Hoit Brothers machine shop

[160pennsy]

I've been working on this N Scale Architect kit on & off for a few months. It was a special run made for TexNrails that I found on eBay and is long OOP. This kit is typical of their original style (pre laser cut) where you have to cut out the window & door openings from the provided acetate sheet drawings & then trace them out onto the wood sheet material. It's an old school craftsman kit - very close to actual scratch building. The windows & door are probably from Grandt Line. The rest of the larger doors need to be assembled from material provided





The walls, windows & doors were spray bombed with colors I had available. The kit provides paper printouts of concrete block to be used to construct the rear boiler addition and front dock but I wanted something more realistic so I used Fine-N-Scale resin concrete block sheet. Mocked up the front & side walls to see how the dock would fit.









All the walls for both structures were then assembled. The sub roofs for both buildings are thin card stock provided in the kit. There was corrugated sheet metal foil material provided for the rear boiler roof. Just like the concrete block material, the paper printed shingles for the main structure roof were not going to cut it so I switched them out with laser cut asphalt shingles from Rusty Stumps. They were the non-adhesive type that needed to be glued down one strip at a time - tedious but the end results was good. Since I planned to model the doors on both sides of the dock as open a small floor was added behind the walls.















The boiler room and dock base were painted with an aged concrete color and then mortar lines were added. The wood planks on the dock were stained and then attached to the dock. The over head crane structure was assembled by cutting strip wood to size and then gluing them together on wax paper that covered the kit drawings. Crane needs to be finished and then stained. The open doors on the dock need to be added along with details behind them. The boiler roof will get a tall smoke stack and the main building roof will get a vent. The structure and dock need some weathering. I will probably add working goose neck lamps above the open doors.












 

[peteski]

That looks beautiful Paul. You still have those true-craftsman skills left in you.
This type of kit makes you pause and think about just how easy we have nowadays with all those wooden laser-cut kits.  I'm not sure if I would even attempt to build one of those older kits anymore.

[wazzou]

Paul, just a tip for you on the application of those shingle strips.
I've applied an awful lot of them and what I recognized is that I needed to make it easier.
I printed straight lines on sheets of paper using MS Excel, then I could cut out whatever sized area is needed and attach it to the wood or styrene roof with spray adhesive.
Now with straight lines to guide me, I attach to the paper thin 3/8" wide 3M clear double sided tape that has a paper backing on one side that is then peeled off exposing the lines beneath so that the process goes very quickly.

[160pennsy]

That looks beautiful Paul. You still have those true-craftsman skills left in you.
This type of kit makes you pause and think about just how easy we have nowadays with all those wooden laser-cut kits.  I'm not sure if I would even attempt to build one of those older kits anymore.

Thanks for the incouragment Pete! This kit only had a few windows & doors to cut unlike some of the larger N Scale Architect kits that had a lot more (probably why so many of the older kits went unbuilt). Cutting out window & door openings in styrene is a little bit easier than wood since you don’t have to worry about the wood splitting when cutting with the grain.

[160pennsy]

Paul, just a tip for you on the application of those shingle strips.
I've applied an awful lot of them and what I recognized is that I needed to make it easier.
I printed straight lines on sheets of paper using MS Excel, then I could cut out whatever sized area is needed and attach it to the wood or styrene roof with spray adhesive.
Now with straight lines to guide me, I attach to the paper thin 3/8" wide 3M clear double sided tape that has a paper backing on one side that is then peeled off exposing the lines beneath so that the process goes very quickly.

Thank you for the tip Bryan. Will have to try it on my next build. I did draw guide lines on the sub roof before gluing down the shingles which helped keep things straight. In the past I’ve had some of the laser-cut shingles with adhesive backing, break apart when removing the film on the rear. When I purchased multiple packs of these shingles from my friends shop https://www.rail-scale-models.com/ I didn’t notice whether they were adhesive backed or not until using them for this build.

[160pennsy]

Did some more work on the build. The timber gantry crane needed a dolly on top and the kit instructions had some simple drawings but they were not too detailed so I Googled around for some photos. The dolly was built up from bits of round, square and strip Evergreen styrene pieces. The blackened chain is 40 LPI from A-Line.







Next up were the goose neck lamps. I wanted something smaller than the Woodland Scenics versions and had the parts & bending jig from Nginerring (https://www.ngineering.com/) so I decided to use them for this project. Their website has good instructions on how to cut & debur the tubing and use of the jig. That was the easy part! My nano LEDs were pre-wired (#38 gauge magnet wire) which were purchased in bulk thru Aliexpress and the Ngineering instructions for threading them thru the bends in the tubing were not working for me. As they say you can't push a rope! Came up with my own method to get both the wires thru the tube and will forward them to nGineering along with photos. I made two goose neck lamps to mount above the open loading dock doors.





Noticed that my dolly would not be able to slide all the way back to the large doors since a top cross brace was in the way so I cut it out. The whole crane frame was fragile when handling it so knee braces were added to all the vertical posts. It is more rigid now and the dolly has full travel. With the goose neck lamps built and painted I went ahead and test mounted one on the front to see how it will work. Nothing is glued in place yet and I will be adding boxes/crates inside the doorways since they are illuminated now. The LED is too bright since I'm using the Ngineering tester connected on top of a 9v battery. Some resistors will be needed to bring the brightness down.

[peteski]

It is only getting better and better Paul! 
I don't think I mentioned it earlier: I really like your choice of colors.  Are you going to weather it, or leave it pristine?

[160pennsy]

It is only getting better and better Paul! 
I don't think I mentioned it earlier: I really like your choice of colors.  Are you going to weather it, or leave it pristine?

My collection of rattle cans has a good selection of colors and they are relatively cheap at the big box stores. I own an airbrush & tank but do not have any way to accommodate a spray booth so it’s spray cans for now. I’ve used this color combo before with a corner structure on my T-TRAK module and it worked well. There will be some weathering applied - been watching Jason Jensen videos on YouTube for inspiration. Speaking of paint, colors & weathering I’m amazed at the results he gets just brush painting & staining with cheap acrylic paint.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCwtCiywyxpf5ed785KbAAQA/videos

[160pennsy]

My progress update for this week. Mounted the goose neck lamp on the other side of the dock and decided on a resistor value that gave me the desired brightness. My good friend had SMD resistors and small PC boards that they mount on so we wired up both goose neck lamps. The lamps have delicate #38 gauge magnet wire so using the boards to mount the resistors and a way to switch over to larger gauge wire was perfect.





Needed a way to lift goods up to the 2nd floor double doors on the front so an image search for barn loft pulleys gave me a starting point. The Gold Medal Models brake wheel fret had what I needed and along with the JNJ etched brass lift rings, .002 sheet brass and some .010 dia brass wire completed the parts list. First tinned the middle of the wire, threaded it thru the first brake wheel and then soldered them together. Clipped off the brake wheel and then threaded the wire thru another brake wheel making sure the spokes lined up. Soldered the second brake wheel and clipped the assembly off the fret. Drilled hole thru a small piece of the sheet brass, soldered one of the lift rings to the brass sheet and then filed down the protruding pin. Then I drilled two holes on each side of the lift ring and carefully cut out a thin strip using small scissors. The holes in the thin strip slip over the .010 brass wire after I cut it short, bent the strip over the top of the brake wheels and slipped the other end over the opposite end of the wire. Used CA to glue them in place. Only wire I had that would fit thru the lift ring eyelet was #38 magnet wire so I braided two of them together, threaded it thru the eyelet and then CA'd them to a small strip wood beam. I will add a small wood brace behind the pulley when it gets mounted above the doors.







Worked on a few other detail parts - a wall vent kit-bashed from a Grandt Line eave vent, some styrene squares as a backing and covered with strips of .010 stryrene. I did not have any tarp covered machinery loads for inside the building or on the dock so some small styrene squares and bits were glued together and temporarily attached to a wood base. Then took some tissue paper, covered the loads and used thinned white glue brushed over the tops and sides to represent the tarp. Still need to paint them and add black wash to bring out the creases & folds.







Nest up was the smoke stack for the boiler room addition. Used .092 dia styrene tube cut to length and then drilled a hole in the roof to accept the stack. A bottom flange plate was cut from .002 sheet brass and a thin strip of tape was wrapped around the stack as a mounting spot for the guy wires. Spray painted the smoke stack flat black and checked to see how it will look.