Working on more vegetation With processed reindeer lichen.
Reindeer lichen tree cluster ready for the BOK Sub.
Just picked up 25 free doors for my three-scale basement layouts.
The hill can be placed anywhere on the BOK Sub but if it is attached to a hidden magnet, it won't easily fall off if the kindling block is removed to show and tell.
Recap on what is in the hill: shale base, ceramic magnet, chopped beach grass, pieces of gypsum, dyed sawdust, sandstone topsoil, and glue.
The annual conference in Truro runs for three days with the public show on Saturday, 2 June. After the show, the BOK Sub will be modified with two switches leading to several other N-scale layouts, each being individually portable to take to shows, schools as educational tools, children's hospitals, libraries, and other venues. Love working with this scale.
There are three operating HO trains behind the BOK Sub - two are DCC. Some of the HO ore cars have the same loads as the N gauge hoppers so folks will see the particle size differences. In addition, there is a large O gauge hopper full of ore processed to O scale - again fun to see the size differences between the three scales.
BOK reassembled on my display table. Materials used to make the BOK Sub will have a small sign asking viewers to try and identify them on the mini layout. I am sure this will lead to enjoyable discussions.
Adjustments needed to fit the base.
Next item to work on is my scratchbuilt N-scale trestle based on an abandoned bridge near my home. The trestle is made from HO gauge brass rail.
Added sawdust grass to the hill and building a shale-based tree using freshly processed reindeer lichen from Cheverie Mountain, NS. Trunks of the trees we're carefully painted.
Added some beach grass and gypsum boulders, which will be mostly buried under some sandstone topsoil and sawdust grass.
Flat, thin sheets of shale scattered everywhere on the beaches of Walton make nice mini bases for structures and scenery items. I am building a small hill using shale and a ceramic magnet. The hill will stick to any of the magnets around the BOK Sub.
Some of the grass will be left as hollow tubes and the rest goes into the blender.
Working with beach grass for the BOK Sub today. I collected this grass from the beach in Cheverie, NS last year and treated it with glycerin and a little green dye. It has held up well.
The inside of the barn has a lot of timber support, including the hay loft and cross beam that make the barn strong laterally so it won't cave in when folks pick it up to look inside.
The back end of the barn has a real glass window that I cut from my stained glass supplies.
The side of the barn. I still have to make windows and window frames for the two sides of the barn. When the wall was glued together, I made a paste out of processed red sandstone powder from Cape Blomidon, NS and wood glue, then applied it evenly over the outside surface of the wall. When dry, I sanded until I liked the rustic sandstone-filled wood look. Finally, I applied a coat of urethane to bring out the colours and protect the finish. The roof was done the same way, however, I left a thick sandstone coat on the roof wood and etched lines to look like shingling. No urethane was used on the roof.
So, using The Chopper and a striking knife I cut all the wood. Fast drying wood glue was used to put the pieces together. Here is the hayloft end of the barn.
I decided to build the rustic barn using 100% coffee stir sticks for the wood, which I picked up from the dollar store.
Since I am building farm land, I bought a used set of Branchline Trains Laser-Art Structures N Barn buildings from the back room of the hobby shop. Several parts were missing and the barn was in rough shape. I will rebuild the barn so I took it apart to facilitate repairs. In the meantime, I made a few drawings of similar size to build a rustic barn from scratch.
The roadbed crosses the river on block #2. The buttresses for the culvert can be seen as light gray 'concrete'. I make this concrete using wet clay collected from the shoreline cliffs of Cheverie after a rainy day. The dark gray clay will stay wet in a sealed ziplock bag for several months. When the clay hardens it turns light gray and looks like concrete.
Basic farm crop block includes rows of plants. In this case, I have used the natural (i.e. undyed) sawdust from the exotic hardwood padauk from the Congo. I am working on a piece of this hardwood for another project but save and grade the red sawdust. I have planted red cabbage on this block of kindling.
Simple as painting with a brush and gravity adds more realism by depositing some of the powder at the base of the outcrop.
Hematite is a real iron ore mineral that was mined in this province. Not only do I crush it for car loads, I use the powder for weathering. I'll use this bottle of Black Rock (near Truro) iron ore powder right now to weather the gypsum outcrop so it looks like the ones we have near Windsor, Nova Scotia.
The basic gypsum outcrop block has a solid piece of gypsum made from a piece of gray spar gypsum from the beaches of Cheverie. I drive the water out of the crystal matrix by calcining, a simple process of baking the piece in the oven. It turns white and is essentially a solid piece of dry Plaster of Paris, all ready to carve into shape.
It's a sunny spring day on the BOK Sub so the river reflects the blue sky. There is still some ice in the river which I make using white candle wax. The boulders in the river are graded pieces of shale from Walton.
I use Realistic Water for many things including, of course, river water.
The basic river block has brown river banks due to the underlying paint, as well as green sawdust ground cover. The sawdust produced when my router cuts the river and the roadbed is used for this ground cover.
The sawdust ground cover is applied by coating the target surface with diluted white glue, then shaking the sawdust out of an old spice bottle.
The hidden magnets are found using a short stack of the same.