WSRR 2023 Mik Challenge School House

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Downtown, what might one find in downtown Bear’s Den? Well, let’s see, a general store, bath house, blacksmith, hardware store, lumber supply, mining supply, saw works, hotel, saloon/bar or maybe a church. That’s where I started but I ended up with a school. Every town must have a place to educate our knuckleheads. Sometime ago, I ran across a photo of a model of a lighthouse that I really liked but we don’t have an ocean or any other body of water that needs a lighthouse on the WSRR. As I was looking at the photo, I realized I could convert the tower and its light to a bell tower for a school. Below is the original napkin drawing generated by the WSRR architects.

This will be a 2-story, wood framed structure sitting on a brick foundation with a wrap around porch. There will be a small addition on the back that houses the kitchen. This should be a fun and challenging build.

[Devon_Sinsley]

Very cool. Should be a fun build

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

The WSRR engineering group has been busy this morning. Typical of this bunch of eggheads, they got up early and began working on a 3D model of the proposed school house. So far they have only accomplished generating a crude model. There are still many details to be added but this will give the guys in the woodshop something to go by to start milling lumber.

The basic size is approximately 50’x50’x61’. In 1:20.3 it is 2.5’x2.5’x3’. Foundation will be the same old brick used for last year’s station, walls will be sintra covered with wood siding and the roof will be a mixture of cedar and asphalt shingles.

In honor of WSRR Chief engineer, the late R.E.Mington, the school will be named …

The Remington by Ruger School of Mines.

More to come, thanks for following along.

[Jim_Rowson]

That is quite an edifice! Imposing for a school “house”…

I guess I should have looked more closely at your sketch. I had been envisioning a one-room.kind of affair.

Go for it!

[Devon_Sinsley]

Wow that’s ambitious

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Jim, Devon, it looks a lot bigger than it is because of the porch and bell tower. There is only about 1900 square feet (1:1) between the 2 floors. Time will tell if I have bitten off more than I can chew

Progress over the weekend included getting all the brickwork, floor framing and flooring modeled. Brickwork will be 3D printed and that is under way. Each individual brick support takes about 2.5 hours to print and there are 16, you can do the math (long time). Other items to be printed are the windows, doors and equipment for the bell tower (bell and rigging). I also got the floor framing and flooring cut for both floors today. Started cutting the walls out of sintra. They will require some internal framing due to the length of the 2 long walls. That has also been cut. All wood being used in this model is western red cedar.

Updated model photos:

Milled lumber

Brick support

Thanks for following along.

[Devon_Sinsley]

I want one of these in 1:1 as a house. Cool looking building.

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Thanks, Devon. When you win the lottery and give me half, I’ll come build you one

[Cliff_Jennings]

Deal!

I agree with Devon, very cool design. Good luck, and I’ll be following along!

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Thanks, Cliff. Long way to go yet and I hope the actual structure turns out half as good as the 3D model

[Cliff_Jennings]

How are you going to make all those trusses? All stick built?

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Yup. Already designed a jig to make building them much easier. Just waiting on some available print time.

Would be much easier to print, but I’ve vowed that this year I will only use the printer for details and the brick foundation. I could scribe the bricks in sintra, but that would drive me completely out of my mind … but mostly, I just don’t want to do it

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

The jigs are to big to print as a single piece so I have cut both of the bottom corners off the one on the right and the left corner on the jig on the left (it is a clipped truss that butts up agains the bell tower.

I’ll print the corners seperately and “weld them back on”. I’ve left a fillet on top and bottom to accept the weld filament as shown below.

You can see them better on the back.

[Pete_Lassen]

Wow Dan you hide all year and then come out strong with the design and project! Look forward to this build, yours are always top notch .

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Oh, I’m around, Pete. I’m just hiding in the shadows, watching from afar

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Made a little progress tonight. Brickwork still printing, about 8 of the 16 columns are complete. No. nine is on the printer. They come off the printer looking like this:

After some cleaning up and gluing together, they look like this:

Started putting the floor framing together. This will give you some sense of size. That is a 12" ruler in the frame.

More to come …

[VicSmith]

Thats gonna be one BIG model

[Devon_Sinsley]

Dan,

A couple technical questions on the bricks. I am assuming these are resin printed and not filament. And if that is the case, are you printing them flat? I am wondering what the “flashing” is at the base. To me that looks like the first couple print layers to attach it. But if that is what you are doing and you are printing them flat with no supports, why have that at all? They look big enough that it should stick without the need for the island. This is not a judgment rather than a seeking of knowledge. They look great. Last year I made my chimney by printing brick panels and yours look much better. So I am looking to learn so I can do it.

[Devon_Sinsley]

Thanks Bob and you know why

[WaverlySouthern (Dan Hilyer)]

Devon, the bricks are printed on my filament printer, hence the reason for printing them flat. I tried printing a set on the resin printer and it failed miserably and I don’t know why. All the supports printed, but everything else is floating around in the resin tank. Really my first major fail with resin. I’m going to try again with a different setup once I figure out the different setup