Plastic structure kitbash

[cfesmire]

If I might be so bold as to christen this new section with something I've been working on for some time. These are two different injected molded structures, a stone powerhouse that I cut in half and a flat roofed store that I am turning into a mill. I put my dioramas on a sealed plywood base and add grade elevations with styrofoam board covered in plaster. Military diorama modelers paint their bases a dark color before adding and groundcover such as gravel or grass and I always thought that although the subject matter isn't my cup of tea, the effect is good.
This project is nearly complete on the back side but the front has a long way to go.



With the water wheel installed and laser cut wood cornice.

Put a brass standing seam roof on the stone house and brick retaining wall from Evergreen styrene. .

And weathered the roof and began groundcover.

And after building the sluce and small dock from wood and finishing the foliage and water, this is the back of the structure.

[jackfitz1944]

Chester, If you look at photos of my layout (Jack's workbench) a lot of the structures are "kitbashed". Your mill looks great! I've always liked the old wooden mills with the water wheels. As a matter of fact I have a spot on my layout (the new one) that I was going to model a mill like yours. Jack

[kitbashcasting]

Looks fantastic! I can't just build the buildings on my layout "out of the box ." I am forever modifying them too. I have at times purchased a kit just to get a part or two from it. Save the rest I might need it some day. Make lots of the details too. I have a nice supply of plastic, wood, paper, metal, tubing, resin making materials, glass, plaster, wire, Plexiglas, plastic shapes in all sizes, and just about everything I could possibly ever use. It's taken years to build up an inventory, It will never be completed. ;D

[cfesmire]

Thanks guys, I've always liked the styrene finishes from Evergreen like the brick work and clapboard siding for bashing and scratch building. Most plastic kits need something anyway but these Railway Design Associates buildings above are pretty nice on their own. I do a lot of scratch building and have found manila cardstock to be excellent since I can draw stuff out on the computer and just run it through the printer. Of course it needs to be braced.
I mentioned that the red building was a flat roofed structure but I built gables and pitched roof from cardstock for this one.




Not braced yet, covered with shingles from GC Laser

[cfesmire]

One end of the mill will have a wooden grain elevator that I started. This will be heavily weathered in a delapidated state.


The kit came with a small loading platform for the front of the building. It was too small so I built a foundation from cut linoleum tiles and then poured a plaster casting for a concrete deck for the platform. It has been weathered here with a chalk and alcohol wash. The URL before the picture will take you to a small tutorial on how I cast these plaster loading platforms.
public.fotki.com/stryper50/187_scale_dioramas/concrete-pad-for-lo/