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Kitbashing a bakery for Richmond Harbor


in taking a chance of it getting glued to the model!)


Since the storefront has such large windows, I added some basic interior detailing on each side of the doorway to fill up the space. I also added green shades on the inside of the windows, as I didn’t feel up to trying to make roll- up awnings. (I’m still looking for a store near where I live that still uses the old-fashioned crank-out awnings to get an idea of how they were made. When I was growing up nearly every store in town had them, but now that I need some info, do you think I can find any?) I made two counters with a low partition across the back, one for each side, and put some cakes in the right- hand window. The left window received some bags of flour and a few advertise- ments.


This type of building was common in small towns in many areas of the country around the turn of the last century. They brought increased commercial activity to a town as it devel- oped, and provided living accommodations for the store owner’s family at the same time.


sent roll roofing. Prototypically, a flat roof like this would normally be layers of felt paper set in hot tar, then covered with gravel. However, as the roof of this model will probably be quite visi- ble on the layout, I opted for the roll roofing as being visually more interest- ing. The insides of the store walls where they extend above the roof sur- face were painted flat black, and a flashing strip was added across the side walls of the house where they met the roof. This strip covered the lowest two visible clapboards. The model was installed on a


scenicked base of .060″ styrene sheet cut to the size of the finished lot. I de- cided that I wanted a slate slab side- walk, as these were very common on Staten Island years ago. I used .020″ thick plain sheet for the slate, as this scales out to about 3¹₂″ thick. Strips were cut 4′-0″ wide, then scored and snapped off into three-foot pieces to make the stones. After cleaning up the edges a bit and shaving a few corners on some of the slabs to represent the delaminating common to slate, I stuck them to a piece of cardboard and paint- ed them with dark grey acrylic paint. Afterwards, I went over them with sev- eral A.I.M. Products weathering pow- ders to give the slabs a suitably “grub- by” appearance. After an overspray of Testors Dullcote the slate was ready to be installed. Before doing the side- walk in front of the store I made some larger slabs, so that area looks a bit different. I also cut some narrow strips for slate curbstones. This was a lot of work, but I think I got the feel-


56


ing I wanted by the time I was done. I used sifted dirt from my garden as


the basic ground cover on the areas of the base not covered by either sidewalk slabs or the structure itself. Most of this received a coating of grass, some areas got more weeds than grass, and some remained as just plain dirt. I have read about modelers sterilizing garden soil before using it on their lay- out, but I have been using it without doing that since the mid-seventies and have never had any problem with molds or mildew. Perhaps the glue se- curing it to the scenery has something to do with it. To make sure that none of the white


plastic showed I marked the outline of the building on the base and painted a strip along it about a half an inch wide with flat black. Just a bit of the black was painted under the walls. When the paint dried, the building was placed back on the base and accurately traced onto it. Undiluted white glue was painted onto the base a small area at a time being careful to maintain a sharp edge along the penciled line, then fine soil was sifted onto it. The excess was removed, then I went on to do the next sections one at a time. The soil was al- lowed to dry overnight and any stray soil cleaned up. The result was that the building appeared to be set into the ground.


I applied blue painters tape to the cellar area, right up to the lines, and also masked off the pavement, then ap- plied “grass” using the usual diluted white glue method. The tape was re- moved before the glue dried (no sense


Turning to weathering the roofs, the gabled roofs of the house were streaked from the ridges downwards towards the eaves using A.I.M.


weathering


powders. The flat roof was smudged up a bit the same way, but in no discern- able pattern. I weathered the side walls of the house and store only very lightly, as my grandfather was a very prosperous baker! And now, as I’m sure most of you think I have forgotten, came the time to attach the storefront to the rest of the model. I used small dabs of the Locktite Stick-n-Seal adhesive, work- ing from the inside. (Note: check that you do not have any 12″ to the foot fin- gerprints on the inside of the glass be- fore you do a step such as this!) With the storefront in place and the roof re- moved, the window displays were slid inside and secured with a few more dabs of Locktite. The signs were added next, one free standing on the projecting roof over the storefront and two wall signs, one on each side. I used Word Art® crosoft Word®


(part of Mi- ) to make the signs. After


printing out the signs to the desired sizes I attached them to a sheet of .010″ sheet styrene using double sided tape. I then cut them out, painted the ex- posed edges flat black, and installed them on the bakery. The large one on the front had some small braces placed behind it for support to complete the model. With all the work directly related to


the structure completed, I ran a small ribbon of Locktite along the bottom edge of the walls and carefully placed the building into the slight recess cre- ated by the ground cover, leaving it un- til the glue dried. The last things I added were some shrubs, flowering plants, a few weed clumps, and a climb- ing red rose on a trellis at the front porch.


SEPTEMBER 2013


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