I've been itching to try my hand at scratchbuilding something from wood. There's a building I see a lot that I think could make a neat little diorama:



See, awesome isn't it.

Well the thing is that I don't know where to start. Yeah, I know that I need to track down windows and doors and draw up some plans. I don't plan on doing it perfectly to scale, but it measures out as pretty close to 40'x20' in Google Earth. I have pictures of all four sides and its literally a 30 minute walk away, round trip, so its not hard to reference.

The current sticking point for me is how to scale clapboard siding. I checked Northeast's site and the clapboards are by dimension not scale. So...yeah, there's question #1 right there

Using the door on the right side as a guide, I count 13 siding boards in the height of the door. The door appears to be a standard 6 feet 8 inches tall. So, that's 80 inches. 80 inches divided by 13 is 6.15 inches for the height of each siding board. If you are doing HO scale, then we divide 6.15 by 87 and we get .071 spacing for the clapboard.

Of course, if you are only 30 minutes from the prototype, how about taking a tape measure over there and measuring the siding? Then divide by whatever scale you are building in.

radivil Wrote:I've been itching to try my hand at scratchbuilding something from wood. There's a building I see a lot that I think could make a neat little diorama:



See, awesome isn't it.

"Yes it is very cool, is it a boat house?"

Well the thing is that I don't know where to start. Yeah, I know that I need to track down windows and doors and draw up some plans. I don't plan on doing it perfectly to scale, but it measures out as pretty close to 40'x20' in Google Earth. I have pictures of all four sides and its literally a 30 minute walk away, round trip, so its not hard to reference.

"Sounds like you have already did the first step"


The current sticking point for me is how to scale clapboard siding. I checked Northeast's site and the clapboards are by dimension not scale. So...yeah, there's question #1 right there

"first do you know the approximate size of the prototype? if so you need to come up with math formula to convert from full size to scale size

Example for converting scale size to actual dimensions

For O scale 1/4 inch = 1 foot so a 6 inch wide board would be .5' x .25 =.125 inch wide

For S scale 3/16 inch = 1 foot so a 6 inch wide board would be .5' x .1875 = .094 inch wide


Or an easy way would be to log on to Model Railroad hobbyist magazine and look for the downloadable scale converter.


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radivil Wrote:Well the thing is that I don't know where to start. Yeah, I know that I need to track down windows and doors and draw up some plans. I don't plan on doing it perfectly to scale, but it measures out as pretty close to 40'x20' in Google Earth. I have pictures of all four sides and its literally a 30 minute walk away, round trip, so its not hard to reference.

Looking at the door and windows i would think the building is pretty close to 20 x 10. Since you are living near, you will find out soon enough.
Paul

Ok, so:

Yes, I was intending to go with HO scale. I thought I mentioned that but apparently not.

The outline of the roof is about 20 x 40 feet, which I should have been clearer about. The footprint being so much smaller than the roof is something I like. Lots of curtilage for detailing. Yes, I used the word curtilage. Those law classes I took need to make themselves work for me somehow.

I'd taken four pictures yesterday. You know, its amazing how good the cameras in cell phones are these days:







That last one was a tough shot with the sun being right in my face.

Its the meeting house or office? of the Alexandria Seaport Foundation. If look look carefully, you'll notice its not on the dock but its actually a barge. There's a small sailboat under construction inside. They do a lot of boat building. I was planning on just eyeballing the dimensions, but their website mentions that they have patterns to make a little paper model boat as an introduction to full scale boat building. Maybe they would let someone measure their building for modeling purposes. I'll walk up this afternoon and take a look if anyone's around.

That is an interesting structure! My friend's Dad owned the boat yard at the end of the street we lived on. Their house's foundation was an old wood barge set up on concrete blocks. Looks like the double doors at the "stairway end" are the only large doors......hope they're building a small sail boat in there. :o
Northeast scale clapboard siding, 6" ( .068" ), or even 8" ( .092" ) would work for HO, unless you intend to lay in each board, then I'd say .010" X .080" stripwood, with a scale 2" overlap.
Is that really board and batten roofing ???!!!! ( you can get that in 24" long sheets too, or just lay the battens on after )

I didn't get a chance to go up today.

I'm pretty sure the roof is standing seam metal. Its got a certain reflectivity that doesn't photograph.

I wasn't planning on doing board by board because I'm not insane! Yet. Also the sailboat inside is small. Maybe 12'?

Other than Grandt, Tichy, and Northeast, who makes window casts I can look at? I'm thinking I might just try to scale it off the window castings I choose and guesstimate the dimensions to be proportional to the windows and doors.

What ever approach you take to building this structure it will be a nice model for sure.


I think I may do one based on the pics you have posted in O Scale, I am not a rivit counter so I will use some selective compression and maybe a little artist's licence.

Radivil,
a wonderful house and a very good model building project also for beginners, I think.
- Try to make a few more shots in direct faces to all fronts and sides. Take to get a few dimensions from the house, length and width and high at markant points, also door and window dimensions.
- Make a few sketches of house of all sides and a floor plan.
- Select the material for the walls, I thank wood as preformed clap boards from North Eastern will be a good choice.
- Try to get window and door castings in right or close to original dimensions - this will save a time consuming producing by your own - and they will be very clean and even produced.
- For the roof I would use styrene and than add thin wire for simulating the rips - my ideas.
- For all other rods, poles and posts I would choice Kappler wood strips and do not forgot to model the visible poles under the roof.
- And if you find preproduced material for stairways and other needed parts so you should use it. The quality is in most cases a very good and you will get an result in a shorter time. I know these problems - You will start many projects in a hurry and than you need more and more time for finishing because you must add details and many more details. Getting a fast end will the fun hold highly.
Wish you success !

I started to make some preliminary drawings. I've concluded that some of my estimated dimensions are pretty off.



The roof outline is 40x30 not 40x20. I remeasured the aerial imagery. But after that, things fell apart faster than I'd have expected. Looks like I'll send an email off tomorrow to the owners to inquire about measuring it. Who knows, maybe I'll luck out and it'll turn out they built it themselves and have plans! Wouldn't that be a stroke of luck.

I didn't have much luck finding doors that look like those. Windows look better. Grandt may have some that work.

If I could have printed out the picture, I could have gotten a better idea of size, but -----
The end of the building figures to be 16.666 feet, and the roof width, ( bottom edge to edge, second picture ) looks to be 27 feet. ( dimensions based on a 36" door width )
I can't find an "adequate reference" for the long side, but the spacing between the roof ridges may just be 12".
The idea that this sits on a barge, makes it a very tempting project. If built just a bit smaller, I might have a place on the new modules for something like it.
Also in picture 2, there's two doors on the lower level, and, it looks like two more doors ( without hinges, and handles/latches ) on the upper level.
The double doors, on the opposite end remind me of a product called "The Atrium Door", that I once used on a home improvement project, about twenty years ago. The upper level here also looks like a hinged door, and a fixed one, they are that similar in appearance.
The Dormer windows are the same width as the lower story windows, and are the same centerlines. You could use the 12" roof rib spacing to determine the long wall length, center to center of the windows, at least.

Take pictures at right angles to the sides, even if its multiple partial pictures. Measure or estimate one dimension (door height, door width). Then use photo editing software to resize the pictures to scale.

Don't know if this will help at all, but......[attachment=10984]
I used things like door height = 81", door width 30", and a few other clues. The drawing wasn't coming out right, so I started playing around with any possible knowable references in the photo------ came up with a 17" spacing on the roof ribs, and the rest is history.
I massaged the autocad drawing into a jpg file, and sized it so it should print out in HO scale. There is a ruler with it, that was 12"/1foot, and is scaled down with the building drawing, so hoewver it prints you can get dimensions off of it in feet and inches.
This is a very interesting structure ----- Have fun !!

I tried a save to: and then print --- comes out small, and is a blueprint, with black lines ! :oops: :oops: :oops:

Sumpter250 Wrote:Don't know if this will help at all, but......[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]
I used things like door height = 81", door width 30", and a few other clues. The drawing wasn't coming out right, so I started playing around with any possible knowable references in the photo------ came up with a 17" spacing on the roof ribs, and the rest is history.
I massaged the autocad drawing into a jpg file, and sized it so it should print out in HO scale. There is a ruler with it, that was 12"/1foot, and is scaled down with the building drawing, so hoewver it prints you can get dimensions off of it in feet and inches.
This is a very interesting structure ----- Have fun !!

I tried a save to: and then print --- comes out small, and is a blueprint, with black lines ! :oops: :oops: :oops:

I didn't forget about this! Work and the holiday got in the way (and my birthday too).

That's a solid drawing. I found a video, which I have not saved on this computer, that was shot inside and around the building. It gave some pretty interesting scaling ideas.

If I recall correctly, Autocad can export as a dxf, can't it? Its been like 12 years since I've done anything with Autocad. If it can and I gave you an email address, could I have a copy of your file?

I'll PM you. That drawing took about two full days to do, re-do, and re-do a couple of times more, as I "stumbled onto" new clues. If you ever get the actual measurements of the building I would be curious to see just how close I got.
Pete