” roof, affixing it to the signboard with E6000. O.S. and I broke out the RapidFuse to start the battening process. In order to try and address the curl, I repurposed some 1/4"x1/4" basswood strips to this project. He helped me glue and clamp the fist one in place:

The plan is to slowly move up the structure on both sides, using the “beam” to flatten out the cladding. Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll look good!

I feel we are behind, but that we can catch up. Next week work is going to be an issue, so this weekend has to see us get the building structurally complete!

Eric

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Good to see the whole crew hard at work, Eric. I think the effort you made to lighten the stone was well worthwhile. It looks much better now. I hope you get the curl issue worked out. But if not, it will still look great.

[Eric_Mueller]

@WaverlySouthern

I think the effort you made to lighten the stone was well worthwhile.

Thanks, Dan! This may be the only part of this build that comes out better than anticipated. We may have bit off more than we can chew here, as “scaling” up wood-on-foam to entire sheets of wood failed.

Most of today, though, involved attacking that curl while the girls and I crafted the details that will allow crew in and out the bottom, coal buckets in and out the top, and light into the interior.

Yours truly tried to glue shingle material to the roof, weighting it down with paving stones. Natually, I took the stones off too early, and the roof warped. More glue, more paving stones, and we’ll see what the morrow brings on that one…more successful were some simple “doors” made with craftsticks and scraps from the wood cladding. I also was in charge of slowly gluing and clamping up the walls of the tower to address that warp as shown below:

This was moderately successful. There are still considerable gaps between the wall and cross timber that, frankly, I am not sure how I will address. I may just caulk it and let it lie. This issue will also impact our platform that will overhang the tracks. It will not lie flush against the wall.

O.D., for her part, crafted the doors that will go over the tracks for the coal carts…

…while Y.D. made some basic windows.

She cut the plastic (thanks @Pete_Lassen !) and framed them with scraps of craft sticks. We’ll paint the back flat black tomorrow to block the fact these were windows to nowhere! Of note, we did consider making some sort of skylight, but we just couldn’t figure out how to do that with egg crate and plastic sheet!

The three of us also discussed the platform. Originally, we were going to brace it from the bottom, but we doubt the track clearance. Now, we are looking to “hang” it from the overhead and make it fast to the wall. The deck will rest on an “iron” grid (egg crate spray painted black). With glue drying and the day ending, though, it was time to give it a break. There was no way to do a visual clearance and aesthetic check, anyway, with all those clamps on the tower! The results of the afternoon are below:

.

I should mention O.S. played a role at this point, helping me “safe” the work area, stow unneeded items, and vacuum up debris. Give credit where credit is due!

I do fear we bit off more than we can chew this year. I think I should have steered us towards a little freight depot, especially knowing my job was going to get in the way, where the fun would have been in the details, and the building and platform products of tried-and-true techniques. Also, with no real reference to frame what we are doing, I think the crew is having a hard time visualizing the end product. If I can guide is to a completed structure by nightfall tomorrow, we may yet meet the deadline!

Happy Building!

Eric

Eric

[Devon_Sinsley]

Awe the struggles of having the best laid plans not come out quite as expected. You guys will get through it, I have faith.

Love the stone work. Learned it in my HO days and it has translated over to large scale quite nicely. From making whole mountains to making blocks and rocks. But the basic technique is the same. I have even made brick and block walls. Concrete bridge abutments. Foam is versatile and cutting it scoring it and then learning to dry brush makes it into almost anything. Even trees with bark.

Your daughter did a brilliant job on the dry brush. Looks just like the ballast rock.

[VicSmith]

That rock technique is great looking.

[Pete_Lassen]

Wow the dry brushing is very very close to the ballast. Very good eye for the colors ! Look forward to the finished product , another winner

[Eric_Mueller]

Thanks everyone for the comments on the rockwork. I will pass them along to Youngest Daughter! She is my “crafty one,” in that no material, no matter how plain, is without application to a project. You can imagine what her part of the girls’ bedroom looks like!

Today, Kid-zilla has been my sidekick as we pushed the project to “turn-over,” that point where I am going to have to rely on the crew to bring a good part of this over the line.

First on the agenda was addressing gaps between cross timbers and the cladding. In desperation, I grabbed woodfiller, which Kid-zilla and I applied to the various gaps.

In the ideal world, we would have let this sit for 24 hours, let it cure, sanded everything, and then applied the battens. This is not the ideal world, so the two of us and a bottle of RapidFuse started the process of turning craft sticks into battens.

Copious sanding on the seams, where the warp was most pronounced, allowed a good, level fit.

We also cut and painted the egg crate for the coaling deck after first testing clearances.

He masked and painted Y.D.'s window backs. He needed a bit of help with the spraypaint. It is nice to know I am still needed!

I still had no idea how we were going to mount this deck. I got out the Box of Randon Stuff, and we started going through it. Kid-zill saw picture hangers and eye hooks. Problem solved. We glued and nailed the hangers to the wall…

!
…and then we glued badly stripped lumber cut last year for a now delayed MOW project to the top.

Though the deck clearly hangs as Kid-zilla demonstrate…

…eventually “chains” will run from eyebolts in that topmost timber (the one clamped in place in the previous picture) to the deck and square it in place. While I am clearly taking advantage of that fact that physics works in my favor in 1:24-ish PLAYMOBIL scale, I think Kid-zilla hit upon a credible solution. As an upshot, it will be easy to remove and repair this if need be.

I started to safe and clean the lanai while Kid-zill fit a timber to the top of the coal receiving area, where an unseen elevator carries the coal to the bins high above.

We added some more battens, but then we had to stop. The lanai becomes very hot at this point in the afternoon, and the all the glues and putties had to dry anyway.

Tomorrow, I hope to add the doors, windows, eyebolts, and falls. Then I can hand-over staining the wood bits, mounting the roof, sealing gaps, making the coal pit, and detailing things out to the crew. I will have them plank over the deck for the coal carts, if I can. It’ll be tight, but I think we may just pull this off!

Have a Great Week!

Eric

[Pete_Lassen]

Wow that’s looking awesome!! Kid ills is becoming a real problem solver!!

[Devon_Sinsley]

Its neat to see Kidzilla becoming such an integral part of the game. From the little guy running around just gluing “stuff” to now an active part of design and development is fun to watch.

But I think we need to make a new rule. You should not be allowed to be barefoot and wear shorts for the MIK.