I typically use Evergreen Scale Models styrene plastic. Mostly because its a bit more readily available than Plastruct, but either will work. The biggest differences is that the dimensional pieces from Plastruct are shorter than those from Evergreen, the total amount in each package is about the same though. The battens were easy to glue down. I just applied a line of glue along the lines I had already drawn and added the batten on top. I didn't worry to much about them being straight, they tend to wander a bit off of center in the real world anyway. I did forget to leave a space for the door on the front of the shed so I'll have to cut through the battens there when I get the doors. I'm hoping to make a Caboose Hobbies run on Thursday for those.
Once I get the doors, I'll continue working on the inside of the building while the walls are still flat. I have already added some plastic filler pieces to the windows to level them up on the inside. Unfortunately I couldn't get the size I wanted in Evergreen plastic today and there wasn't a Plastruct rack available. I'll have to pick that up on Thursday as well. The interior will get a chair rail all the way around and all the doors and windows will get framed in. It would be a good idea and easier to add wallpaper at this point but we will see how much patience I have. I don't currently have access to a color printer although I do have a ton of wallpaper down loaded and ready to print. Wallpaper was very common and it was used as much for insulation as it was for decoration. The key to using it is making sure that you have it printed at an appropriate size. Most of the wallpaper that is available to be downloaded is scaled for dollhouses at 1/12 so its much to large for our purposes. You can find a ton of wallpaper here: Wallpaper
Here are some pictures of today's progress:
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| My favorite glue: Plastruct Plastic Weld (toxic version), some Evergreen .040x.040 pieces for the battens and the back wall of the newspaper office |
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| Applying the battens. I like to glue on a number of pieces and then cut them off afterwards. Evergreen does make board and batten siding but its much to regular in appearance for my taste. |
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| One side finished including the foundation board |
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| The other side finished. You can definitely see that some of the battens are not very straight! |
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| The floor. I re-thought how I should have scribed the planks after I was finished. Another measure twice, cut once situation. I went ahead and work some raw umber into the planks so I could see the planks, the scribes and the wood grain. I ran a piece of 60 grit sandpaper across the floorboards to make the grain, quick, easy and looks pretty good. |
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| The back wall of the Office plus the addition. The battens don't go all the way down where the addition will be glued. |
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| Here is what the addition will look from the front. If you look really close you can see the filler plastic I used to make the windows level with the wall. |
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| Pieces for the main building |
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| Pieces for the addition. I still need to acquire three doors and cut out their positions. Now that I think about it I could go ahead and add planking to the inside of the walls. I'm envisioning this mostly as living quarters for whoever owns the building. Pretty normal way to do things in the old west. |
