Bits-Building?

Recently JD Lowe over at 30 Squares called attention to the helpful distinction between scratch-building and scrap-building.  This little annex to the Union Ice Co. is what I'd call bits-building.  The bits in question aren't scrap material like tissue box cardboard or soda can aluminum.  Rather, they're the remnants of carrier sheets from the die-cut walls of the Alexander Coaling Tower I built a few years back.  Technically you might call this scratch-building, but I don't feel it is simply because I'm not starting with virgin material.  I'm using bits from my bits box.

The bits are sorted, by the way, (clockwise from upper left) into round styrene, flat & skinny styrene, small flat wood pieces, longer flat and skinny wood and styrene, small skinny wood & styrene, longer than small skinny wood and styrene, metal and wire, and extra dividers.  When the bits box is full, I know it is way past time to utilize these parts somehow. That day had come.  This closeup from the photo of the Ice Factory in Santa Rosa inspired me.

See if you can spot the really big vent hiding behind the Private Property sign on the sunny face of the extension.  I decided the Union Ice building could use an annex along the wall closest to where an operator or viewer might stand.  I chose to make it from wood in order to provide a contrasting texture.  It will be painted blue to match the structure.  As an annex it makes sense to house some sort of additional ventilation for cooling pipes or other mechanical equipment, say, compressors.  Who can say for sure, but it looks plausible and adds interest.

Freezer Door Kitbash

Nobody makes an HO scale freezer door.  Nobody.  None that I could find at least.  This is the sort of part that could have been a unique casting that came with the kit instead of a printed card cutout.  Like I said in the previous post, this is a proto-craftsman kit and many of the parts were still relatively crude.  Later evolutions would produce more fine-scale touches and no doubt a beautiful, wide, six panel freezer door would have been one such part.  

Open this image in a new tab to view it full size for a better look at the detail.  I created this door from Tichy parts; their 5 panel door with frame and the large strap hinges.  Two hinges were used as hinges, and another was cut apart and used as part of the door latch.  Other bits of styrene sprue from the scrap box were used to finish the latch.  Most critically, however, the door is installed on the outside of the frame to give it that bulky look of an insulated door set flush into the frame.

Do an image search for vintage wood freezer door and gaze upon fine craftsmanship.  Many were made from oak and apparently command a great price on the salvage and restoration hardware market.  If I knew CAD and had a 3D printer I could have perhaps drawn and printed a better likeness, but this one took me all of 15 minutes to make using Tichy's excellent parts and some scrap bits.  Not perfect but a far cry from the supplied part, and the result makes me happy.

Make Your Own Template

I believe that every kit, no matter how simple or of what materials it is made, can be a "craftsman kit"*.  I have taken that approach with just about every structure I've built recently, and much of the rolling stock too.  By that I mean any kit can be built with care and consideration of what would make the structure more interesting.  Often additions or modifications can me made to make the structure unique, or materials can be used that improve the level of detail or help sell the realism of the structure. 

Craftsman kits are often known for their reputation of being essentially a box of sticks and detail castings with thorough instruction books and many drawings and templates over which complex assemblies are constructed.  Whereas laser cut or plastic kits have done much of that work for you, stick-by-stick construction is a hallmark of craftsman kits.  For me this is part of the enjoyment of constructing such a kit and brings a sense of satisfaction for having built it myself.

In the case of the Suydam Union Ice Company, there is a sense that this is what might be called a "proto-craftsman kit".  Not "proto" as in "prototypical", but "proto" as in "protozoa" or that more simple kit that came before the evolution of the craftsman kit into Campbell, Fine Scale Miniatures and others.  The elements of a more modern craftsman kit are there - die cut walls, stripwood, templates, detail parts - but some of the materials are still crude by comparison.  

The cardboard widget provided to space the cooling tower baffles is really a weak point in the kit.  In one sense it is brilliant in its design; bent and wedged into place, then held by similar bent cardboard under tension.  And the instructions say that further bracing can be added.  In another sense it is literally weak; more like shirt cardboard, it is prone to warping out of shape.  A cursory search of previously built kits of this structure reveal it to be a problem area on nearly all of them.

But, just like I was unsatisfied to leave the baffles as provided and sheathed them in printed wood texture, then added styrene shapes as bracing, so too I couldn't leave the spacer as is.  Though it won't be seen unless a viewer peers down through the gaps in the baffles, I decided to make my spacer from wood.  It will be painted to resemble metal so it will match the styrene braces.  Assembly will be a little trickier, but in the end I hope to have a structural component that will be a feature of this structure for years to come.

The template is simply a pencil drawing on a sheet of paper, onto which a strip of Daiso transfer tape has been applied.  The cross members are laid on, then the verticals are attached with a dot of yellow glue at each connection point.  The whole shebang is weighted to keep the assembly straight while the glue sets.  A chisel blade allows the brace to be removed and the tape is tacky enough for the second frame.

*I don't mean every wood wall would be riddled with "nail holes", curling and lifting clapboards, rotting foundations and rusting corrugated metal.  Fine if you like that, but it is not for every structure even if you're going for that fire-trap, run-down look.

Early Morning Imagineering

Got up early this morning to putter around with buildings on Pine Branch Park.  I like the quiet when the family is still asleep and the garage is still cool.  Won't need the heater anymore this year, but the time is coming when I won't get more than an hour or so before it gets a little too warm for comfort.

In the top center-left of the image you can see the Union Ice Factory, still under construction, on its siding.  Following that track down to the lower-center there are two buildings.  The one closest to the track is a scratch-build (of sorts, using DPM wall segments).  The one next to it is an actual DPM kit, a Carol's Corner Cafe, if memory serves me right.  The kitbash will be a bar restaurant (prohibition, remember?) and the cafe will become a pool hall.  My Dad really enjoyed shooting pool, so this one will have a highly detailed interior.

Across the street from the pool hall will be the brightly colored Purina Mill, with spots on the siding for grain loading/unloading at the silo and doors for unloading into the main building.  But there are a few blanks along this dead-end industrial drive, and I'm not sure what I'll put in them.  Oh, I have ideas, but I'm open to suggestions.  It may be tricky to imagine the streets here, so let me fill them in using Gimp:

Site A between the businesses and the ice factory will likely be a kitbash of the Pola brewery, the brick version of the pickle factory.  I've got one from who knows where and it'll need to be disassembled before kitmingling can begin.  There's a picture I found and stashed away in my Florida 1920s folder of a neat soda bottling plant, in Ocala no less:

Delightful and Famous.  That'll be the title of the blog post if I build this, or something like it.  I think the brewery is a pretty good starting place, and what drew me to it was the arched brick windows similar to the ones in the brewery.  Unfortunately the brick on that Pola kit, well, calling it brick is charitable.  But it may work.  I do have more DPM wall segments, and that could be good too.

In Site B I'm thinking a small coal & oil dealer.  I had a coal dealer in mind for the spot the (former) bar and pool hall will occupy and was disappointed to lose it when I put those two structures there.  But they really seem at home in that place so I went with it.  But now, seeing the Purina building laid out and knowing what sort of room I have across the street from the ice company, I think I could put it in there.

Again, if anyone out there has any ideas - keep in mind I'm modeling Central Florida in the 1920's - then leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Cooling Tower Progress

Here's an update on the latest work to detail the cooling tower for the Suydam Union Ice Company.  A couple weeks back I received the angles and channels for the bracing, but focused instead on the interior office details, wall and roof bracing, and building the icing platform.  I also applied a first coat of stucco/paint to the building except the front wall.  In addition, I cut out the letters for the front wall sign.

Before I can finish the front wall I need to finish the cooling tower, in order to get a feel for how the lights will look along the wall beneath the tower.  Having done most of what I could except work on the tower, I returned to that focus.  I set up the NWSL chopper to cut 3/4" lengths of the styrene channel, and 7/8" lengths of the styrene angle for the corners.  Next I attached the strips to a painting stick, along with the styrene letters on a separate stick.  The letters got a coat of black, and the channels and angles a coat of primer gray.

The gray parts will be painted with a blotchy light gray to try and approximate the look of galvanized metal before I glue them to the cooling baffles.  I also found another picture of a prototype much similar to the one in the Suydam kit.  I decided to hunt for the prototype that Ayres used - a fact they touted in their catalog - and turned up a few more cooling towers in California.  Here's one from just down the road in Santa Rosa:

Ain't she a beauty?  Of course this tower has got a fancy roof with lovely trusses, but the baffles are the same shape as the kit.  I'd love to see more sides of this structure, and the detailing is really interesting.  And how about that sign behind the pole?  This Means YOU!  Opens more possibilities for my own structure, though I am having to control project creep and balance that tension with letting the creation speak through the process of building.

Work has been slow going lately, with in-laws visiting, Easter celebrations, a spouse that likely got food poisoning, and splitting a bee hive.  But each night I sit at the bench and do something to move the project forward, no matter how small.  Sounds simple, but right now I find this an effective means of getting something done when living through lockdown as an introvert with a family tends to drain the energy out of me.