Many thanks again for those kind words from Tony, Martyn, Mark, Kev and Christian!
I first bought some clear resin when I was building the paper Sopwith Pup, intending to try and cast the instrument panel in clear and sticking the dials on the back of it. Unfortunately as I mentioned above, the earlier clear resin wouldn't loose its tackiness on the open part of the mould so I gave up on that - this one however would be perfect for that as well! And Kev, talk about great minds etc etc - when I read your comment about the tomatoes I suddenly realised I'd forgotten to say just that in the diary! If I could get some red micro (or is that ultra micro) spheres to add in the resin when the foliage is pushed in it would look brilliant! (Maybe pumpkins instead?)And Christian, after 1/35 I thought going back to 1/72 was small - 1/700 is really pushing it on my old eyes!

For the second house, alongside the greenhouse, I thought I’d try something a little more ‘traditional’! As you can see in Photos 1 and 2, (both taken in the Sword Beach landing zone) there appear to be quite a number of the old timber frame buildings which over here in the UK tend to date from the Tudor / Elizabethan period. (Note the two Churchill tanks in the background, one’s an AVRE but can’t tell with the other. There’s a Sherman on the extreme left and it looks like we were using the American M4 Half tracks too – unless it’s a bunch of Yanks who got lost!) Its possible that the Normandy buildings also date from this era or possibly the style continued much longer over there. Anyhow, I decided to take the resin cast I made from the second example of the Skywave European Buildings set and add a set of first floor wooden framing with top to bottom corner posts as shown in Photos 3 – 5. The framing was constructed from Plastruct 0.5 x 0.8mm styrene strip (90721). This came in a pack of ten of which I only had one and three quarters strips left! Fortunately, all of the framing shown here came from a single strip so now I’ve only got three quarters of one left! (Must get some more from Antics!)
I fiddled around with the base design on this house. Initially I glued a thin piece of Plasticard to the bottom, slightly in from the edge of the walls to produce a raised slab of resin, which I then had to cut off with the razor saw. Unfortunately this kept producing lop sided bases after the necessary sanding down process so I later adapted that as you’ll see in Photo 7. Before that however, in Photo 6 the corner frames are being trimmed back, this is to allow the final casting to sit in its ‘socket’ formed by the pathway styrene strips. The house is sitting on its thin sheet base with a scrap piece of the same plastic in the foreground to create a level footing. Another section of the scribed Plasticard pavement is then pushed up against the house and the sharp knife blade shown here is slid over the pavement to neatly slice off the bottom of the frame at the correct height. Photo 7 shows that extended base with a thicker section of Plasticard glued to the bottom of the thin plate. When cast, the thin gap between the bottom of the house and the new thicker plate provides the guide to razor saw the bottom off flat!
The next step was to form the silicone mould to cast the pristine, undamaged building and then, using that resin cast, to get to work with the rotary tool and add some damage. I was deliberately more restrained with the shell damage on this one. You might remember the garden has a single crater on the opposite side from the greenhouse (as an excuse why said greenhouse wasn’t blown to pieces!) so the main damage to the house is on the end wall by that crater. Photos 8 and 9 illustrate the shell damage inflicted, and also show the additional base section waiting to be sawn off. I ‘blew in’ the front doors on this one for added effect! Finally, in Photos 10 and 11 the base has been trimmed to size and the house is sitting in its garden along with a standard resin copy of the greenhouse waiting to try some shattered glass grinding in the future. That just leaves the last building to work on now – the largest of the Skywave set, which is the big tenement block which I’ll be trying to convert into a seafront hotel. More on that one next!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Beautiful work Robin, exceptional standards as usual...

Regards

Alan

Grateful thanks again to Tony, Alan and Kev!
Best of luck with your first trials Tony! One word of caution, see if there's an expiry date or date of manufacture on your kit. If it's all sealed up you should be fine but I've discovered that the resins have a 'shelf life' of about twelve months once opened, they will still produce good castings after that time but any flat surface exposed to the air (like the bases of my buildings) can cure 'lumpy' instead of nice and flat if the resin is getting old!
So this is the ‘Biggie’! I've split this one into two posts as it was getting a bit extended! (there's a lot of explanations going into this, the largest of the buildings!)Photo 1 shows the completed original building from the Skywave European Buildings Set. This one is a little more complicated than the smaller houses in so much as the skylights or Dormer windows are separate pieces, which have to be glued into the roof rather than moulded ‘in situ’ as on the smaller models.A few days ago I was watching an episode of the ‘Abandoned Engineering’ series which featured a large ‘mansion’ complex somewhere outside of Berlin which had been a Nazi institution of some kind before the Soviets took it over to station their HQ staff and families during the cold war period. During a couple of aerial shots of the complex, in the background was a housing estate composed of tenement blocks which were the spitting image of this model – so that’s where they got the design from! Anyhow, I duly made a silicone mould from the completed model and Photo 2 shows the mould being filled with resin (this is an earlier shot when I was using the mould as a receptacle for excess resin whilst casting other items). When the mould was finally filled I was able to remove the finished basic casting as seen in Photo 3. Actually, by the time I was ready to carry on with this final building I had two castings as you can tell from Photo 4. This shows the first of the changes to convert the tenement block into a swanky hotel. It had occurred to me that for a lot of separate rooms, a pair of simple chimneys was probably not sufficient! So using the moulded chimneys as a guide for the razor saw I carefully sawed down into the roof each side of them and then pared away the resin by craft knife, finishing off with a file to create the platform shown on the right foreground. Then, using the same embossed Plasticard I’d employed for the road surface, I constructed a simple box to form the chimney breast as seen on the left. Actually, it wasn’t that simple – I had to carefully chamfer the corners of each tiny piece to fit them together without losing the brickwork effect! I then glued a thin strip of Plasticard sheet over the top to create the concrete plinth thingy before then taking five short lengths of Plastruct 1.5mm round rod (90858) and cementing them together with liquid Poly on a flat surface. Once they were set I sliced off two sections and sanded one edge flat on each before gluing the sets on to the plinths to form the chimney pots. When they were firmly glued in position I then sanded the top surface flat as well as shown in Photo 5. I did toy with the idea of a set of chimneys on each end of the roof as well but decided to make do with just the ten pots in the end.
I decided beforehand that a posh beach front hotel would have to have a balcony for the top (first class) rooms and so I penciled in a line just above the first story windows. I then spent quite some time wondering how to achieve a nice neat groove into the wall to accept a plasticard strip for the balcony (my free-hand sawing technique doesn’t always ‘run true’)! By sheer coincidence I discovered a length of brass box section in my metal strip collection, which was exactly the same width as the pencil line so I was able to butt the brass up under the roof and use it as a saw guide to put in the initial groove as shown in Photo 6. The balcony was going to be formed from a strip of Plastruct 0.8 x 2.5mm styrene, which meant that the first groove would need to be widened. Before I forget, I liked the thin groove so much I continued it right around the whole building, whether the groove would remain as a simple ‘demarcation’ line or would be embellished later I couldn’t decide right then.
In the second part of the Hotel design, you’ll see how the groove got widened and the extra careful moulding and casting techniques to get a good clean resin copy (all the better to turn into a shell shocked ruin!)

Back soon with part 2!

Robin.

Many thanks again to Kev and Alan!
Spot on there Kev! Yes I was intending to add the ship's railings to give a nice '3D' effect to the upper wall. With the damage to the left side of the balcony I can now have some fun twisting the railings into scrap iron down there!
Health and Safety? (Raspberry noise)The hotel was probably commandeered by high ranking Nazi officers anyway, the French Resistance had already removed the nuts and bolts from the stanchions!

Robin

Amazing work Robin regards Phil

Many thanks again to Christian, Phil and Mark!
Just a quick update tonight and an apology for the delay in posting! My time has been occupied for the past few weeks in rebuilding part of the conservatory I helped Dad build about thirty five years ago, all I can say is that building a large hotel in 1/700 scale is a lot easier than taking out full height double glazed windows and building a thermal block wall in 1:1 scale! (Actually one window was taken out, the second fell out whilst I was sweeping up the dry rot under it) My back, arms and hands are throbbing! I’m further on than the last photo though and I’m almost at the point now where I can order the replacement Upvc windows which will take two to three weeks to come through – more time for modelling during the wait! Had to get it done though, uninvited furry guests of the larger variety peering in through the glass kitchen door came as a bit of a surprise. (I thought they looked really cute but Mum said to stop leaving them little bowls of food and water so poor Roderick has had to return to the wild!)
Carrying on from the shell damaged hotel in the last instalment, Photo 13 shows the area on the base where the hotel will fit. I used the earlier casting of the undamaged building to provide a template for the pathways to fit around and in this shot the area has just been masked off to protect the embossed plasticard from the modelling paste which will form the ground work as in the previous houses. This has been applied in Photo 14, a simple lawn area with a trio of shell craters positioned near the most damaged areas on the hotel. I will also be adding some small ornamental trees later but these will be made from lichen and Woodland Scenics turf material. Note the damaged sea wall and crater just outside the hotel gate, this was then given the debris treatment as shown in Photo 15, individual blocks were cut off the embossed plasticard as before and glued down with liquid poly (mostly one at a time) to form the line of debris formed by the low angle shell hit. When I make the hotel balcony rails I’ll also make a couple of ‘wrought iron’ gates for the street entrances, one intact and the one for this gateway ‘knocked about a bit’
The same block treatment was then given to the larger hole in the wall, down by the shops and shown in Photo 16. This one is actually the result of a Churchill AVRE blowing a dirty great breech in the wall and will feature another Churchill variant – the bridging tank or “Armoured Ramp Carrier” allowing another tank to climb up through the gap. When the beach is fixed to the road section, I’ll be adding more debris to this part on the seaward side.
Photo 17 shows the dry fit of the road section to a sheet of thick plasticard, I think its 2.5mm? This is to allow the wall and beach sections to be fixed together and also to take out the slight warping which has occurred in the beach part (possibly unequal drying of the modelling paste which was on a thin section of plasticard to allow a thin edge at the waterline). In order that this base would itself remain flat, I used a series of clamps as seen in Photo 18 to hold the road section in place with a metal ruler gripped underneath as a straight edge. Four clamps were employed, one in each of the building base locations with old style polystyrene cement from a tube used to glue the road section to the thick sheet. Finally, Photos 19 and 20 illustrate the beach section joining on to the sea wall. Again multiple clamps were used to flatten the beach out and hold it in place. Photo 20 shows the beginning of the paste application to fill in the small gap between the beach and wall. Once this is completed along the length of the wall, I’ll have to add more paste to the two ramp ways to level them off onto the road surface and then begin the design and construction of a pair of ‘Battered Bunkers’, one covering each ramp, so they’ll be coming in the next instalment!
Until then, Happy Modelling and house building to you All!

Robin.

Many thanks for those kind thoughts Mark!
Time for another apology! As I said in the last post, the new windows for the conservatory would take about two weeks to come through which would give me some time to catch up. In the following fortnight I managed to do – absolutely nothing! The reason is shown in the first photo – this is (was) our 66 year old main fuse box, installed when the house was built. Soon after the last installment the mains circuit fuse didn’t just blow, it blew up the whole fuse cartridge! For twenty four hours we had no mains power at all, fortunately we still had lights thank goodness. The next day the emergency electrician arrived from the insurance company and discovered we had a dead short somewhere in the house wiring. He fitted up a pair of emergency sockets so we could run the fridges and freezers and two TVs via wander leads, but still no power to the plugs including everything up in the attic workroom . Talk about the dark ages! Anyhow, ten days later he fitted a brand new modern consumer unit so we now have the power restored, apart from the garage, which is now cut off as that’s where the short circuit apparently is. No sooner was the workroom back in working condition than the windows arrived so it was back to them again. As you can see in the second picture, the windows are now in and sealed so I’m finally modelling again!
The next little item I needed to construct is another of Percy Hobart’s Funnies – the Churchill Armoured Ramp (also known as the Ark). Unlike the Bridge Builder or Layer which unloads a bridge for other tanks and itself to cross over, with the Armoured Ramp the Churchill itself IS the bridge! There is a photo on the Wikipedia entry for the Churchill showing the crossing of a river gulley in Italy, one Ramp was driven into the gully and a second one then piggy backed on top of it to form the bridge! Photos 1 and 2 illustrate the two types – a Biggie and a smaller. The one I’m making is the smaller example used as in the photo to provide a ramp up sea walls and the like. The bigger one was used to fill large obstacles like dry ditches or shallow canals etc instead. The main components are shown in Photo 3, one of the resin Churchills with the turret removed, a couple of cast ramps from the LSI ships and a strip of thin plasticard to make the side ramp supports. Photo 3 shows the first successful casting from the mould, not shown are the other five attempts before it! Despite it being the simplest of all the ‘conversions’ to make, it’s very difficult to avoid getting air bubbles at the ends of the ramp sections! I think I should have cast the hull and ramps separately instead. Photo 4 shows the Ramp positioned in the breech created by the AVRE, this shot was taken right after the modelling paste was applied and scattered with cut down blocks which is why it looks like melting marshmallow! Eventually the Ramp will have the folding ends added with another tank climbing up and over.
Before getting to the German bunkers, which will be the next addition, I’ve been re-thinking the rubber moulds for the shell damaged buildings. As you’ve seen, I start off with a cast ‘pristine’ model and then grind and drill out the damaged areas before re-moulding that version. The problem is, when pouring in the liquid rubber on the second example, the undercuts in the casting tend to trap air bubbles which then produce the resin ‘blobs’ seen in Photo 5. I then have to re-drill the damage areas out again to produce more than one casting. With the larger hotel building I decided to try a new approach. I bought a pack of tiny brushes designed for applying whatever it is that women apply to their eyelashes (about 100 for a couple of pounds!) I then used one to brush and plug all the holes and other damaged areas on the prototype casting with the liquid rubber and let them dry before temporarily gluing the hotel down for a second mould making as illustrated in Photo 6. The improved rubber mould now gives a perfect casting as shown in Photo 7, the original is at the back, the copy at the front, (the slight banding discolouration is due to me casting it in stages using leftover resin from other items and not doing it all in one go). I’m now in the process of doing this to all the other buildings to create one long mould with them all in a line.
Finally, in Photo 8 we have the ‘sort of’ bunker that I’ll be trying to construct next (minus the tourist wooden gantry behind of course). I’ve looked at a few different examples and mine will essentially be similar to this – but a bit more battered about I think! I've just finished them tonight and fixed them to the base - the full story in the next installment!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Nice work Robin.
Glad to see you back from the dark ages.

Mark

Many thanks again to Tony, Mark and Kev! You're dead right about the winter fast approaching Tony, ironically, whilst the electric was out we had to delay the annual service of the gas boiler for a few weeks, this was ironic because the boiler is only three years old, the old one having conked out on its annual service at exactly the same time of the year! The worst part of this 'emergency' was the first two days with no computer, no TV and although I had loads of stuff to read, with no plugs we had no reading lights either! Bored stiff had a whole new meaning! Anyhow, its good to be back!
When it came to building the master for the pair of German bunkers I was in two minds – should I make a hollow ‘box’ of plasticard or use one of the defective house castings, sawing it down to size and ‘carving’ it into shape? When I worked out the size of the article, the hollow box was out the window, even using a thin card it was so small there wouldn’t be much of a hollow left inside, plus of course it was going to be cast in resin anyway at the end. I didn’t like the idea of carving it to shape much either due to the slit that would be needed for the guns. In the end, I settled for using the plasticard, but instead of a box it would be a multi layered ‘flat pack’ as shown in Diagram 1. Composed of three layers initially (four were needed in the end) there was a roof section with the wall above the slit, a bottom section of all the wall below the slit and sandwiched between, a slightly more complicated shape matching the wall and roof for size with the slit cut away on two sides. The actual parts are shown in Photo 2, the larger base piece was just an off cut to give the full height of the bunker which is why it is sticking out after the four parts were liquid poly glued together as in Photo 3. After giving it overnight to set completely, I could then happily sand away, rounding off the corners and roof edges and fairing the walls back until all the layers were smoothed together. The finished master copy is shown in Photo 4, I should have made it a ‘Penny’ shot for an indication of the size – you can just fit three of them on said penny! Following the enhanced preparation for casting without air pockets, I first applied liquid rubber into the gun slits after the bunker was card-glued down temporarily as shown in Photo 5 before building the little Lego wall around it and creating the rubber mould. The first casting is illustrated in Photo 6, all in all, it came out not too bad!
Photo 7 illustrates the evolution of the bunkers from ‘brand new’ to ‘knocked about a bit’! The one on the left was an ‘almost’, although it has an air pocket just visible under the front it could still be used on a suitable foundation whilst the two on the right have been routered and drilled with a diamond dust pointed rotary bit to create the shell strikes from both tanks and naval guns. Photo 8 shows the position for one of the bunkers, I think this is the one near the shops. I simply placed the bunker in position and pencilled around the base to mark the beach. Note the new cut out in the sea wall for the door in the back of the bunker. Many of the German strongpoints were built on the beaches by dumping a huge pile of rocks and boulders onto the sand and then pouring ready mixed concrete on top. Once that was set, the labourers (or slaves as we would call them) constructed a wooden former lined with steel bars and poured in more concrete to form the bunker. This is the kind of effect I was trying for. To create the rocks I needed something smaller than my Woodland Scenics rubble but bigger than my beach sand, and so in Photo 9 we have the perfect solution – about ten pence worth from a £1 bag of budgie grit from the local pet shop! I then painted the area with Rocket Card Glue (still left over from the card Sopwith Pup build, though nearly gone now) and sprinkled the grit over the tacky glue to form the base as seen in Photo 10. When that was dry I epoxy glued the bunkers in position, gently prodding them now and again to ensure they set upright and level. Then came the harder part, building up the boulder foundation bit by bit, using a small paintbrush to apply card glue to the base and then picking up individual grains of grit on the sticky brush and placing them into position. This was done over three or four sessions, letting the previous layer dry before building up the next (otherwise they tend to ‘avalanche’!) The finished effect is shown in Photo 11. At this point I realised the rear door wasn’t at ground level as intended but about four scale feet up in the air, obviously due to some overenthusiastic rockery building!
In the next installment, adding a flight of stairs ‘out the back’ and preparing to turn the whole beach and road into a big rubber mould!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.