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Posted By:
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Gene Herman
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Posted On:
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Saturday March 31, 2012 at 4:55 AM
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Message:
PICS (1:24) Your Daily Dose of Diorama.....
Part 1....“On Building a 1/24th Scale Model - Some Sketches and Plans....I have been invited to be part of an exhibit on Dioramas, and what I wanted to do here is show the process of making the model. I chose to build the house I grew up in during the 1950's. Through old photographs, memories and a few surreal situations, [where my brother and I each visited the house separately before it was demolished], I was able to draw up plans and figure out the dimensions. Here are the scaled drawings I drew up.” “Cutting Out Window and Door Openings.....The plans were then drawn on 3/16th gatorboard. It's like foamcore that you use for school projects, except gatorboard's outer surface is coated in resin, so it's very rigid, light and durable and can be cut with an X-acto knife. Here I am squaring up all the openings with the trusty 220 grit sandpaper glued onto a block of wood.” “Making Window Sashes....Ah, making windows! Each window has 14 pieces to them, not counting the interior and exterior trim, which will be added later.There was never any intention to have them open. One must draw a line somewhere. The wood is Basswood, not Balsa. Basswood has a tight grain which is in scale with the model. Plus it's very sturdy”. “Exterior Walls and Windows....As you can see, the windows have been glued in place, along with the door frames. The glue of choice is your basic white glue. Sometimes super glue is used, though, when a joint will be subjected to a lot of stress. The white glue is water based and if too much is applied, the wood will warp. If that happens, I just place a heavy object on it until is dries.” “Building Interior Walls....Building the interior was the next step.A number of decisions had to be made, such as; should the floors be glued in place? Perhaps the floors and walls could be engineered so they could be removed for easy access to place furnishings? How does one go about doing such things like that?” “Getting a Sense of the Finished Interior....I decided to have the first floor walls glued in place so they would provide structural support for the exterior. The second floor would be completely removable along with the attic floor. To accomplish this, I took off 1/16 inch all around the floor plates, which left a gap, so everything could be lifted out of the building. You can see the kitchen in the foreground and notice how really small it was: 9 x 10. There were 8 people in my family, so we ate in shifts. It boggles the mind how my parents managed all of this.” “Almost ready to Assemble....The wall paper is pretty close to the actual paper that was in the house when I was growing up; heavy floral designs in the pink and gray pallete. The rest of the house was done up in muted green tones. I went online and downloaded wallpaper swatches, then pieced them together to make sheets of scaled wall covering. Gotta love the web.Because the house was built in the 1870's, the floors were wide plank pine painted burgundy. In order to be modern, my parents covered the floors in wood grained linoleum. To represent that look, I used craft paper in the model and you know, it looks just like what it was.” “Closeup of Front....The clapboards are next on the schedule. I decided to frame all of the openings first with 1/16 thick wood so I could butt the clapboards up to it and get a good fit. Another decision was to show the house as it was before the aluminum siding had been put on. It will bring out the real character of the structure.” “A Conversation with the Little Guy....It was late at night and the end of the weekend. The roofs had been figured out and a decision was made to go with a raised seam roof instead of an asphalt shingle : it just had more visual impact. Perhaps it was the all of the adhesives I had been using, but I could have sworn that the little guy was talking to me.” Tune in tomorrow for Part 2, and thanx fur lookin’! 
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 | PICS (1:24) Your Daily Dose of Diorama..... by Gene Herman #42031
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