After building and casting a lot of different items like windows, doors and shutters it was time for some new parts for another building. I inteded to make them compatible with the existing parts of my bombed out building so that I can make different looking houses by recombine a limited amount of different parts. This ruin should be less damaged than the first ruin with 2 walls and parts of the roof still standing.
Pictures of the old project (Bombed out building) can be found here (WIP) and here (finished and painted).
Step 1: the walls
After some thoughts and sketches I found the following solution. I use the 3 higher parts of the first ruin (one changes sides) and add 2 new parts of relative intact walls. Here comes the sketches:
The main material is balsa foam again. Here you can see the cut but still unstructured pieces.
Here you can see the cutted pieces beside the masters of the older pieces. The older and new pieces looked good together.
The next pictures show the ready structured pieces. The brickwork and the battledamage is done by carving into the the soft balsa foam. The white areas are done with a mix of plaster, woodglue and fine sand. For the plastered parts of the walls I like this surface structure more than the porous surface structure of the balsa foam.
This following shots are taken after building the molds. The master broke into a few parts in the demoulding process. This happens almost every time with complex masters done in balsa foam.
The next four pictures show how the masters of the both new and the older pieces work togester. I took care to make the transitions realistic by continuing the damage of the plaster.
The first step is done - the molds of the new pieces are built and the first casting is done. I testfitted some resin castings of the windows and the main door. I am already pleased with the result.
The next steps to do are the roof (damaged), a chimmey, the ground floor, the (damaged) upper floor and some inner walls. I still have no ideas how to built stairs that can be cast in a single sided mold.
Step 2: The roof
Here comes the first sketch of the roof. It will be at least two parts, the pantiles (outside) and the beams with rafters (inside).
The first step was to build the understructure of the roof - the beams with the rafters. As a startingpoint I intended to built a master of a smal part and then make a mold and cast the needed parts to do a whole roof.
I took a piece of thin plastic card and marked the distances between the beams and rafters with a pen. Then I cut stripes in the right measures from 1 mm plastic card and glued them with superglue along the lines. On top of this i glued the beams, some casts in resin. I have made the experiance that resin casts could be much better demolded than real wood or balsa. Further there can be seen that I tried to do the measures and distances compatible with the rooftiles I intended to use.
In the next three pictures you can see the first castings after cleaning. I testfitted them and I was quite pleased with the result.
Now it was time to do some deliberations about how the parts can be fitted to the ruinwalls to become a realistic looking roof. At this point I decided to built an intact roof first. From this I could hopefully build some destoyed roofparts with less labour.
I measured the needed length and width. Then I cut the base of the beam in an angle (pic 2) to match the upper side of the sidewalls and the upper side of the beam with a notch (pic 3) to support the beam for the roof ridge.
The shingles of the roof will be done with a recast of an older plastic roof from a model railway supplier. This was also used as a guide for the length of the beams and the number of rafters. Here you can see a provisional testcast with the master of the beams and rafters testfitted to the underside of the testpiece.
Once again it was time to build a mold. This time of the finished master of the beams and rafters as well as a beam for the roof ridge. Here comes a picture with just a small insight of the materials used.
With the first casts done came the critical moment to see if all will fit as planed and measured - and yes it did. I provisional set up a relative intact building with not so much damaged wallpieces (casts and masters). Then I superglued the beam for the roof ridge to the notch of the first roofhalf. Next I sperglued the second half to the first, using the ridgewall as a guide for the right angle.
The result can be seen on the next pictures.
But there had been some problems with the casting of this roofpieces. The rafters on the left and right are very fragile, because they are very thin and narrow. The first broke off as I demoulded the first casts. The next went off in the process of cleaning the casts. I had to find a solution or do a new master with (unrealistic) thicker/wider rafters.
Based on the model of steel concrete I put thin floral wire into the mold before the casting. That worked fine.The result is very durable "steel resin". On the next two detail shots you can see the green wire shine through the beige resin.
The next step to be done is the making of the part with the pantiles and a (castable) rain gutter. Here comes a picture I used as a refernce.
As I already had a part of the pantiled roof cast, I began with the rain gutter. I used a piece of plastic tube and cut it into two halfs. I needed some tries to get a usabel half to work with. I had to keep in mind to make the finished gutter castable so I added some heated wax to add some more thickness to the material. Then I made a mold and cast up some of the short pieces. They came out well and I could built the whole length of the rain gutter from 5 pieces. I glued them on a piece of thin plastic card that had the size of the whole roof. A little piece of plastic card was glued on both sides of the gutter. Then I glued a very thin tube of plastic rod on the long edge to built the characteristic shape of a rain gutter. The attachments were sculpted with modelling clay (Pro Create).
With the rain gutter finished it was time to glue the pantiled roof to the plastic card. In the following pictures you ca see the result.
The new mould of the finished roof piece cast up well. Here comes some pictures of the first castings, provisional attached to the walls and the roof subconstruction.
The next part to be done was the
downspout. I used a plastic tube as a basis. This was carefuly heated on one side with a
lighter so that I could bend it to the needed shape. For this I needed some tries to get
it right.
I glued the bended and measured tube to a piece of plastic card for easyer
handling and moldmaking. The attachments were sculpted with Pro Create again.
Now that I built an intact roof I decided at this point of the process that is is a good idea to build two more complete walls too. The result will be a minor damaged house. In a next step I can hopefully built some more ruined wallparts from the masters of the four wallpieces later
Again I used balsafoam as the basis. But this time I added the plaster, sand and woodglue mix before I started to do the damages. It worked faster and I will do it in this sequence the next time again. The next three pictures show the finished new masters.
The folowing three pictures show the four masters of the rlative intact walls ant the the testfitted casting of the roof.
After moldmaking and casting the four wallpieces I wanted to construct a somewhat damaged but still intact building. The openings for the windows and door had been dimensioned that my existing windows and doors fit in perfectly. The following four pictures shows some of the casts of the windows, shutters, door and doorframe I used in addition to the walls and the roof.
I provisional added the roof parts and converted windows, shutters and door to the wall castings. For fixating the resin parts I used some BlueTac.
I emulate the look of damaged windows by
penetrating the very thin "glasses" with a metal handle of a sculpting tool.
This is an easy and realistic way to get some very realistic broken windows.
The damages on the shutters were achieved with a drill and a sharp knife.
The next pictures show the assembled building and gives even still unpainted a good impression of an wartorn building.
There is still a chimmey missing that I have to built next. I am also thinking about doing a basement and a piece of the roof with a few pantiles damaged/missing.
To be continued ......