WIAD plastik cottage becomes warehouses

[relaxinghobby]

I started to show this kit conversion over on Vintage and Collectables as it an old kit and may be of interested to people there.

To make it suitable for my layout I've used the walls cut up to make a couple of small warehouses in low relief to go against the back scene.

 

 

 

This contraption used here to hold it all flat whilst the glue set as it was trying to curl up, basically screw it down to a lump of wood while the glue cures.

 

 

 

Clamps galore whilst the chimney is glued in. You can see the ridge support top edge has been curved concave to try and get an antique sag like an old building would.

 

 

 

 

 

[relaxinghobby]

Election night progress, gluing in more window frames and adding detail. It's funny but the windows are a very loose fit in the wall holes. I guess the manufacturers relied on the continental style shutters to hide any gaps. But by anglicising them by the simple operation of cutting them off the shutters revelled they cover up big gaps.

 

 

Since I had chopped the walls around the door and window spaces are all different sizes so it's a case of cutting and trimming down the window frames to fit, e.g. places B.

 

I didn't last long during election night, the window frames where more interesting than political pundits droning on so I went to bed, I would find out in the morning who was in and who was out, when it would all be over bar the shouting.

 

Places A need filling, I am using a tube of Ronseal Smooth Finish Filler, 330g so that will last a long time, a household product, which is inexpensive and seems to do the job very well on this plastic kit. I guess it would work on cardboard and metal too.

 

You can't see where I did invisible filling at C.

 

[relaxinghobby]

I bought a bag of bits by the manufacture ********* ( lost the packet label ) they all looked like half-timbered sections so I fancied I could build some kind of rustic cottage or shop, another low relief model for a future village scene?

 

It looks like the parts are varied and from several different kits, so a lot of cutting and fitting and fiddling and floor by floor it sort of growed into what you see.

A quick internet search of " half timbered " and "timber framed " came up with a few old buildings to take inspiration from.

Some years a go I vaguely remember a TV documentary about how to build a Tudor timbered framed house they were actually building one from scratch, they used the whole tree, axing and adzing the timbers, actually roughly carving to the right size beams, carving the wood, no saws.

That's how you tell the real from the fake, feel the wood, is it slightly irregularly from hundreds of cuts with an adze blade or smooth from a saw?

The slightly irregular house frame they came up with used the whole tree, wasted no wood and they incorporated any twists and natural jiggles of the wood as they went. Using the trunk and all the branches.

The timbering on these plastic mouldings looks a bit too neat for this but over all the look is rustic enough.

My modelling skills have added the wonkyness without trying.

 

I'm topping off with some Wills' moulded roof tiles. The rooves would have started out as thatch then converted to clay pantiles then maybe been modernised in the Victorian era with slates. Now-a-days especially if you were listed the council would probably want you to go back to pantiles.

Being H0 the floor heights were a bit low, even for 4mm hobbits so I've added in some extra horizontal strips between the floor sections.

It's all a bit of a mishmash, a very bashed about kit.

 

 

 

Whilst taking these photos I notice the roof was slightly off horizontal the rear triangular shaped support is to high at it's top tip, so I’ve pull the roof off whilst the glue was still soft from yesterday and I'll try again.

 

Photo 38a 33a

[relaxinghobby]

 

Further work on these plastic buildings, reconstructed from bits into a whole new way to make low relief models.

The half timbered one is nearly done. The glazing is some old and slightly yellowed clear packing plastic with diagonal lines scored on and pencil lead rubbed into the grooves to give the impression of the old leaded windows.

The square paned window on the first floor and the ground floor shop windows are some printed windows left over from a Metcalfe building.

To try and get a matt look and tone down the shiny plastic look I'm trying watercolour paint over an enamel matt colour used as undercoat. This is so the water based paint does not bead.

Water colour mixed into wood filler to stain it seems to give a paint slurry that covers plastic quiet well. The magic material is Ronseal Smooth Finish Filler.

Edited March 21, 2020 by relaxinghobby
correction

[relaxinghobby]

Chance to work on this signal box, a cut down Airfix original kit to make a small branch line box. It was ready built but I pulled it apart and cut up the sides and re-glued it into a sort of perfect cuboid, give or take 2%.

Why is it I can never get 4 sides of a square thing all together and square, that includes the full size bird boxes we made the other day.

Anyway back to the problem in hand which was to fit the box out with windows. I had kinda half remembered someone somewhere somehow had made some windows or etched-brassed window frames for it. Couldn’t find anything on line so had a look at some left over Metcalfe kits. Which are printed on thin clear plastic, here are warehouse ones with small frames sizes. Non of them fitted the larger windows at the front son I've scratched some out my self.

The hardest part was holding a piece of paper at the back of the window space to make the sides.

The paper can then be draw on to show where the window bars should be, Funnily enough all dimensions are fractions of an inch not millimetres. So a chance to use that old fashioned ruler buried at the bottom of the toolbox.

Having both mm and inches marked out gives us more choice which can be handy.

Then a piece of clear plastic something about 5 thou or so, as long as it's stiff enough to stay flat in the window place.

Cellotaped or some other sticky backed plastic tape down to the cutting mat then groves can be scratched in with the back of a craft knife, all trimmed to fit.

Then some white paint rubbed into the scratches to high light them a bit. I used watercolour.

Here's how they look.

 

 

Just noticed it needs a door too. Some more fiddling plastic cutting to make one.

This close-pick shows up some horrors that the paint has not covered up.

Pencil rubbed onto the Metcalfe printed windows to tone down the white.

Edited March 26, 2020 by relaxinghobby
added detail

[relaxinghobby]

More modified kits, this time Wills.

 

In the May 2020 Railway Modeller there is a story of how a modeller CW, used the Wills Cattle Creep kit as tunnel entrances for an underground ammunition dump.

They even had lit-up interior details, I had once hoped to do that too somehow and used one cattle creep entrance to make a calverted drain under a shunting yard.

To prove it is a water drain it has a stagnant trickle made from green paint and varnish dribbling down the front. The entrance has about 2 inches to 30mm of plastic tube glued on behind it to form a tunnel.

 

The inside is painted in dark greys and the plan was to hide some sort of dragon or troll or boggit figurine inside that could light up when a little button was pressed ?

 

 

Never happened so here is a scrappy picture with a bicycle torch shinning up the back.

 

 

Now I remember the tunnel was have a plastic tube cut length wise for the vaulted roof, plastic sides didn't bother to used stone pattern plastic card just plane and a bit of strip-wood for the floor.

 

Image from Dream Stream Model Railways web shop.

 

I cut up the second entrance kit to get matching stone effect walls to extend the entrance downwards under the opening and the wings.

[relaxinghobby]

 

Continued from above post.

I could not load any more pictures so carried on in this new entry to the thread.

Never happened so here is a scrappy picture with a bicycle torch shinning up the back.