Friday, March 6, 2020

"Agricultural Implement & Paint Dealer" - Part 7 - Fascia and Freize Boards

At first New England buildings, especially those built in the 19th century, may appear very simple. They're not simple as much as they're understated, but when you study them close enough there's plenty of small details. 
The Implement dealer building is certainly one of those plain or understated buildings, but the wild assortment of additions and changes to the prototype structure over the years produced an interesting building. "Simple shapes combined into a complex whole" may be one way to describe this thing. 
Last night I tackled one thing I don't really love about  building structures, the fascia trim and freize boards. The one good thing about getting to this stage is that it means the end of this endless project, while not here, is certainly close!
I started with the fascia trim. For most buildings this isn't a single piece of lumber, it's actually comprised of several pieces of descending widths. Studying prototype photos over the life of the building showed at least three different arrangements of the fascia trim, so I opted to go with what I thought looked good on the model. (You may remember from one of the initial posts on this project, I don't actually have photos from my modeled era, only decades before, and decades after - so some logical guesswork is called for!).  In the case of this building I went with a wide board on the bottom, and two additional boards on top. The trickiest part of this step is getting the correct angles on both ends of the fascia trim. I started by laying an over-length piece of styrene onto the side wall being sure to get the styrene to line up with the roof on its length and one end. 


Next, I used a square to locate the angle on the top of the board. NOTE: In this case I marked the line with a pencil so it would show up in the photo - in truth the pencil line is too thick to create a mark accurate enough to make the cut. I usually mark this angle by scribing it lightly with the tip of an X-Acto blade.     






To cut the angle on the bottom of the board I repeated the process, making sure the board was seated correctly in the peak of the roof. In this case, the trim boards end inset from the corner posts, so I was able to use them as a guide. 
 I repeated this process for each of the three pieces on the front and rear of the "paint store" section and on the gable side of the "L extension by the garage doors. I cemented the trim in place using MEK applied with a small brush. 
Once the fascia was completed I added the freize boards to the underside of the roof overhang on the side and rear walls of the building. 
Then I added the trim to top of the "false front" section of the structure on the front wall (lead photo above). 
After all that was done, I gave the model another light coat of primer gray, focusing on the roof and trim. 


3 comments:

Matthieu Lachance said...

Can't believe nobody comments on that structure... What a shame. As an architect, I really like the care you put into real life details such as fascia, soffite, trims and other tidbits. Building them as they are done in real life really boost the appearance and provides a lot of satisfaction in the end. Sometimes, I even go far enough to had V-grooved styrene under the soffites to make them even more realistic, though I admit it's a little bit time consuming!

CVSNE said...

Matthieu,
Thanks for the kind words- high praise from an architect. Really made my day!

I actually considered adding some additional detail to the underside of the soffits and the like, but since you can't really see them in place on the layout I opted out. Perhaps I should rethink that decision?

Marty

Matthieu Lachance said...

Marty, for soffits, if the models are in the foreground and the focus of a particular scene, it may indeed be a good idea. For structures that are less in the spotlight, it isn't that much concerning. However, I recall many less fancy building only have rough roof decking with a fascia. Using a darker color to represent that unpainted detail could improve greatly a model without requiring too much effort. But honestly, given soffits can be quickly applied using for V-groove clapboard styrene sheet, it's not that much effort.