Over the last week or so I've made some good progress on my model of Ebridge Mill. The lower building is almost complete now, the roof got covered with Wills sheet and I'm reasonably happy with the colour. It probably needs some Woodland Scenics putting into some of the troughs as lichen. The rain water goods have had quite a large effect on the look too with the guttering made from shaped 40thou plasticard and the down pipes from 1mm plastic rod.

When you zoom in you can really see the brick texture, you can also see the tie-bar plates which I cut and engraved on the laser cutter. The slightly bumpy finish of the engraved section actually looks alright on the plates as it looks like the plate has some surface rust on it. The crack that I tried to enhance which goes between the two horizontal white concrete beams is not as visible as I'd like and I think that I should have made the mortar joint even wider when I cut it, still we live and learn.

I had a couple of hours in Makespace this morning as I had a day off and was able to cut the shell for the extension on the second part of the mill. This looks a bit weird at the moment as there is meant to be another silo next to it. I had to do rather too much brain work to design tabs and slots to fit this together and I made a couple of errors but nothing too serious. The odd raised section won't look quite so out of place once the main building gets its lucam.

Obviously the window holes in the shell are oversize as the whole building gets covered in 1.5mm MDF with the bricks cut on it. The building is English bond not Flemish bond and it will be interesting to see just how noticeable the difference is.

There was a comment on my last entry asking about the plans for Empire Basin, which is my current P4 round the spare room layout. The current plan is that, once the exams and over and the family can all relax again, the layout room is going to get gutted, redecorated, probably have the ceiling recovered (it never looked right since I took out the airing cupboard and immersion heater) and then work starts on a new layout. The vertical fiddleyard will stay and that dictates the height of the running lines. The plan is still pretty much as per my entry

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/186/entry-10751-starting-to-plan-the-replacement-to-empire-basin/

I'm not sure if I may get a chance to do some cutting on the mill walls tomorrow, I did a 'calculate' on the drawing and it claimed 1 hour 35 minutes. I bit more than I can do at a lunch hour!

<edit 01/07/2013>

As Portchullin Tatty pointed out the tiebars really do look to be in the wrong place. Just a problem that nobody told the builder!

David