Sawmill kitbash


DairyStateDad

Mumbling in the corner
Hello, all... I know I have been away a long time, but I recently got started on a project and decided I would share some progress.

Working from a LifeLike supply house kit, along with a LifeLike general store kit, I am kitbashing a small enclosed sawmill. It is still early, but here are some progress pictures...
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Thank you. I've gotten some good advice from folks here, and I have been learning as I go. The Supply House kit came as a bonus when I bought another kit on Ebay and I have been wondering what to do with it. Then I founnd the general store kit and decided it could be a good source of parts. Even then it took me a while to work out how it would all go together. But I'm having fun.
 
Looking great! My grandpa had a saw mill but it wasn’t nothing like yours, as long as you are having fun that’s all that matters I love to kit bash and I enjoy it when I see other people like you self come up with great ideas to kit bash keep up the good work
 
Thanks... my goal was to come up with something small, but plausible (the big Walthers one was too large for me), but more than the little backwoods sawmill from Woodland Scenics. We'll see how it goes. :)
 
The main body is now in two sections. Before I complete the assembly I want to line the inside walls with something to simulate plank. I don't know that I will detail the interior completely, but I will leave open the possibility for the future, and putti ng interior walls in now will be a lot easier. I think I will use paper from a free website that has all kinds of texture images, including one with plank walls. An alternative could be scribed wood or plastic, but I think paper would be easier to work with. Any thoughts?
 
Here's an image I made from the site by mashing up multiple copies of the same image and then reducing it so the planks scale to somewhere between 6 inches and 1 foot in HO scale. I assume the planks should run horizontally, and not vertically as they are here... I'm switching this to just a thumbnail image because the website from which I got the images (for free, legally) has restrictions on distribution, and I don't want my having posted here to be interpreted as distribution not in compliance with their requirements.

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Here's another example from a different set of wall texture images. I think I like this better. These planks scale to about 9 inches wide.

WoodWall2.jpg
 
So here is what it looks like in the rough. Windows not cut out.

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Do those planks look too wide? I think they might.
 
I decided to download a different plank image and try it out. I think I like the look of it better,
WoodWall3.jpg

but upon printing it out and roughing it in to the inside wall..... well, I think my printer might need new ink. These planks scale to about 10 inches the way I printed it out. I'm leaning toward this one, but will need to reload the printer ink first!

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What I like about this last one is that it actually LACKS some of the detail of the previous one, which is so sharp it's easy to see that it's the same image repeated over and over again.
 
Looks good to me, Erik!
Thanks. I will pick up some new ink -- printer says it's low both on color and black -- from Office Despot tomorrow and do a fresh run for real this time. I've also been looking up what adhesive to use between paper and styrene, and the consensus seems to be rubber cement. So I'll probably pick up some of that, too.
 
Erik:

Your saw mill is taking shape and will be a great addition to your layout. Spray adhesive could be used in place of rubber cement. A product like 3-M spray adhesive.

I've used the 3-M product to mount paper signs on billboards and it worked just fine.

Keep us posted on your progress.

Greg
 
I've printed out a version of the one I showed immediately above, this time with better ink, and I think it will do the trick. The photo below is of the paper printout. I'm hoping tonight I can take the time to fasten it in place. I like the idea of spray adhesive... Will pick up some hopefully later today and move this forward. Thanks for the tip, Greg!

In case anyone is interested.... the site textures.com has a lot of images of all kinds of textures. If you register (for free), you can download a limited number a day, and there are other kinds of restrictions on your use and dissemination of them. Generally what you get are just small segments, so to create larger images like the one I used you have to go into Paint and then copy and paste to assemble them. (You want to use the images labeled "seamless" for this purpose -- they have been already manipulated so that people can select, copy, and paste, then match them up side to side and end to end, and they match up in color tone, shade, etc. so you don't see the borders between segments.) Once you've done that you also need to resize the images to properly scale them -- I just do that in the Paint program that's bundled with MS basic Windows. You also then have to make sure that Paint prints them out in the same scale (instead of, say, shrinking it to fit a single sheet of paper). Image below is just thumbnail size, but as I mentioned earlier, I got the planks to scale to about 10 inches wide in these printouts, and a search leads me to think that for interior wall planks that is a plausibly accurate size.

woodwall-printout.jpg

I'll post some more pix as I continue this process... Perhaps later this evening, if I have the time to work on it. Unlike the work I've been doing so far, I'll have to spray the adhesive down in the basement on my work bench with lots of extra newspapers spread around I think. If it doesn't happen tonight, don't look for another update until the end of the week -- meetings tomorrow night and Wednesday.
 
Say, Greg -- when you use the spray adhesive, do you apply it to the paper, or to the object you are sticking the paper to? I'm thinking I should apply it to the paper.
 
Erik:
I apply the spray adhesive to the object that I'm mounting the paper on. In the case of a bill board sign, I use styrene and apply the sign and then trim
the styrene to fit the sign. This method reduces the chance of the sign not being perfectly centered on the styrene backing since I'll trim the styrene to fit the sign after the adhesive has a few minutes to cure.

Most spray adhesives provide one chance to mount the paper since the adhesive is so tacky and has firm holding power.

My photographic backgrounds are mounted on a foam board backing using 3-M adhesive.

Greg
 



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