Do you true up the edges and glue up the structure before masking and painting etc.?
Or do you paint the walls, trim and wash for the grout on the separate wall pieces and then glue them together?
On my first small one, I am painting first because I don't know any better.
I normally true up the edges and lay out the walls, adding any bracing I want or need. I usually assemble the entire building and then paint and weather. If the building is going to be very large I may just do one wall at a time and then glue them together for final paint touchup and weathering. Whatever works for you is what you should do.
Roger
Extra trick after assembling & gluing the four walls...
On a piece of sandpaper, lightly sand the building bottom until there are no uneven bottom edges, and the building sits on a flat surface without any wobbling.
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
These tips might help.http://www.gatewaynmra.org/mhslayout/mhs-dpm.htmhttp://www.woodlandscenics.com/information/faq/faqBuildingTips.cfm
I sqaure mine up. Paint the walls, windows and doors then glue together. Touch up the seems if need be. Then brick mortar and weathering.
I have always squared the edges and glued everthing together before painting. The glue will not do it's thing if there is paint on the joint, and cleaning the paint back off of the areas to be glued is something I hate doing.
I agree: build first, then paint.
Wayne
Agreed. Build first and then paint. Trying to remove paint in order to glue never is fun!
As in real life - build first then paint. I have yet to see a house, etc. being built with already painted wood. Unless it's pre-fab of course. But yes, build then paint. Getting glue on already painted surfaces just makes a mess.
Mainetrains
'there's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear' Modeling the Hard Knox Valley Railroad in HO scale http://photos.hardknoxvalley.com/
I paint first, then glue. I do make a point of scraping the paint off the glue edges, but on DPM buildings those are all edges and interior sides anyway, so I typically don't have much paint there to worry about. I just find it a lot easier to mortar my bricks (I use Hydrocal) if all the walls are flat on the same surface, so I can do them all at once.
You do need to square the edges as noted in the directions. These are typically thick castings, and they bevel the edges slightly so they will come out of the molds easily.
On some older DPM's that I have built, I've found that the back wall needs to be shortened by about one wall thickness, maybe 1/8th to 3/16th of and inch. They seem to have mis-calculated the length of this wall, vs. the front wall with the way the sides fit on. So, you need to put the building together and make sure all 4 walls are square, and don't think you're doing something wrong if you get some sort of trapezoid instead of a rectangle. The walls may really be the wrong size.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I build the building box first, then paint the box and do the mortar. Windows, doors, and trim pieces are painted before adding them to the building box after it is done. Weather if desired after final assembly. If the windows and doors are cast in the basic building, I paint them after the building box is built and mortared.
Elmer.
The above is my opinion, from an active and experienced Model Railroader in N scale and HO since 1961.
(Modeling Freelance, Eastern US, HO scale, in 1962, with NCE DCC for locomotive control and a stand alone LocoNet for block detection and signals.) http://waynes-trains.com/ at home, and N scale at the Club.