Thursday, February 2, 2012

Building Berry Machine Co. - 2


Work continues on the Berry Machine Co. complex with the boiler house. Like the penstock this second of the three structures included in the kit has some good news and some not-so-good news. 

I glued to the subwalls to the inside of the clapboard walls as indicated in the directions. After prepainting and glazing the windows I stained the walls with alcohol and India Ink, and set things aside to dry.  Once the walls were dry I drybrushed them with craft paint “Parchment” which is a slightly cream-colored off white. I assembled the walls, added the pre-painted corner posts, and got ready to install the subroof. So far, so good. 
 Then, things started going downhill. 
When I placed the roof with the correct amount of overhang on the front of the building, the other end was far too short. Out of curiosity I compared the roof panel to the drawings of the prototype, expecting the kit sub roof to be short. Guess what? It was too long – by a noticeable amount!  That could only mean the building was also too short.  


I also noticed that the two side walls are not oriented corrected.  Interesting, the photo on the lid of the box shows the boilerhouse walls oriented the same as the prototype drawings I have, which is opposite the photos in the instructions.  And guess which pictures I used??
So now I have a too short building with a too-long roof that doesn’t match the photo on the box or the prototype picture . . . Egads!


I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this. I can live with the walls being oriented incorrectly since I doubt anyone will ever notice once the building is installed on the layout. The roof is another matter.  I certainly need to cut a new roof panel.  I might make the roof from Evergreen corrugated styrene material as I think it will produce a neater roof than the corrugated metal material in the kit. 
Or I might scrap this one and scratchbuild the building from the start. 





2 comments:

George Dutka said...

Marty: You did to much work on this one to scrap...make a new roof...George

CVSNE said...

At this point, that's what I intend to do!