4mm Terry's Card Buildings Thread

[Terry]

*buys in large supply of pop corn*

There was a card kit of Hampton Court Palace issued as part of a series of miniature card kits called Micromodels. I have a collection of these, including Hampton Court. I'm minded to do a thread over the Christmas period which might prove interesting, especially for older members who were around in the 1950's and 1960's.

Terry

 

[oldravendale]

I still have some of those unbuilt, Terry, but all are (not surprisingly) railway items. They were great fun to make and produced recognisable (ie for the time pretty good) miniature models. I'll be interested to see a build.

Brian

 

[Osgood]

*buys in large supply of pop corn*

 

[Terry]

I still have some of those unbuilt, Terry, but all are (not surprisingly) railway items. They were great fun to make and produced recognisable (ie for the time pretty good) miniature models. I'll be interested to see a build.

Brian

Hello Brian. I have most of the entire series covering architecture, shipping, railways, and other subjects. I have built scans of some models which I'll include in the forthcoming thread.

Terry

 

[Terry]

A Windmill
This tower mill is based on the surviving example at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. I emphasise that it is 'based on', not a slavish copy. For a start, the real mill is built of stone which appears to have been rendered at some stage in its long life. Following two renovations, the mill currently exhibits rendering on exactly half of the building. Holiday postcards in my possession are all taken from the rendered front of the mill and show the building in an attractive pinkish buff colour. I decided to model the building as if the whole of the base was rendered. Photos of the mill can be found on Google by searching for 'Bembridge windmill'.

I decided to make the mill from card, as much as is possible, so started with a sheet of white 2mm mount board. I found an old picture on Google which has a human figure in front of the mill. I assumed that the figure was about 5 feet 6 inches tall and used this to calculate the approximate dimensions of the building. The base is conical in shape and worked out at about 31 feet high and 26 feet diameter at the bottom, narrowing to 16 feet 6 inches at the top

How to make a cone? I decided to cut out two circles, one for the bottom of the cone and another for the top. These would be joined with central stiffeners. The parts were drawn on the 2mm mount board and cut out..




The stiffeners were fitted to the base..




..and the top was fitted..




A strip of thin card was glued on the edge of one of the stiffeners as shown below. This will be at the rear of the model and will provide a firm base for the two ends of the outer skin to be glued together..




Thin card would obviously be needed to form the outer skin of the building - card which could be rolled without creasing, but which is strong. Cue the large size empty cornflake packet. Clearly, if you are making a cone, you will need to draw two curved lines running parallel to each other, one of which will have a smaller radius than the other. I'm sure there is some mathematical formula which will give us all of the answers, but I took CSE Maths twice and got a grade five, twice! That's just above a fail. You get a grade five for spelling your name correctly at the top of the exam paper! So, I adopted the practical approach. I made a pencil mark on both the base and the top, making sure they were in line with each other. I placed the model onto the card with the pencil marks touching the card. I then slowly rolled the model along the card whilst pushing a pencil against the base where it touched the card. When the pencil mark did a complete revolution, I stopped. I repeated the process with the other end and, when finished, joined up the ends of the lines..




Cut it out and this is the result..




I decided to draw and cut out the windows and door at this stage, as it's obviously easier to do this whilst the outer skin is flat..




Work was required on the reverse side of the outer skin to give the impression of the thickness of the walls. Four small strips of card were glued around each aperture and three strips of card around the door..




Obviously the windows would have to be glazed before the outer skin is glued in place because, with both a top and bottom to the model, there will be no way to access the inside afterwards. But before glazing is done the model requires painting. So, it was off to the shed to search for paint of a suitable colour. I came across a pot of Revell flesh colour, a kind of pinkish buff, and ideal for the job at hand. I brush painted the model and when dry, gave it a dust over with some weathering powders..




A small piece of clear plastic (recycled packaging) was stuck over the rear of each window aperture using 'Cosmic Shimmer', which is an acrylic glue..




Next, one end of the outer skin was glued to the strip of card previously put in place for the purpose..




The outer skin was gradually glued into place and the remaining end glued in place to abut the other end. A small segment was cut out of the base just behind the door aperture to allow the door to be slightly recessed when fitted..



Terry

 

[Terry]

Window frames were cut from thin card, coloured with a felt-tip pen and stuck in place on the surface of the glazing.



The door was cut from a rectangle of mount board and the frame and planking scribed thereon. A quick wash over with a couple of felt-tip pens and a handle of bent wire completed the job..




The roof of the windmill is a rather complicated shape. Basically, I estimated the dimensions and formed it from a number of different shaped parts from mount board. Trial and error rules o.k. The pictures should give the idea of how it was accomplished..


















The roof placed in position for a trial fit..



Terry

 

[Terry]

I painted paint the whole roof with shellac varnish (french polish) to harden and protect the rather soft mount board.
The next stage in this epic was to cover the roof with thin card to represent wood cladding. I used card of approximately postcard thickness for this long winded job..




Fifteen minutes down the shed and the roof was brush painted. I used Revell acrylic, Brown Leather for the wood cladding and Revell acrylic Granite Grey for the corners. Here it is placed in position but not fixed, as the windows have to be attached to the inside behind the apertures.




Clear plastic was stuck behind the two window apertures on the roof. I decided to make the window frames in one piece as shown earlier in this thread. I will re-iterate it here in more detail. The dimensions of the apertures were taken and transferred to thin card. Another line was drawn approx. 1mm inside of the first line..




Prick the inside corners with a scriber..




Carefully cut out the inner rectangle, followed by the outer rectangle..




Colour with a felt-tip pen and try it for size against the window aperture. Trim if necessary, dab some glue on the reverse side and gently push into position on the outside of the window glass..



The hole has been made to facilitate the fitting of the sails. All will be explained in due course.

Terry

 

[michael mott]

Card is such a versatile material, I am enjoying your thread Terry.

Michael

 

[Terry]

Let's get to grip with the sails. Having trawled the local £1 Emporium for anything which could be pushed into use to represent the 'square mesh' look of the sails, and drawing a blank, I decided to build them from scratch. Styrene strip was the obvious contender here so out came my hoard of Evergreen products. Firstly, a drawing was required, drawn to the exact size of one of the required sails..




This drawing has to be used four times because we require four sails. Therefore, in order to protect it, I taped some clear plastic over it. I used clear plastic retrieved from some packaging. In fact I am always looking to retrieve flat clear plastic packaging, as it is ideal for windows of model buildings.




I applied a couple of strips of double-sided tape on the clear plastic to cover the drawing. Four pieces of 40x40 thou strip were pushed into place on the tape, to cover the four longitudinal lines of the drawing underneath..




Next, transverse strips of 40x20 thou strip were positioned over the pencil lines and attached to the longitudinals with solvent..




It was allowed to dry and I gently slid a metal rule under one end to gently prise the sail away from the double-sided tape. I trimmed the overhanging ends and it looked like this..




The process now had to be repeated three more times. In reality, each sail took about ten minutes from start to finish. Each sail had a spine built up from thicker pieces of styrene strip..




A central boss was fabricated, as shown above, and the four sails were attached..




The sails now went off to the paint shop to get rid of the plastic look.

Terry

 

[Terry]

Card is such a versatile material, I am enjoying your thread Terry.

Michael

Thank you Michael. As you can see I reverted to using plastic for the sails. I suppose wood would have been a more 'friendlier' option, but as I have a fair quantity of plastic strip in store, I wasn't going to make life hard for myself!

Terry

 

[Terry]

I had originally decided to fix the sails in place so that they did not move. However, you know full well that everybody will give them a poke to see if they move, risking damage in the process. So, how to make the sails rotate? Fixing the sails to a spindle and letting the spindle rotate inside a tube seemed a good idea. A small piece of plastic tube was cut and glued into a hole at the front of the roof..




Holes were drilled into two small pieces of 100x100 thou Evergreen strip and a short length of plastic rod was glued into one hole. This rod is quite flexible and I was unable to break it by bending. Ideal for our purpose. The other piece of 100x100 thou strip was trimmed to fit behind the roof to be secured to the end of the spindle..





The 100x100 thou in the photo above looked a bit large, so I reduced it slightly with a file. Off to the paint shop again.

Terry

 

[Terry]

The roof, including attached sails, was glued to the main body of the building. The centre of the sails was painted with grey acrylic. Attention was now turned to the wheel at the rear of the roof. Connected to gearing, this wheel was used to turn the roof, and thereby the sails, to face them into the wind. I took a spoked plastic wagon wheel from an old Airfix wagon kit and mounted same by the axle in the chuck of a mini drill, using it as a lathe. It didn't take long to remove the flange by applying a file to the turning wheel. Next the wheel was thinned using the same process. Here's a 'before and after' picture..




Strictly speaking, the wheel is not quite large enough, but it gives the right impression, so I can live with it. The wheel was surrounded by a short wooden frame which was made from some Evergreen strip..




The wheel was glued to the centre of the frame..




The frame was given a coat of brown paint and the whole unit was pushed into a hole at the back of the roof..



Strictly speaking there should be a chain around the wheel, hanging down towards the base of the windmill. Pulling this chain would turn the sails into the wind. This could be represented by thick thread soaked in glue to stiffen it. Of course, this is one of those jobs which I haven't got around to doing yet!

It took a couple of minutes to make the weather vane and a minute to paint it. The pictures explain this simple task..






And basically, that's the job done. Some pictures of the completed model..




Thanks for following this build.

Terry

 

[Terry]

I haven't added anything to this thread for a while. However, I am contemplating a new micro-layout where all buildings will be scratchbuilt, which should be happening hopefully not too far into the New Year. In the meantime, if you haven't read my card buildings thread, please go to the first page, get a mug of something steaming, sit back and enjoy!

Terry

 

[Joe's Garage]

Well Terry I have done just that, a mug of coffee and a fantastic read, this is an interesting thread
I have always thought of card as a lovely medium and at the end of the day if you make a mistake it is not that drastic.
I will keep reading this post.
Thank you
Julian