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Construction project

8K views 40 replies 14 participants last post by  mike45 
#1 ·
I've always love miniatures of all types, museum dioramas,model railroads and now 1/6th militaria,in the past I have built several homes and multiple smaller buildings even a telephone treating plant in Nevada, but all those big projects have taken their toll so now I'm sticking to 1/6th scale,it's big enough to get details but small enough not to kill me trying to pick up an engine!
Last month I bought a 1/6th Indian motorcycle on ebay,it never showed up,I think the seller got buyers remorse because it didn't go as high as she thought it would, so this weekend I bought another one, paid a lot more then I wanted too but it's on it's way, so I thought I needed a place to park it, I also bought some of those model brick kits,I found if you just have them send the bricks and throw out the mortar you can get them at a much better price,shipping is a killer on those kits, then I went online and found a couple pictures of victorian garages,I looked for European styles but all they wanted to show me was current buildings in that style,the one I used as my pattern is English so I think it should be pretty close.
I spent a couple hours today ripping 1 by 10s down to 1/6th 4X4's,I already had my floor poured,it's a piece of fiber board covered with tile grout,the garage measures 12X9,just big enough to get a 21st Century Jeep into and leave enough room for a work bench, as soon as I recover from today I'll start building windows and doors,they take up a lot of space so I don't have to use as many bricks! Here the roof, I'm not sure how big the roof tiles are in the brick kits so I have to wait before I go any further.
 
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#5 ·
Not to derail your forward progress, but I wanted to mention some possible search word options. The Victorian era is "officially" 1837-1901 and of course refers to Queen Victoria, a distinctly English person, which may be why you are getting mostly English garages. Although the term is used ( abused ? ) in the US to describe some types of architecture, you may get more images of what you want by searching for "1800s garage" or even "carriage house" since many garages were just repurposed for the " horseless carriage" . I looked quickly using those terms and found some great looking buildings that match the shape and construction of your rafters. Hope this helps, and no interference intended if you are already set on your idea.
 
#6 ·
The real world of construction's loss is our hobby's gain. I get pretty excited when I see building done to scale, from the foundation up. As I told a friend once, looking at his large multi-conduit project that was about to be poured, it's a shame how much beautiful work is hidden by walls and floors.
 
#7 ·
ruusscal I hadn't even thought about wiring for lights,but now that you mentioned it it's pretty obvious,I have plenty of grain of wheat bulbs left over from my model railroad days!
Pontiacavan, Thanks for the suggestions,I did look at carriage houses but they were pretty ornate,I'm going for more of a rual looking garage,built just before the war,during the golden years of german economy,I figure during this period people had a little more money for stuff like cars and garages, and in this case an Indian motorcycle!
Thanks for the words of encouragement ! Now I'm going to go crazy tilii the bricks get here!
 
#9 ·
I've been trying to figure out what to use for window glass,plastic just looks so fake, so when I was up at my friends place I asked if they might have some old microscope slide covers,they are real glass and very thin,they measure out to 5 X 7 just perfect for multilane windows!
 
#10 ·
THAT's detail! Not having any old slide glass my self, I use the plastic packaging from large items like when I buy a new circular saw blade. There is usually enough of a large flat area to use for a window and it is much thinner than even 1/16 acrylic. Great score, though !
 
#11 ·
Plastic packaging is what I have used in the past as well, and while it's fine for smaller scales when you get the larger pieces you start to see the irregularities, it's quite wavy,these slide covers are perfectly smooth,so much so that it took m five minutes to find one when I dropped it! Now I have to engineer the widow frames,the outsides aren't bad but making the cross pieces could be a little trying!
 
#12 ·
I use Lexan. Very clear, very flat and inexpensive. Hell, I've even replaced a few window panes in my house with Lexan instead of glass. It takes glaze very well and you can even use white silicone instead, which wears better than glaze.
 
#13 ·
Dadrab, I have used lexan as well in the past,I actually replace what would have been a $400 windshield in a Cushman truckster with it,but I have never seen it thin enough for this kind of work.

A big challenge to my modeling is where I live,my nearest big hobby shops,like hobby lobby even a toys r us is 3 hours away,I have a Jo annes and Michels an hour and half away but they are very limited on their actual hobby stuff,you can find some really neat stuff at them by accident if you spend the time looking, so most of my stuff I end up buying online or a lot of time I make do with what I have, a lot of my scale lumber I cut myself from a pile of wood that has been sitting at an old homestead behind for at least 50 years, so if I need aged wood I have it,if I don't I just rip it off and I have fresh wood.
I have always enjoyed the challenge of building something from scratch rather then just buying it,or kit bashing something I did buy.
 
#14 ·
My first batch of Teifoc bricks showed up today,they are very nice, and since there are so many different brick sizes used over the years these are perfect,as has been pointed out before not too many people are going to take a tape measure to check my brick sizes,if thy look close then they are close enough! The roofing tiles that came with them aren't as encouraging, they are a little small,as far as I can tell,never having seen a European roof tile,they only measure 4 inches wide by 6 inches long in 1/6th scale,they look like slate and if you place the curved so it's hidden they do make a respectable slate looking roof,would have been better if they were double the size,I also have some wood shingles that I might use,we'll see what comes up when I get that far.
 
#15 ·
My second batch of brick showed up friday and I realized that I grossly underestimated the amount of brick required! Between the two set I bought I only ended up with 570 full size bricks,which looks like a lot until you start laying them out,I would need at least another 1000 bricks to build this garage, so I'm shifting gears and going old school European, half-timber construction, which would probably be more prototypical for an older Germany building,I've done some studying on this style before so I already have some reference material copied out,big problem is that I will have to rip a lot more wood,but I have tons of it available so it won't cost anything but time. When I get my first wall layer out I'll post a picture!
 
#16 ·
The rain has finally stopped and my wood dried out enough to rip into 4X4's so yesterday I ripped a bunch up and got my first wall built,this wall will have a man door in it,you can also see how I laid it out on styrofoam, which works really well because I can pin it all down while I'm marking up my next series of boards to cut,each board is cut and notched to fit the board it mates with. I cut my first wall with a full size table saw,which works well but kills my back bending over for so long,so my second set I decided to try to use my little bitty table saw,it's really cute,it actually looks like a 1/6th scale table saw,I bought it for cutting styrene and it works great for that, and once I sharpened the blade it cut the 1/2 square pine just fine,much easier on the back, and I can get out of the wind.
 
#19 ·
All of my walls are framed and attached to one another,and I have half of the roof shingled,and ran out of shingles,I have to worst time estimating materials! I didn't lay them correctly,I only overlapped them about an 1/8 of an inch instead of the half to 3/4 of the shingle like they should be, but I don't expect them to ever have to keep the rain out so it looks good and lets me get a lot more coverage with what I have, it took about 400 shingles as it was,now I have to try to find another 400 that match what I have already used!
 
#26 ·
After looking through google I decided the board should be installed vertically and the joints covered with 2 inch strips, so that is what I did,the boards are scale 1X10s and the joints are covered by scale 1X2's, when it is all done I will probably paint all the sheathing a dark gloss green,the timber in the bottom I will probably paint flat black,from what I have seen online these look like common paint schemes.
Not sure how many people have ever seen one of these little table saws,it uses a four inch blade and is super handy for doing small stuff like this,it will cut 1/2 square pine cross grain very easily,and it will rip 1/4 inch. I mostly use it for ripping sheet styrene. So far I haven't cut any fingers!

 
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