Berry Machine - Main Mill Building

I took advantage of the relatively light work schedule at the office, and the fact that we didn’t travel or have house guests for the holidays to spend some time at the workbench.  First up was the Berry Machine main building. I blogged about issues I’d had with two smaller structures that make up this three-building complex in this post and this one last year. The main mill building had no issues with fit and finish and went together very easily.

The look I was going for with this building was “old, but well-maintained.” I did “lift” some of the clapboards (the technique is easy: Start by cutting the board vertically to define the end of the board. Then gently slice the underside of the clapboard with a sharp X-acto, then use a no. 17 chisel blade to pry the board up. You can see how this looks in some of the photos. 

After I added a lot of 1/8” square bracing to the inside walls, I stained the clapboard with Hunterline “Creosote” stain. I have a number of these Hunterline stains, and I use them for all kinds of applications.

While waiting for the walls to dry I prepped the windows and doors. They were all painted white, and then glazed using Canopy glue to add the “glass” to the windows. I painted three  walls Polly Scale Antique White. The front wall was painted with Barn Red craft paint.

After assembling the basic walls, installing the doors and windows, and adding the sub roof panels, I turned my attention to the foundation. This building will sit alongside the mill stream, meaning more of the foundation will be exposed on one side and along the rear than in the front. The kit includes a lot of small plaster blocks for the foundation. To make installing them easier I added a wall of 3/64” basswood sheet glued to the inside of the bracing and extending the full height of the foundation. Then I used a selection of the Hunterline stains (Medium Brown, Sepia Brown, Blue Gray, and Driftwood) to color the individual stone blocks. This was hardly scientific; my main goal was to make the coloration subtle and somewhat varied by staining each stone with the “base” of one color, and then adding variety by dabbing on the other stains to each stone.

Then it was simply a matter of gluing the individual stones to that bass wood foundation subwall.

Once completed, I started carving the foamboard riverbed and bank to shape to accommodate the Berry Machine building. The partially assembled shell is the Ben Thresher mill building. You can also see the start of the mill falls. 

Next step for Berry?: Corrugated roofing.