Brewery and Park completed

The A3 board system seems to be working but does need a few compromises. The brewery, for instance, was originally meant to be linear. All pieces on the brewery apart from the lorry are glued down; the park I've glued the fence but items like the clock and chairs are loose - I can forsee lots of variation in the future.

I've been buying various road and pavement sets for the table. However, many of these simply have the features'drawn' on in a dark sepia colour. So I bought a dark sepia marker and drew 1cm squares on the courtyard to represent 2' flags.

At the back, the paving is marked to represent cobbles.

That seemed to work, so when it came to the park I rather overdid it really... for this, I should probably have glued the grass in first, but I thought... 

So, cobbles for the front and back entrances, crazy paving inside. It looks quite effective.

The side view really does show off the park to it's best advantage.

 And finally a back view.

Miskatonic U preview

Knowing exactly what the problem was with the Manor House I've put it together to give an idea what the actual finished University will look like.

No problems with the gatehouse of course - fits well, looks good. The single coat of thinned paint works well, I'm quite pleased with the effect on the gate. Just the right amount of brown from the mdf shows through.

The gatehouse with the manor house main building behind.

This view gives an impression of the courtyard. The fence is by Blotz -  They're the only decent UK supplier for this kind of fence I've found so far. It would be good to have been able to make the grounds bigger but it has to fit on an A3 board. Even so, the manor house does overlap a bit where the side chimney is. I have plans in mind for that far corner attic floor by the chimney... Still considering the courtyard. I've bought a dark sepia artist's pen and will probably draw cobbles on by hand. Likewise, not sure whether to have the gate there or just use the gate in the gatehouse.

The bad parts... The first picture shows the joints - I've had to carve all the stubs down to make them fit. Looks ugly on close up, plus I didn't know where to cut down at first - so had to do all round. The difference between ground floor (before Sarissa email) and the slightly neater ground floor (only need to shave top and bottom surfaces) is quite clear...

But this is where it really went wrong and I called for help! Tried to force a joint too much and the entire ground floor basically collapsed. Damage to the outer wall doesn't show it all - there was an internal arch that collapsed as well - that actually threw out a few things on another outside wall. Result is that the ground floor is a disaster area - I didn't even attempt any internal detailing on this, plus glued the upper floor floor down to hold things in place  better - couldn't get it to fit properly without springing apart, so used main force until the glue set.

This gives a better picture of the damage. I had tried to shave things down, obviously just not enough...

Knowing the problem and shaving down every stub and internal fitting there were no more problems and it fitted together easily. The replacement should be much better than this effort!

TT Combat Police Station

A while back one of Armand's posts on TMP led me to TT Combat and I said that was going to try them. My first attempt was the Police Station.

No instructions were given with the kit, but there is a UTube tutorial was put out by a previous purchaser. That video also mentioned that the motto and shield are actually Cornish in origin.

 Firstly, this one really was crying out to be painted. That Art Deco facade is so over the top the paint scheme had to be likewise... happily, the town has a colour scheme already, so  red, green and old gold as previously.

I did use one extra colour - the kick plate and hinges on the door are Vallejo Model Colour 70865 Oily Steel.A couple of areas still need touching up a bit.

How does it compare to Sarissa? They seem to match quite well. Here it is compared to one of the Sarissa City block buildings. Very similar in many ways, though construction has one major difference. Whereas on the Sarissa buildings each wall sits on top of the floor, TT Combat have walls slotting in the side. This means the wall can be 'flat', but does mean that if, like me, you prefer to build up floor by floor to ensure they fit and aren't misaligned, then there is a risk of sticking two floors together.

So, how was the kit? Parts fit together well. Generally they separated from the backing well, though some were not cut through enough - care needed in this operation. Overall, a good kit and, at £11.95 very good value for money. Having said that, you can find it even cheaper.

It's how you deal with it... Sarissa update

Re the Manor House, told them about the problem:

Sorry to be voicing dissatisfaction for one of your products - made a dozen or so and said nice things about them - starting with http://easterngarrison.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/sarissa-buildings.html - but I'm afraid one of my latest ones, the Manor House, doesn't come up to scratch. Basically, the parts don't fit - slots are too small for the stubs to go in, and trying trying to force parts into place has just resulted in the thing getting smashed up. Again, I've made buildings from you Old Europe, Gaslamp Alley, City Block and South of the Border ranges and not encountered this.

Their answer:

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the message and sorry to hear of your problem and let’s see if we can sort it for you.

MDF as a sheeted product has a manufacturing tolerance that we are aware of and allow for in our building designs. We also check our batches when received and grade them so that any which are on the thicker side don’t get used for building kits etc. We are only talking about perhaps 0.2mm but it all adds up.

I would suspect in this instance we’ve managed to mix a thicker sheet in with them and thus your having some problem with the kit. As I say we’re talking fractions of mm’s and nothing your eye would see but due to the precision nature of the kits it will have an effect on some components.

We’ve missed todays post but I will get a replacement kit out to you on Monday and if you have any issues or questions then please don’t hesitate to contact us.

I hope this is satisfactory and many thanks for your patience,

Steve

Which is how you deal with things, well done Sarissa.

Sarissa Manor House - first disappointment

Currently trying to make this as part of Miskatonic U. Gatehouse done, great, right up to the standard I've started to expect. Manor House? Every joint is so tight, and in some cases just don't fit. Result? I think this one is going to be an expensive wreckage.

Quite simply, I've made up a dozen or kits so far, generally nothing but good things to say, but if this lemon had been the first one I'd bought there wouldn't have been a second.

It's just too big...

Today, spent quite a bit of time making up some Blotz railings to go round the park.  Still some touching up of paintwork to do, but basically got it together and loosely set the park up.


I think it's pretty obvious from these two pictures that the band stand just totally overpowers the scene. With it there, there's not really much room for anything else!

Happily, there are always other possibilities. In this case, putting a town clock into the park rather than in a more central, well, town, position seems to be a bit more balanced. There would be other options - perhaps a fountain? Blotz do one that is still a bit big but could be made to fit. There are lots of resin/metal fountains out there, just a matter of how compatible...

The clock tower, by the way, is the one in Downham Market. There was a Caithness Crystal store in King's Lynn and they used to commission Liliput Lane limited editions. My wife Sandra collected these - very useful as they came out around her birthday - and when I saw this one I bought a 'spare'.  They brought out two different clock towers - I've got a spare for the other one as well, so one will go in the town anyway.

Still waiting for the University to arrive - that's  going goiung to need fences as well, so next order will be to Blotz.

Meanwhile, memo to self - must go through and update some of the labels for these posts...

The Park

Finished some of the park buildings...

 In keeping with the rest of the town I'm going with a muted colour scheme. The red is Vallejo Model Colour 926 Red, the green MP 13, deep bronze green - a colour also used, for example, on the warehouse. They have been put on as a single coat, again to help allow the underlying mdf to dull things down a bit. Apart from a couple of bits of od gold the rest of the buildings have been left unpainted.

The bandstand is going to look a bit big for the park... it measures out at about a third of the park's width... but it's quite a nice model. Although it looks as though I've used two different reds here that's just an effect of the underlying mdf colours.

 The public convenience has a few issues - quite awkward to assemble and it's going to be a tight squeeze for anyone to get in -  the screen needs to be 5/6mm further away from the main structure. Lots of cardboard in this one - and could have been easily designed in a way that would have made assembly a lot simpler. The basic shape includes several separate card panels - very difficult to set in place when they could have been done as a single foldable sheet. Still, it looks good and, now it's finished, I like it.

The simplest model of this trio - the ticket kiosk. Easy to build, parts fit together well, paints up well. Not certain how much I'm convinced about it being a kiosk - perhaps an addition of a desk or something.

Need a fence to go round the park, once that's sorted I'll start putting everything together.